POV: What they don't get about rap

You can’t be ESL and truly enjoy rap. Shakespeare’s Old English isn’t what defines literary genius anymore — rap can obtain commercial success. It’s one of the only mainstream form where English literature 101 is alive without sounding archaic.

You don’t even have to call it “music,” since so much of it is just sharp banter — but that banter proves how versatile and powerful the English language can be when delivered to the masses.

That’s why ESL speakers struggle to connect with it.

It’s not like Taylor Swift is offering anything particularly clever or linguistically witty.

We live in a world where English has been degraded so much that when I walk down the streets of any major cosmopolitan city in the West, the older generations are actually happy to see me — probably because they assume I can still speak proper English, haha.