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“Royals” became a huge hit and was crowned Song of the Year at the 2014 Grammy Awards, while tenuous accusations of an anti-rap (and even “racist”) sentiment some internet pundits tried to make were rightfully dismissed because most people understood Lorde’s sincere expression and the emotional and rational contribution she was making within the context of pop and youth culture. It is so much part of the global pop scene that the values (and valuables) rappers talk about served teenage New Zealand act Lorde as an ironic contrast to her own reality, for instance the young love described in “Royals” that can do without status symbols. For more than three decades this music has traveled outside of its home territory and continues to influence tastes and opinions on a worldwide scale. It is my firm belief that rap should be a sphere of discourse and discussion where everybody with a minimal familiarity with the topic gets to say their piece.
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The combination of her looks, her origin and her music are sure to test the tolerance of some, and that’s exactly why Iggy Azalea deserves her 15 minutes – 15 minutes to plead her case the rap way, not to aimlessly strut around in the spotlight, of course. But I also acknowledge that for practically every one of us who listens to hip-hop and rap on the regular there’s a mental line that we draw, based on whatever principles, between what we are willing to accept in rap form and what not. Some of it is good, some of it is great, and the rest ranges from average to awful. Or are they? At the risk of angering further hip-hop luminaries, I believe that music is music and therefore rap music is rap music. This brings us more quickly to Iggy Azalea and “The New Classic” than the time of reflection we should reasonably schedule when contemplating rap releases who are not only 20, 25 years apart, but world’s apart. Both rappers have helped author two indisputable classics, Brand Nubian’s “One For All” and Mobb Deep’s “The Infamous,” respectively. Last year Lord Jamar reminded Macklemore and other white rappers of their “guest” status in hip-hop, while the other week Prodigy took offense to being reviewed by Jayson Greene, labeling the Pitchfork critic (via Twitter) as an “outsider peeking in” who is “not learned in this lifestyle or music” and therefore unable to “make a proper assessment” of his art. Of late, some rather old debates are making a comeback.