A Comparison Between Rock and Rap Music: Origins, Differences and Similarities

What's Relevant To The Assignment?

What Is Interesting And Informative?

What Matters To The Argument i Am Going To Make?

What Is Basic Or Central (And Needs To Be Mentioned, Even If Obvious)?

What Can i Leave Out Because It Is Off Topic?

Overall, What Is Most Important About Each Subject?

The paper intends to focus on the major aspects of two musical genres. The essay does not only concentrate on their distinctive features but also seeks to establish the demarcating line between the two. Analyzing the backdrop of the emerging point of both the genres, the essay seeks to understand how the two genres should never be mixed with each other. The motive of the piece is to show how these two genres can be segregated from one another. Finally, the objective of the essay is to look for how the intensity of rock music supported by the students is more engrossing than that of rap in general (Carpentier et al).  

Rock is that sort of musical genre that needs a lot of authenticity and practice of years to the blending of the essence from different musical genres. The other genres like “rock-n roll” was nearly popularized around 1960 among rest of the style and eloquence. Rock music basically consists of interesting patterns of music created through rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass and most of the times drums. The use of keyboard is also vehement in this genre especially a song by one of the most celebrated rock bands, Pink Floyd namely Echowhere the audience can see how most of the musical part is arranged by keyboard. Rock music tends to have a huge experimental practice of incorporating instruments especially that needs tremendous skill and expertise. The considerable amount of skill is put together to form this genre.

On the other hand rap is comparatively a newly formed genre. In order to be very precise rap is not even a genre itself rather it is a part of the greater musical community called hip-hop. It has to be understood very clearly that rap concentrates mostly on the flow of words and how the quickly uttered words become the fragments of a collage of a bigger story or a message that is tried to be conveyed through the song (Knobloch-Westerwick et al). The arrangement of these two genres has a basic difference in the use of instruments. Rock has extreme use of instruments while rap uses one instrument or so and mostly a track as the background. In case of rock, one on hand, the quality of the tone that is produced by the instruments is at the heart of the story generated by rock genre on the other rap does not need the assistance of any musical instrument to utilize it as a device to progress the story.

Conclusion

Rock expresses its opinion through lyrics that is again backed up by a proper tune while rap does not have a specific tune which is followed throughout the piece rather a beat is chosen and the beat continues to play till the piece comes to an end. It is already mentioned earlier that this is comparatively a new genre because it came into existence almost tem years after “rock n roll” has reached its summit (Friedlander). Although rock music has been used for the purpose of forming opinion, protest against war and inhumanity yet the sole intention of the latter genre is to express the frustration that is being suppressed. The frustration might not always be personal, it can get generated from political instability, national insecurity, deprivation, poverty and heinous that are taking place everywhere. Rap is a language of protest. The way Wilfred Own thought the writing “Futility” might help the readers understand how vague wars are, the same way has also been adapted by rappers who think that the songs are the channels through which they can communicate anything to the world faster and better. Therefore in rock, lyric has been given a little lesser importance than that of the arrangements while in rap, lyrics is the heart of it. If there is no playing of a reef, it cannot be a rock song similarly without a good set of lyrics that appear in a loop it cannot also be justifiably called rap. Usually through rock, impersonal issues are addressed however in this case, rappers take instances from their own lives and put them in the song and do not forget to make the audience involved with the authenticity and the originality of the personal grief and bereavement. It is also certain that when the rap songs get impersonal it sometimes loses the dignity of the language and the raw colloquial form of language is put inside the songs (Partlett). The purpose of these genres is also slightly different from one another because when rap tries to merely gather the attention of the audience trying to make them aware of the sufferings of others, rock music tries to touch the heart of the audience with the lyrical and musical offerings.      

However there are some similarities between rock and rap music. The most significant of them is similarity in the theme. Rap music is a part of the hip-hop music. Both the composers of hip-hop music as well as rock music have preferred protest against social issues like racism; claim for equality, justice, hard times, feminism, Sex, cheating in love, as their favorite theme. Eventually, the themes of rap music also encompass racism, claim for equality and justice, feminism, cheating in love, sex. This signifies rock music and also rap as the part of hip-hop music can be used as protest music.

Conclusion

The paper has rightly identified some distinctive features of the two genres where one is inclined towards music and instruments as a whole while the other only looks for the opportunity of making people aware of the pain and grief the world is bearing everyday. Therefore it can be concluded that even their origin and purpose are diverse they still have one thing in common and that is creating the language of protest and affection through music even the rock is preferred more than rap.

References

Carpentier, Francesca Dillman, Silvia Knobloch, and DolfZillmann. "Rock, rap, and rebellion: Comparisons of traits predicting selective exposure to defiant music." Personality and individual differences 35.7 (2003): 1643-1655.

Friedlander, Paul. Rock and roll: A social history. Routledge, 2018.

Knobloch-Westerwick, Silvia, Paige Musto, and Katherine Shaw. "Rebellion in the top music charts: Defiant messages in rap/hip-hop and rock music 1993 and 2003." Journal of media psychology 20.1 (2008): 15-23.

Partlett, David F. "From Victorian Opera to Rock and Rap: Inducement to Breach of Contract in the Music Industry." Tul. L. Rev. 66 (1991): 771.