Rap music can really rock out

I suppose living in a region that boasts an impressive rap community would change a girl's mind about rap. I'm admittedly 100 percent ignorant about rap, and to top it off, I'm a former scoffer. It was hard to appreciate the rapid-fire rhythms of ambiguous lyrics as a die-hard classical music fan.

After a brief interlude into pop music, I came away with an affection for boy bands (I'm partial to the Backstreet Boys), but in terms of musical experimentation, that was about it ? until excessive exposure to rap music forced me to give the genre some grudging respect.

It's a reflection of the very creation of language itself. Most of the words in rap music don't make sense, and this is a little disconcerting at first. Artists have an odd habit of creating new words ("bling bling," referring to the sound jewelry makes, or "duckets," as in money), or even giving completely new meaning to existing words ("crib," as in home, or "to bump," as in playing your music loudly or "do," as in hairdo, or to kill or to have sex). But language is subjective anyhow. The meaning of words are defined by how we use them.

Even pop music works with a limited set of words, the permutations of which soon become tiresome (love, forever, kiss, kiss, blah blah blah). The English language is still growing, but at a slow pace ? for instance, the verb "to fax" didn't roll around until the invention of the machine. Rappers set their own pace of lingual evolution by speeding things up ? mutating the lexicon, if you will. It's nothing short of revolutionary.

Then, there's product placement. First, we have "Timb's," which are Timberland boots. They were somewhat dorky in the '80s (can we say, lumberjack?), but now they've made a comeback as the symbol for masculinity. And you know they've really made it into the cool club when they get a nickname.

The nicknames "Benzo" and "Beemer" make these overpriced rides seem friendlier, more accessible to the average joe. Ingenious marketing tactics, albeit unintentional.

A friend recalls a tale that illustrates just how much the material culture that rap promotes has pervaded everyday society. Upon returning home last May to Miami, he paid a visit to South Beach, where a major hip-hop culture magazine was hosting an awards show. To this day, he marvels at the collection of Bentleys and Rolls-Royces that were parading along those downtown streets.

Forgive my digression but do you suppose those stately carmakers have ever thanked Juvenile and Master P for all the free promotion? Surely their marketing departments never envisioned such high sales in the Dirty South.

The best is when rap gets personal. Tupac and Biggie Small used their artistic forum for duking it out in "answer records," playing out their ongoing personal dispute in a series of bitter songs that matched each other, one-for-one. Following in their shoes come the white rappers Everlast and Eminem, who started going at it over one guy snubbing the other. Eminem even outwardly acknowledged his derivative nature, setting his "Quitter" diss to the same background beat as one of Tupac's "answers."

These talented guys not only get to insult each other, but they set it to music, and not just simple repetitive riffs, but complicated overlays of rhythm and instrumental blends. It allows their overinflated egos to release their overflowing testosterone, but it's hella classier than whaling at each other.

They get to be little boys in a playground, throwing sand at each other from a safe distance, trying to make the other cry by getting sand in his eyes. Schubert still kicks ass, but when it all comes down to it, I'd rather have the brother by the name of Jigga getting my back when some dude pisses me off and we step outside.

Finally, there's the fact that rap is just plain poetic. It rhymes, it has musical phrasing and it follows patterns as graceful as those of sonnets, but with more interesting material (well, except for those ridiculous Eminem lyrics). Poetry is hard enough to compose on its own without having to deal with form and structure ? ask any Writing Sems major.

I find myself oddly intrigued by the art of rap production. These days, some hip-hop aficionados follow producers like the Neptunes, Swizz Beatz and the Trackmasters even more closely than their favorite artists. Block-rockin' grooves like Mary J. Blige's "Family Affair," Busta Rhymes' "Break Ya Neck," and Eminem's "The Way I Am" all trace their roots to the mixing table of one Andre Young, the infamous Dr. Dre. More than most musical genres, hip-hop is increasingly producer-driven. Some use this to question whether there's any real artistry to the format. I disagree.

Indeed, it only increases my respect for rappers, who must work to shape their lyrical flows to match the tracks laid down by others. That requires a collaborative effort to rival Gilbert and Sullivan or Simon and Garfunkel any day of the week.

So while I know absolutely nothing about rap, I know it's not something I could pull off without seriously jacking it up, and for that, I gotta give those guys mad props.

And if you don't know, now you know.