When Elton John sang a duet with the white rapper Eminem on a Grammy telecast, rap went mainstream. Massive parental headaches followed.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Elton John's opinion turned the label's opinion around, all in a day.
Rap is just somebody getting something off his chest. That's all it is.
I could never rap, personally. I can't even wrap presents.
Rap was my drug.
Lil B opened up the floodgates for Odd Future, and now rap has a huge Internet culture.
So, rap has that quality, for youth anyway; it's a kind of blues element. It's physical, almost gymnastic. It speaks to you organically. Rap grows out of what young people really are today, not only black youth, but white - everybody.
I loved rap, especially in the early days. But I wasn't trying to shove it down anybody's throats.
But it all came, and for me, hip-hop has done more for racial divide and racial sort of bringing together than anything in the last 30 years. Seeing people like Eminem sounding like somebody like Jay-Z and just the racial aspects of it all.
By the late '80s, I was already giving up on rap music.
Everybody in the '80s, well, we hate rap. Now, the biggest rapper in the world... Eminem. Rap's a black thing.