ShadowSD said

[orig][quote]

Kadoog-a-go-go said	[orig][quote]
half the metal bands on the planet aren't making music because they're not singing over the song, they're screaming, and I'm gonna venture out and say at least 50% of it isn't actually in key

That just isn't true, the vocals in death metal and black metal and even f'ing punk rock is always pulling towards the actual tones, thus avoiding the harsh semitones in between, and more importantly they keep drifting back to the root note of the key; it's a pull like gravity even when there are brief moments in the interim when things are off, and there's not a constant note clash with the music like there is in most rap, which is the reason why although metal has a reputation of growing on people who didn't initially like heavy music to begin with, virtually all people who dislike rap to begin with permanently can't stand to listen to most of it because the note clashes just hurt their ears.

It sounds like ass for the same reason I'm not going to play an E and an F at the same octave simultaneously over and over, or a quarter step above E and an F at the same octave - notice you've never heard that for the entire duration of a metal song, whether via guitar, vocals, or a combination of the two. Most rap does it as a staple, because they're not going for notes that sound good; they're going for a rhyme scheme that works with a backbeat and focusing on the lyrics. That makes them artists, that makes them poets, but musicians, that's a stretch; not if they don't give a flying fuck what the notes sound like. After all, dissonance in metal or punk or jazz is intentional, meant to create an effect. The much higher degree of dissonance in most rap is not intentional, it's just a by-product of the vocal pitch that still resonates even when rhyming and not singing. If you judge most rap as music, it's the most horrifyingly offensive worthless shit possible; if you judge it for what it is, however, it has value.

That's why I don't get why people think insisting most rap is music is defending rap; it's judging it by a brutally unfair standard. I don't do it for the same reason I don't judge the Mona Lisa as a sculpture, and complain that it's boring and two-dimensional; that would just make me a jackass.