Wojtek: You seem to be confusing two things - being an arrogant asshole that spills its shit all around without any regard of others -which I find to be quite widely spread in the US, and the aesthetic preference for different music genres. One may or may not like hip hop, or any other music genre, but that totally different form someone else blasting noise into other people's faces, regardless of what genre that noise is.
Your point about blasting car stereos in the US vs. the rest of the world just reminded of your earlier statements about "rap is virtually unknown in Africa." I'd wanted to correct you the first time you made that statement but I never got around to it while the thread was going on. Thought I'd take this chance to make it clear. From what I remember in that old thread, you were arguing that arrogance and competitive taunting were essential to the asethetic of hip-hop and since those are features promoted in US culture as opposed to cultures in other parts of the world, that's why it was so popular in the states and not elsewhere. I just wanted to point out that that's not true, hip-hop seems to have a very widespread following all over Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. So either there is more to this music that makes it compelling or the in-your-face spirit is more worldwide than you thought. I am not sure which is correct, I think it might go both ways, there is definately an intensity to hip-hop that's often aggressive and assertive, a lot like punk.
Arash
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