Accounting for Taste: Why I Hate Rhyming

Accounting for Taste: or Why I Hate Rhyming

                Today’s improvisation picks up where I left off yesterday with the fact that the music one loved in one’s youth has a staying power that influences our evaluations of subsequent musical developments to the point of prejudice.  Aesthetics was almost a dirty word when I was studying theory in grad school. It smacked of value judgments and vague notions of truth and beauty that were ahistorical and based on all sorts of prejudices.  Whenever the subject came up, my question was this, “Even when people think they can explain why they appreciate an artwork or particular genre of art form , isn’t it possible that they actually like it for some other, mostly unconscious reason?”   If so, then the same thing must also hold true for artists and genres that people “hate.”  I have been trying to figure out why I don’t care for rap.

     The reasons people give for responding positively to art and even entertainment must always include familiarity and exposure as factors. Some people reject the music of their parents or the art of the previous generation out of rebellion; others embrace familiarity and tradition out of a need for comfort and meaning. Some people like art to be challenging; others want it to be instantly relatable, but even that perception is on a continuum and not always the case on either side.  

      Sometimes younger people will assume that I know nothing about hip-hop or rap because of my age. If they know that I am a jazz person they sometimes ask me why I don’t know more about it, as it is also black music.  I have two answers to that question.  I still somewhat resent the postmodern collage technique of taking the fills and grooves of unpaid drummers and calling the result original. They usually understand that one and have reasonable arguments as to why I shouldn’t think that way. The other answer usually really surprises people, and I get the feeling that they don’t even believe me. The other reason is that I HATE RHYMING!

I am glad that rap exists and that it has given people a voice when they did not have one in this culture. I don’t know if Spike Lee’s “origin of rap” story is true, but it is revealing. Spike talks about how the music programs in NYC and other  black urban areas were cut drastically in the late 70s and that as a result people began to learn to play records instead of musical instruments. They made music however they could. Of course, without school programs, music lessons and instruments cost money, but then, so does the equipment required to be a DJ. I never connected the dots on that.  Anyone?

     As for the “poetry” of rap and hip-hop, I will admit to being prejudiced against it because of the way it sounds. Not because it sounds black and urban ( so does my favorite music!!!!) but because of the INCESSANT RHYMING! I can appreciate the rhythmic interest and complexity of some of the rapping, and I like when they use alliteration and internal rhyme. But end-rhymes do not sound hip to me. They sound corny. You don’t hear that word as much as you used to. “Corn” is the opposite of “Hip.” Corn is over-done and obvious. Corn is worn.

I like songs that avoid rhyming, and a melody sometimes makes a rhyme less obvious and predictable.  The only poems with end rhymes that I can tolerate are ones that are not written in rhymed couplets. I prefer  a rhyme scheme that is more complex and in which the rhymes come farther apart. I like unusual rhymes (e.g. Bob Dylan rhymes “capitol” and “skull”) but not when  they feel strained or come as end-rhymes.  To me, poetry that rhymes sounds old-fashioned  and childish.  The only rhyming poetry I have memorized is from Dr. Seuss. Check out the complexity of sound associations in this bit of “On Beyond Zebra”:

    And Floob is for “Floob-Boober-Bab-Boober-Bubs”

Who bounce in the water like blubbery tubs.

They’re no good to eat, you can’t cook ‘em like steaks,

But they’re handy in crossing small oceans and lakes.

     Seuss’s accomplishment is all the more impressive due to his using a limited vocabulary. His made-up words always had clear meanings or referred to something that he had also drawn a picture of. There is also very little repetition in a Dr. Seuss book.

     When I first heard rap I thought it was an interesting  novelty, like when Lou Rawls talked on records. Then it began to sound all the same to me.  It all sounded like “ My name is Meany, I have a big Weenie” chanted over a stolen drumbeat that I often recognized from an old funk, disco or soul jazz record. One of my favorite song lyrics is Lennon and McCartney’s “Strawberry Fields.” The closest thing to an end rhyme in that song is “real” and “fields.” There are other sound correspondences in the song, but very little rhyme of any kind. Yet, it is not blatantly obvious when you listen to it that it is unrhymed. When end rhymes are obvious and expected, I don’t hear the words for the banging and the clanging. So, to me, most rap sounds like

Blaba blaba baba  BANG

Blaba blaba baba  DANG

Blaba blaba baba  TANG

Blaba blaba baba  PANG

     Why do I have this prejudice against rhyme? To be honest, I think I used to like rhyme when I was a kid and read Dr. Seuss , Pope and Coleridge.  But when I first started to write and publish poetry (around 16) I knew that anything that rhymed was going to be rejected immediately by any serious,  adult poetry publication. I spent years avoiding rhymes in my work, or hiding them.  I think that pretty much explains why  poetry that rhymes is annoying to me. I will try to listen for something besides the rhymes, but they are still all I hear once the banging follows the clanging.