A lot of you on here feel waaay too comfortable admitting that you don't and refuse to listen to rap music, and I'm not loving the incredibly reductive takes on rap because the kendrick/drake beef has it on some of yall's radar for the first time in your life.
I'm not going to sugar coat it-- for americans especially, if you consider music a significant interest of yours but still feel the need to search for acceptable reasons to keep yourself ignorant of black music, or think of rap as a monolith of hate and violence and not equally as diverse as any other genre, or can only name nonblack rappers… you should be embarrassed of that. And your embarrassment should not keep you from being active about exposing yourself to unfamiliar art and broadening what you listen to.
'I don't understand what they're saying/they rap too quickly' I'm surprised by how much I keep seeing this-- speed is not a stylistic trademark of most rap music, & clearer diction as a performer is much more necessary in rap than other genres?? Statistically rap has a lower bpm (here's an example of one person's study) average than other genres. (of course these aren't all-encompassing, but you can look into this yourself using sites like bpmdatabase.com.) Do you really feel overwhelmed by speed listening to Kendrick or Biggie or Nas or 2Pac, or have you never actually listened to their songs?
'I have to look up the lyrics'-- so what? is it a bad thing to take an extra few seconds to engage with an artist's work? If you listen to lyrical music, do you care when it's the artists you listen to? Why does the thoughtful art consumption everyone talks about not also apply to black art?
'there is too much violence and misogyny and commercialism' this is not unique to rap, or true of all rap music. Artists exist that talk about other things, the way they exist in all genres. There is an entire wikipedia page listing alternative hip hop musicians and rappers if you consider seeking it out too much labor. Click one!
'i find it unrelatable'-- who cares? Being unable to engage with art you don't find wholly relatable is a deeply childish and self centered way to exist. You get on here reblogging feel good navel-gazey posts about the shared human experience and caring for one another, but a rapper talking about living with violence or poverty is stretching the limits of what you can imagine or empathize with too much for you to care about it? You don't find that embarrassing to admit to?
You don't have to love rap, you don't have to incorporate it into what you listen to every day, but a lot of you need to be aware you're parroting reagan era anti-rap (& antiblack) pearl-clutching talking points, and it's a very ugly look. It isn't racist if your favorite genre isn't rap, but you need to do some serious self reflection if you consider it inherently less artistic, intelligent or positive than 'whiter' genres when you don't actually listen to it. I am looking at you, people into other counterculture genres-- it's crazy how much I see this from self-professed punks and metalheads especially lmfao. If expression, counterculture art, anti-censorship in music and the right for raw and unfiltered music to exist matters to you as much as you say you do, you should care about rap's relationship to censorship & fight for its legitimacy just as much as what you listen to.
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I've been thinking a lot lately about how Kabru deprives himself.
Kabru as a character is intertwined with the idea that sometimes we have to sacrifice the needs of the few for the good of the many. He ultimately subverts this first by sabotaging the Canaries and then by letting Laios go, but in practice he's already been living a life of self-sacrifice.
Saving people, and learning the secrets of the dungeons to seal them, are what's important. Not his own comforts. Not his own desires. He forces them down until he doesn't know they're there, until one of them has to come spilling out during the confession in chapter 76.
Specifically, I think it's very significant, in a story about food and all that it entails, that Kabru is rarely shown eating. He's the deuteragonist of Dungeon Meshi, the cooking manga, but while meals are the anchoring points of Laios's journey, given loving focus, for Kabru, they're ... not.
I'm sure he eats during dungeon expeditions, in the routine way that adventurers must when they sit down to camp. But on the surface, you get the idea that Kabru spends most of his time doing his self-assigned dungeon-related tasks: meeting with people, studying them, putting together that evidence board, researching the dungeon, god knows what else. Feeding himself is secondary.
He's introduced during a meal, eating at a restaurant, just to set up the contrast between his party and Laios's. And it's the last normal meal we see him eating until the communal ending feast (if you consider Falin's dragon parts normal).
First, we get this:
Kabru's response here is such a non-answer, it strongly implies to me that he wasn't thinking about it until Rin brought it up. That he might not even be feeling the hunger signals that he logically knew he should.
They sit down to eat, but Kabru is never drawn reaching for food or eating it like the rest of his party. He only drinks.
It's possible this means nothing, that we can just assume he's putting food in his mouth off-panel, but again, this entire manga is about food. Cooking it, eating it, appreciating it, taking pleasure in it, grounding yourself in the necessary routine of it and affirming your right to live by consuming it. It's given such a huge focus.
We don't see him eat again until the harpy egg.
What a significant question for the protagonist to ask his foil in this story about eating! Aren't you hungry? Aren't you, Kabru?
He was revived only minutes ago after a violent encounter. And then he chokes down food that causes him further harm by triggering him, all because he's so determined to stay in Laios's good graces.
In his flashback, we see Milsiril trying to spoon-feed young Kabru cake that we know he doesn't like. He doesn't want to eat: he wants to be training.
Then with Mithrun, we see him eating the least-monstery monster food he can get his hands on, for the sake of survival- walking mushroom, barometz, an egg. The barometz is his first chance to make something like an a real meal, and he actually seems excited about it because he wants to replicate a lamb dish his mother used to make him!
...but he doesn't get to enjoy it like he wanted to.
Then, when all the Canaries are eating field rations ... Kabru still isn't shown eating. He's only shown giving food to Mithrun.
And of course the next time he eats is the bavarois, which for his sake is at least plant based ... but he still has to use a coping mechanism to get through it.
I don't think Kabru does this all on purpose. I think Kui does this all on purpose. Kabru's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder should be understood as informing his character just as much as Laios's autism informs his. It's another way that Kabru and Laios act as foils: where Laios takes pleasure in meals and approaches food with the excitement of discovery, Kabru's experiences with eating are tainted by his trauma. Laios indulges; Kabru denies himself. Laios is shown enjoying food, Kabru is shown struggling with it.
And I can very easily imagine a reason why Kabru might have a subconscious aversion towards eating.
Meals are the privilege of the living.
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A lot of people on this website make great points that could be phrased a lot less condescendingly
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