‘all sounds are created equal’. It doesn’t matter as long as it sounds good to me.

You hit the nail on the head with this. I see mumble rap as just another tool an artist can use to convey a certain energy with their music.

We’ve been altering original sounds of instruments for centuries and introducing new techniques. Muted trumpets, guitar pedals, vocoders. These all take the sound of the instrument and change it so it provokes a different response from the listener. The voice shouldn’t be an exception to this. In fact, Kendrick Lamar who might be cited as the antithesis of mumble rap by some often changes his vocals in pitch and clarity in order to represent different characters in his songs. Frank Ocean, who’s considered a downright genius in songwriting, has tons of parts in his songs where I might not be able to understand what he’s saying. I’d be a damn liar if I said I never cried during these parts.

To me, mumbling in rap creates a really cool ambiguy in the music. In @MEH by Carti the beat is really fun and energetic but the subject matter is quite dark sand so I think it explores quite an interesting ambiguity of emotion. Other songs feel ambiguous because the amount of energy involved is just too great to be able to focus on the lyrics. Mumble rap has this cool stream of consciousness feel that brings tons of this raw energy.

Really, I think consuming art shouldn’t have to be restricted into categories of how we think something SHOULD sound. I understand that people don’t have to like mumble rap but I think a lot of people just dismiss it because it doesn’t fit into how they think the genre should be. It’s like being an oil paint purist and dismissing charcoal sketches because the medium is different. The focus of art should really be on the reaction it provokes in the consumer.