To: Human Beings

[Petitioner]

the for of a rap, which is the lowest form of talking,

I'm quite curious as to what leads you to make this statement. Would you care to elaborate a bit?

Is it found in academia?
Does rap give lots of swearing?

As Thunderer said, just being found in academia doesn't have any bearing on the argument presented in the original post's video, especially considering that the video is speaking ill of academia in the first place. There is not (supposed to be) any fu- er... intercourse present in academia either, but I don't believe that automatically relegates sexual congress to the lowest form of physical interaction between humans. However, you would be wrong in saying that rap isn't found in academia in the first place; middle and high school students in the US often make music or music videos as part of projects for their classes (this is done in collgee as well, albeit more seriously and much less frequently), and rap is an increasingly-popular genre used in this. If you don't think that counts as "academia", though, there's always this, which would necessarily imply that academic studies of and upon hip-hop (and certainly rap as well, though I admit I couldn't find anything about it from less than thirty seconds of googling) have also been conducted.

The sentence "does rap give lots of swearing?", as written, doesn't really make much sense to me, but I assume you're saying that rap is a low form of communication because it is typified by containing lots of profane vocabulary. I would counter this assertion by stating that profane vocabulary is already found in academia in the first place. I can go into more detail than simply giving this link, if you really want me to, but I think you're smart enough to do your own research regarding this from here on out.

Finally, I'd like to say that I take umbrage with the idea of any form of communication being "low". Not only is that a very subjective term (unless you believe in some form of virtue ethics that applies morality to aesthetics), it implicitly asserts a judgment of the humans that engage in that form of communication or appreciate it. I'm going to go off on a limb here and say that you think rap is essentially trivial because most rap music you've heard deals with base urges, daily life, or things commonly regarded as "fleeting pursuits" (money, sex, etc). As a counterexample, listen to this track (content warning: child and drug abuse) (lyrics here). Not only does this track not contain a single instance of profane language, it's a strong example of that old phrase we've all probably laughed at so often; "rap is poetry in motion". Mike and El P's delivery of the lyrics is restrained, but especially in the parts of the song about the military, is incredibly passionate, which helps to deliver far more of an emotional impact than simply reading lyrics alone does. Mike fesses up to all of his listeners about something terrible he's done in his life, and relates an extremely emotional experience. It's unambiguous that they put their souls into this track. Of course, that's not to say that some rap music isn't about much more "base" experiences (like this track, also by RTJ -- profanity warning), but the point is that by far most rap is intended to tell a story, convey personal emotions like anger, love, and regret, or get a point across to the audience -- exactly like any other lyrical medium that humans have ever utilized.

But, I mean, if you're trying to say there's something inherently stupid and bad about the lyrical style of rap rather than any less-inherent traits of contemporary mainstream rap songs, feel free to disregard the above; I just think that position would be much less tenable than even your current one.

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