Good Music is Good Music -- Isn't It?

I will not exaggerate at all in this in the least. 


We were having lunch at Southtowne Mall and Carl went off to the restroom.  I felt comfortable alone so I sat mindlessly watching a rap video on one of the major video screens placed randomly around the place. 


Then suddenly I noticed a guy with an askew baseball cap glaring at me. He didn't look unlike the guy in the photo above except he was younger, you could see his numerous tattoos, his look on his face was even nastier and, no, he definitely wasn't Eminem.  


Am I not allowed to watch rap even?  I had no particular look on my face though he definitely did. In fact, I forget the name of the rapper who was on the video, but his rap was kinda catchy, in no way offensive (it was a public mall, after all) and I actually liked it.  I don't plan to download it, but it was okay.  


 I haven't been living in a basement, you know.  Rap has been around for a long time, since maybe the seventies, and only a real shut-in doesn't have some awareness of it. And you have to be a real bigot not to be able to appreciate its finer points, it's rhythm, rhyme, it's dance.  


It's violence, mysogyny, its language, its hate is not quite so pleasing.  This one had none of that.  It was nice.  


I think this kid was wondering what business I had watching it or at least was presuming I had a negative judgement of it.  I remember about twenty years ago when Reno Mahe, who was in my seminary class at Brighton High School at the time, was asking a white kid sitting next to him why he liked hip-hop when it wasn't his music.  The answer then was simply because he liked it.  Reno seemed to buy that.


My answer would have not been exactly the same the other day, but close enough.  It would have been "Why shouldn't I like it?"