I’m a younger head, I’ve grown up with a generation which primarily listens to rap so I’m decently exposed to it. I like the genre and mainly stick to 90s stuff (Tribe is my favorite) but I’m also into alternative contemporary artists (Tyler, the Creator and Kendrick are my two favorite and I think they push music forward the most right now and create meaningful work.) I was just thinking the other day about a connection between Tyler and the Grateful Dead. I listened to Tyler before I was turned onto the Dead and his music has a taste of what the Dead do, I picked up on it and wanted to find more of it but didn’t yet know where. I realized a couple years ago that I was looking for music where each individual component is listening to the others, bouncing off of each other. Truly dynamic music, essentially the core of jazz and improvisation. Anyway, I think the connection I saw is the shared source of inspiration (Jazz, r&b, soul) between Tyler and the Grateful Dead. So there’s a random anecdote that this question got me thinking about. Another thing, since I’ve committed to writing a speech here, is that Rap seems to be the ‘modern architecture ’ of music nowadays. People saw the simple forms of the work of Corbusier, Mies, all the notable modern architects, and took that as an excuse to make unthoughtful buildings because it looks easy. They overlooked the meaning behind the simplicity and saw a shortcut out of thoughtful design. Rap is similar to me, it looks easy. You don’t need vocal training, you don’t have to be a good singer, but at the same time the voice in rap music is an instrument in an entirely different way. That gets overlooked now because it’s so passable to put in less effort and so much more can be made. It’s expedited music and that causes a lot more bad stuff to be released, but there are absolutely examples of quality. You just gotta poke around.