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Description
I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m an addict. I go through some stressful times, and there’s only one thing that can ease my mind. I always have some on me, in my bag, or in my pocket, or even just in my imagination when it’s not appropriate to take it out (such as in the workplace). It calms my mind when I’m angry, picks me up when I’m down, and doesn’t leave me with a sense of depression after taking a hit. I’m so addicted to this, I’d swear I couldn’t live without it.

What is this addiction? Why, it’s simple.

Music.

Ah, yes. Music. It can make you laugh, it can make you cry. It can bring light to a dark day, and warmth to a cold heart. It can make you rich, or you could pin all your hopes to it and fail utterly in life.

It can make you kill. It can encourage you to save a life.

It can lift you up, take you on a great journey, and drop you gently back into the real world, or it can drop the harsh reality of the real world directly on top of you. It can give confidence to the apprehensive. It can give courage to the faint-hearted.

Music is a wonderful thing, there’s no doubt about that. But, listening to some Linkin Park songs on my computer a few days back, I started thinking: “What makes music so special?”

Music is defined as “the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre”. This tells us what music is, but how does music do what it does? What makes music appealing to us, or some music disgust, frighten or annoy us? What makes us go through different moods depending on what we are listening to, and when?

One songwriter, a rapper by the name of Curtis Jackson, more commonly known as 50 Cent, sums it up in one line: “My music is a drug, press play you ain’t gotta sniff it.” Music is a drug. It can be turned on or off, up or down, and you have a choice of what music you want. You don’t have to worry about hepatitis or tetanus from rusty needles, and it won’t make you cough your lungs out. It comes in many varieties, and doesn’t have to be rolled, cooked, powdered, lit, or injected. Nowadays, you can carry it around with you. Most music costs around the same, and for an instant hit, you can download songs off the internet.

My drug of choice is hip hop, or more specifically, the vocal side of hip hop, rap. It requires impeccable vocal timing in harmony with a beat which can be complex or simple. Usually delivered more quickly than conventional songs and with less stress on singing lyrics, but more on talking over beats, rap is one of the most controversial genres of music made today. But why not? The rap we hear regularly is usually something like Xzibit’s lines “One n***a less, what used to be his chest is now a mess under his vest.” I can see why people may not class that as real music, but then they say that all rap is pathetic, they “hate” all rap.

To these people I say this: Listen to all rap before hating all rap. Not all rap is about killing, violence and doing drugs. The good stuff, the rap no-one listens to because they have the “crap rap” stereotypes drilled into their heads, are songs like Tupac Shakur’s “Changes” or Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony’s “Crossroads” – a heartfelt song taking an introspective look at death itself and the question of “what is the point of it?”

“…and man, I miss my Uncle Charles, y’all
He shouldn’t be gone, in front of his home
What they did to Boo was wrong
Oh so wrong, oh so wrong
Gotta hold on, gotta stay strong
When the day come, better believe Bone got a shoulder you can lean on…”

This isn’t just music; it is poetry.

This is the kind of rap that can reach out to you, take you in its arms and hold you from start to finish. The kind of rap that leaves you wanting more of the same. The kind of rap that blows the “Armed and dangerous, ain’t too many can bang with us, straight up weed no angel dust, label us notorious” stereotype out of the water.

Rap isn’t the only good music out there though. In the words of Layzie Bone, “We love the reggae and jazz, and rock and roll can be cool, alternative too, we love the rhythm and blues, but I’m a hip hop baby…” The music I’m listening to all depends on the mood I’m in, and what I’m doing at the time. Oddly, I can kill people in games a lot easier listening to songs like Bob Marley’s “Sunshine” or Blue’s “You Make Me Wanna” than when I’m listening to songs with lyrics like “Put your hands down, bitch, I ain’t gon’ shoot you // I’ma pull you to this bullet and put it through you” That’s just me though; everyone is different.

However, everyone listens to music at some point in their lives. Our love of music is one of the greatest things that we humans have in common. For all we know, music could be the key to breaking the chains of difference related hatred. Ask anybody, anywhere, of any ethnicity or religious belief (or lack thereof) what kind of music they like; the answer is almost guaranteed not to be “I don’t like any music”. Some people are hardcore Metallica fanatics; others, Snoop Dogg groupies; a lot of people enjoy a wide variety of music.

So what’s your drug?

Description
I’ll be the first to admit it. I’m an addict. I go through some stressful times, and there’s only one thing that can ease my mind. I always have some on me, in my bag, or in my pocket, or even just in my imagination when it’s not appropriate to take it out (such as in the workplace). It calms my mind when I’m angry, picks me up when I’m down, and doesn’t leave me with a sense of depression after taking a hit. I’m so addicted to this, I’d swear I couldn’t live without it.

What is this addiction? Why, it’s simple.

Music.

Ah, yes. Music. It can make you laugh, it can make you cry. It can bring light to a dark day, and warmth to a cold heart. It can make you rich, or you could pin all your hopes to it and fail utterly in life.

It can make you kill. It can encourage you to save a life.

It can lift you up, take you on a great journey, and drop you gently back into the real world, or it can drop the harsh reality of the real world directly on top of you. It can give confidence to the apprehensive. It can give courage to the faint-hearted.

Music is a wonderful thing, there’s no doubt about that. But, listening to some Linkin Park songs on my computer a few days back, I started thinking: “What makes music so special?”

Music is defined as “the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre”. This tells us what music is, but how does music do what it does? What makes music appealing to us, or some music disgust, frighten or annoy us? What makes us go through different moods depending on what we are listening to, and when?

One songwriter, a rapper by the name of Curtis Jackson, more commonly known as 50 Cent, sums it up in one line: “My music is a drug, press play you ain’t gotta sniff it.” Music is a drug. It can be turned on or off, up or down, and you have a choice of what music you want. You don’t have to worry about hepatitis or tetanus from rusty needles, and it won’t make you cough your lungs out. It comes in many varieties, and doesn’t have to be rolled, cooked, powdered, lit, or injected. Nowadays, you can carry it around with you. Most music costs around the same, and for an instant hit, you can download songs off the internet.

My drug of choice is hip hop, or more specifically, the vocal side of hip hop, rap. It requires impeccable vocal timing in harmony with a beat which can be complex or simple. Usually delivered more quickly than conventional songs and with less stress on singing lyrics, but more on talking over beats, rap is one of the most controversial genres of music made today. But why not? The rap we hear regularly is usually something like Xzibit’s lines “One n***a less, what used to be his chest is now a mess under his vest.” I can see why people may not class that as real music, but then they say that all rap is pathetic, they “hate” all rap.

To these people I say this: Listen to all rap before hating all rap. Not all rap is about killing, violence and doing drugs. The good stuff, the rap no-one listens to because they have the “crap rap” stereotypes drilled into their heads, are songs like Tupac Shakur’s “Changes” or Bone Thugs ‘n Harmony’s “Crossroads” – a heartfelt song taking an introspective look at death itself and the question of “what is the point of it?”

“…and man, I miss my Uncle Charles, y’all
He shouldn’t be gone, in front of his home
What they did to Boo was wrong
Oh so wrong, oh so wrong
Gotta hold on, gotta stay strong
When the day come, better believe Bone got a shoulder you can lean on…”

This isn’t just music; it is poetry.

This is the kind of rap that can reach out to you, take you in its arms and hold you from start to finish. The kind of rap that leaves you wanting more of the same. The kind of rap that blows the “Armed and dangerous, ain’t too many can bang with us, straight up weed no angel dust, label us notorious” stereotype out of the water.

Rap isn’t the only good music out there though. In the words of Layzie Bone, “We love the reggae and jazz, and rock and roll can be cool, alternative too, we love the rhythm and blues, but I’m a hip hop baby…” The music I’m listening to all depends on the mood I’m in, and what I’m doing at the time. Oddly, I can kill people in games a lot easier listening to songs like Bob Marley’s “Sunshine” or Blue’s “You Make Me Wanna” than when I’m listening to songs with lyrics like “Put your hands down, bitch, I ain’t gon’ shoot you // I’ma pull you to this bullet and put it through you” That’s just me though; everyone is different.

However, everyone listens to music at some point in their lives. Our love of music is one of the greatest things that we humans have in common. For all we know, music could be the key to breaking the chains of difference related hatred. Ask anybody, anywhere, of any ethnicity or religious belief (or lack thereof) what kind of music they like; the answer is almost guaranteed not to be “I don’t like any music”. Some people are hardcore Metallica fanatics; others, Snoop Dogg groupies; a lot of people enjoy a wide variety of music.

So what’s your drug?