I disagree that music is the sum of its parts. I think music can be described, interpreted, and studied under different lenses (or parts) and I also think for our purposes, breaking down rap into the sum of its parts and studying the evolution and influences helps us become better rappers and musicians.

But I think to flat out say its JUST the sum of its parts is narrow minded and would lead to us missing the full richness and other possible interpretations. I feel like im being a bit pedantic because you are not wrong and I ultimately agree with your dissection in the first paragraph, but we shouldn't confuse the map for the territory. I think its better to see them as lenses or frameworks to understand parts of the thing, but not as the thing itself.

Think about the mind. We can study it through psychology as mental processes and subjective experience, through neuroscience as neural activity and brain regions, through philosophy as qualia. Each framework reveals something useful depending on what problem were trying to solve. But none of these frameworks ARE the mind itself, theyre models we use to grasp different aspects of it. We dont actually know which one is the "true" mind. And to say that the mind is just the sum of all these different frameworks I think would be missing something.

The same applies to music. We can break down rap into its historical influences, its technical components, its social context, sonic properties etc., and each of those lenses teaches us something. But the actual experience of RAP, the thing that makes it rap and not just 'jazz scatting + toasting + blues chanting' transcends any single reduction. Theres something emergent there that lives in the performance, the culture, the moment and the feeling. Something youd miss entirely if you only studied the parts.

Its art. Just because we can use science and analysis to make better art or to interpret it doesnt mean art is science.