"The Appeal of the Remote" -- Jeffrey Tucker, managing editor of the journal Sacred Music ...

... compares Rap to Shakespeare.

In The Wanderer Catholic newspaper, Thursday, January 3, 2013.

"For years, I dismissed rap music as nothing but a loud racket.

"But the other day, I really tried to figure out its appeal.

"Rap is ubiquitous.

"So I decided to figure it out to my own satisfaction.

"Once you get pas[t] the profanity and lewdness, what you find is actually very surprising.

"Some of it has a dry wit, a funny story - telling talent, hilarious words and rhymes.

"However, none of this is discoverable on first listening mainly because, as with Shakespeare, the language is radically unfamiliar.

"You have to listen extremely carefully  to discover the narrative.

"But if you do, you find as aspects of it that are revealings of a world most of us do not know.

"Rap provides a picture of a different realm -- except in all its grittiness and peculiarities ..."

Way to go, Señor! :)