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“What?”
A mix of skeptical, bewildered, mildly impressed
And sometimes a little disgusted.
“You listen to rap?”
Behold, a specimen of middle-class suburbia
Spectacled, pimpled, messy-haired
Painfully awkward, unquestionably nerdy
Oh, and female, let’s not forget about that.
“Haydn and Beethoven; yup, that’s definitely your jam
During your late-night chemistry revision sessions
On your wild nights, maybe some Katy Perr – wait, what?
You listen to rap?”

Yes, I listen to rap
(Although I do still listen to Haydn
Toting Bach and Biggie together
Gets you strange looks from HMV cashiers, let me tell you)
And yes, I do actually enjoy it;
I’m not that kind of ironic listener.
After the initial double-take,
The curious follow up with “Why do you listen to rap?”
Like Victorians questioning a returning anthropologist
Who’s been in among the natives
(For the record, I find this more funny than annoying
So please don’t think I’m being spiteful)
Whereas those who also listen to rap
Go “Do you want a listen? There’s this guy you really need to hear...”
These are good questions, and I’m happy to answer them.
Where it turns sour
Is when the curious “Why?” is instead a “How?”
As in “How do you listen to rap?”
As in “How do you even listen to that garbage?
It’s not even music.”

Guys, you’re breaking my heart here.

The thing is, you don’t have to love rap, or even like it
But if you tell me rap isn’t music, I will say
You haven’t
Truly
Listened to it.

Go listen to it. Do it now.

Really listen.

By which I mean don’t dismiss this genre
As the domain of the incoherent Sosas –
Zero rhythmic creativity
Incapable of rhyming without ending everything with “boy” or “yeah”
And ignorant lyrics not a millimetre deep
(Granted, those sadly do exist
And make me cringe and cry and wash out my ears
With the tears of my lost faith in humanity)
Don’t zone out and let the words become blank noise
Because you think they’re all trash, or too fast to understand.
This is rap
This is poetry with the power of a beat
This is music made to be felt at the bottom of your chest and the highest centres of your brain
Meant to be scribbled on a notepad and spat into a mic by the end of the day
Meant to be listened to with headphones, because your parents probably shouldn’t hear this
And you don’t want to turn the volume low
Stripped bare of melody, armed only with their own rhythmic flow
The words stand alone and speak for themselves
Eviscerating anger, pretention-free tenderness
Crackling, crooked humour, hope hidden in the wisdom of the despondent
Expose themselves to the elements, and thus
Become vulnerable, and to the listener, tangible
This is rap
This is the music of the rose that grew from the concrete
Who read Shakespeare in school but never got a chance
And so wrote his love letters to his mother and his dispossessed people
Over a drum machine and a 90s beat
The music of the ageing genius trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle
While laying his demons to rest and raising one last middle finger to the world
Of the kids rapping in their basements trying to make a dream
Of those who only need one mic
To speak to generations of heartbeats
To reach out to lost and angry teenagers
And those who are still that teenager inside
To give soul and spunk to those who need it
To make a shy and awkward 11 year old girl
Sit up, and take notice.

For what I’m trying to say, words alone can’t do justice
I have over-artsy-fied it, over-romanticized it
Over-intellectual-pick-it-apart-ized it
I have under-beat-ified it
Under-to-all-the-ladies-in-the-place-with-style-and-grace-ized it
Under-when-you-heard-the-Control-verse-for-the-first-time-and-it-felt-like-something-had-detonated-ized it
Trapped in plain text, it’s lost the spark that living rap has
Because really only the music can say what it has to say.
Words and words, essentially saying
That yes, I listen to rap
And yes, I love it.
In the end, it can be distilled to this:
I’m talking about poetic justice, poetic justice
If these hands put headphones on your ears, would you trust them?