History Main / RapIsCrap

These days, it's largely a DiscreditedTrope, especially among younger generations, who have grown up with hip-hop as a mainstream genre of music and largely afford it the same level of respectability they do to pop, rock, and other genres. Its critical appraisal has improved, too, with a greater recognition of the role of hip-hop in black culture in the US in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Straight uses of this trope have grown rarer, with people who hate rap largely portrayed as either irrational old fogies at best, or racists at worst. Nowadays, you're more likely to see fans of ''older'' types of hip-hop badmouthing newer ones (mumble rap, or "[=SoundCloud=] rap", is the current {{Acceptable Target|s}} here), and that's [[NostalgiaFilter a different trope entirely]].

-->--'''Wrestling/CurtHennig and the West Texas Rednecks''', "Rap is Crap (I Hate Rap)"

I-I-I hate rap"''

* Music/{{Prince}}'s "Dead On It", which includes a verse where he claims that rappers are just tone-deaf musicians cheating their way to success. ([[HilariousInHindsight Ironic]], considering Prince's later embrace of HipHop elements in the '90s.)

* In the music video for "Night of the Living Baseheads" by Music/PublicEnemy, the rap group play the role of news reporters, and at one point in the video, a racist anti-rap group called the "Brown Bags" kidnaps Chuck D, takes him hostage, and beats him up.

* Music/{{Eminem}}, despite being one of the truest lovers of hip-hop it's possible to imagine, has had to watch fashions in hip-hop change around him, not always in directions he likes.
** His writer's block period in 2005-2007 was related in part to the dominance of [[CondemnedByHistory snap]], a simplified party style that emphasises beats and hooks over lyricism, and he wrote a few mean-spirited satires of the trend in this era (particularly "Ballin' Uncontrollably", which casts Slim Shady as a psychotically evil {{Glam Rap}}per, and "My Syllables", in which he gets Music/FiftyCent and Music/JayZ to join in with his whining about music sucking nowadays). Even in interviews after his CareerResurrection when he'd got his love of rap back, Eminem admitted he had little interest in most of the hip-hop in 2009, apart from Music/{{TI}} and Music/LilWayne who he adored.
** Eminem's lack of interest in the anti-technical 2010s hip-hop led to him shifting into pop, which he found gave him more freedom to explore his personal style, which had always been an outlier even in his heyday. After ''Revival'' was slammed by critics and hip-hop heads alike for being too poppy and outdated, Eminem responded with the surprise album ''Kamikaze'' in which he insulted, [[CopycatMockery parodied]] and mocked modern radio hip-hop as FollowTheLeader TrapMusic done by no-talents with no real love for the medium. While many blasted the album for being one of the genre's elders attacking the young (or even found it racist, seeing as it was a middle-aged white man insulting the young and largely black), Eminem admitted in interviews and even in the songs themselves that he loved some TrapMusic and could get why people liked certain artists even if he didn't, and that there'd been just as much hip-hop he hated around the time he grew up. His point had actually been to criticise a shift he felt had emerged in hip-hop over the last five years where, instead of encouraging rappers with original styles, your music was considered bad if you didn't sound the same as other artists.

* Yahtzee of ''WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation'' defended rap as a medium in his review of ''VideoGame/FiftyCentBloodOnTheSand'', but lamented that the subject matter always seemed to be "guns, whores, and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs whores getting shot with guns.]]"

-->--'''Wrestling/CurtHennig and the West Texas Rednecks''', "Rap is Crap"

* [[TropeNamers Named]] by Wrestling/CurtHennig and the West Texas Rednecks, who in 1999, amidst a rivalry with the No Limit Soldiers (a hip-hop-themed stable supported by Music/MasterP and named for his label No Limit Records), released a novelty country song called "Rap is Crap (I Hate Rap)" to build heat. The West Texas Rednecks were meant to be the {{heel}}s in this feud and the No Limit Soldiers the {{face}}s, but many Wrestling/{{WCW}} fans, mostly Southerners who hated rap and saw the No Limit Soldiers as bullies and {{Designated Hero}}es, [[RootingForTheEmpire sided with the Rednecks]] to the point that their song even got some radio airplay.

* In ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoSanAndreas'', [[Radio/GTARadio K-DST]] DJ Tommy Smith occasionally complains in the interludes between songs how "that rap crap is killing music".

* Zig-zagged by ''WesternAnimation/TheBoondocks'', where ''Mainstream'' Rap is Crap. Specifically, in the world of the show, Rap is ModernMinstrelsy, with Creator/{{BET}} and {{gangsta rap}}pers like Gangstalicious and Thugnificent depicted as dumbing down Black America to the point where UsefulNotes/MartinLutherKingJr (who, in this universe, survived his assassination attempt but spent 32 years in a coma) gives them a TheReasonYouSuckSpeech. On the other hand, the show was a big booster of AlternativeHipHop, with a soundtrack dominated by such.

* The ''Series/{{Friends}}'' episode [[Recap/FriendsS8E10TheOneWithMonicasBoots "The One with Monica's Boots"]] has Joey talk to his pregnant sister Dina about getting married to her boyfriend Bobby, who only has his band, Numbnuts, as a career. When Joey briefly entertains the idea of her marrying Bobby, he answers that his band plays gangsta rap. Cue the LaughTrack.

These days, it's largely a DiscreditedTrope, especially [[SocietyMarchesOn among younger generations]], who have grown up with hip-hop as a mainstream genre of music and largely afford it the same level of respectability they do to pop, rock, and other genres. Its critical appraisal has improved, too, with a greater recognition of the role of hip-hop in black culture in the US in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Straight uses of this trope have grown rarer, with people who hate rap largely portrayed as either irrational old fogies at best, or racists at worst. Nowadays, you're more likely to see fans of ''older'' types of hip-hop badmouthing newer ones (mumble rap, or "[=SoundCloud=] rap", is the current {{Acceptable Target|s}} here), and that's [[NostalgiaFilter a different trope entirely]].

-->'''Master Shake:''' Frylock, [[EskmosArentReal the government is a myth]] [[ConspiracyTheorist created by the rap industry to promote their crappy music]]. With jetpacks.

** His writer's block period in 2005-2007 was related in part to the dominance of [[CondemnedByHistory snap]], a simplified party style that emphasises beats and hooks over lyricism, and he wrote a few mean-spirited satires of the trend in this era (particularly "Ballin' Uncontrollably", which casts Slim Shady as a psychotically evil {{Glam Rap}}per, and "My Syllables", in which he gets Music/FiftyCent and Music/JayZ to join in with his whining about music sucking nowadays). Even in interviews after his CareerResurrection when he'd got his love of rap back, Eminem admitted he had little interest in most of the hip-hop in 2009, apart from Music/{{TI}} and Music/LilWayne who he adored.
** Eminem's lack of interest in the anti-technical 2010s hip-hop led to him shifting into pop, which he found gave him more freedom to explore his personal style, which had always been an outlier even in his heyday. After ''Revival'' was slammed by critics and hip-hop heads alike for being too poppy and outdated, Eminem responded with the surprise album ''Kamikaze'' in which he insulted, [[CopycatMockery parodied]] and mocked modern radio hip-hop as FollowTheLeader TrapMusic done by no-talents with no real love for the medium. While many blasted the album for being one of the genre's elders attacking the young (or even found it racist, seeing as it was a middle-aged white man insulting the young), Eminem admitted in interviews and even in the songs themselves that he loved some TrapMusic and could get why people liked certain artists even if he didn't, and that there'd been just as much hip-hop he hated around the time he grew up. His point had actually been to criticise a shift he felt had emerged in hip-hop over the last five years where, instead of encouraging rappers with original styles, your music was considered bad if you didn't sound the same as other artists.

* The Pacewon song "I Declare War" has a video about an evil white mayor (amusingly played by a [[RetroactiveRecognition pre-fame]] Music/{{Eminem}}) who has banned hip-hop music, sadistically smashing records for fun. Pacewon storms the building and overthrows him, taking over the city.
* Music/{{Eminem}}, despite being one of the truest lovers of hip-hop it's possible to imagine, has had to watch fashions in hip-hop change around him, not always in directions he likes.
** His writer's block period in 2005-2007 was related in part to the dominance of [[CondemnedByHistory snap]], a simplified party style that emphasises beats and hooks over lyricism, and he wrote a few mean-spirited satires of the trend in this era (particularly "Ballin' Uncontrollably", which casts Slim Shady as a psychotically evil {{Glam Rap}}per, and "My Syllables", in which he gets Music/FiftyCent and Music/JayZ to join in with his whining about music sucking nowadays). Even in interviews after his CareerResurrection when he'd got his love of rap back, Eminem admitted he had little interest in most of the hip-hop in 2009, apart from Music/{{TI}} and Music/LilWayne who he adored.
** Eminem's lack of interest in the anti-technical 2010s hip-hop led to him shifting into pop, which he found gave him more freedom to explore his personal style, which had always been an outlier even in his heyday. After ''Revival'' was slammed by critics and hip-hop heads alike for being too poppy and outdated, Eminem responded with the surprise album ''Kamikaze'' in which he insulted, [[CopycatMockery parodied]] and mocked modern radio hip-hop as FollowTheLeader TrapMusic done by no-talents with no real love for the medium. While many blasted the album for being one of the genre's elders attacking the young (or even found it racist, seeing as it was a middle-aged white man insulting the young), Eminem admitted in interviews and even in the songs themselves that he loved some TrapMusic and could get why people liked certain artists even if he didn't, and that there'd been just as much hip-hop he hated around the time he grew up. His point had actually been to criticise a shift he felt had emerged in hip-hop over the last five years where, instead of encouraging rappers with original styles, your music was considered bad if you didn't sound the same as other artists.

* Downplayed by "Royals" by Music/{{Lorde}}. It was written more as a critique of contemporary pop music in general for being shallow and promoting ConspicuousConsumption, but most of the cultural reference points she uses are lifted directly from the GlamRap of the 2000s.