Noe Article

We have to address an ANCIENT article about the similarities and differences in Rap and Country music.

Noe’s thesis is that Rap music and Country are similar in several aspects. Those aspects being women, law breaking and the American Dream. They both tell stories to convey these messages.

Noe comes to the conclusion that while both of these genres share many themes, it is in the way that they convey them that makes them different. The performers that convey them, more specifically the race of the performers, makes these songs come across differently to the mainstream public. While country can be seen as “red-neck” but mostly nonthreatening, rap can be in your face, and tell-it-like-it-is, even when what it is, is not what we want to hear.  

          One of Noe’s claims that I agree with is that crime does not pay. In “Mama Tried” by Merle Haggard, he sings about how his mother tried to keep him out of trouble, but he didn't listen. In Ice-T’s “Drama” he raps about realizing that education was the way to a better life, not whatever landed him in jail, only to come to this realization too late. That has been a theme in many a song, across many genres. The opposite can be true as well.  

          Noe makes the claim that in Country music, hard work is all for not in the end. I disagree with this. I will use current music to make my point. There is a song by Eric Church, it is about a young man that rejects his life “on the farm” for city. He wears his pants sagged and his hat backwards. Not to read too much into this song, but it sounds to me like he has given up his country music for rap. His brother, the singer pleads for him to come “home boy”. He offers hard work, which will keep him “out of jail”. He also makes the case that one day he will regret not sitting on the tailgate of his truck with his “high school flame on one side, ice cold beer on the other”. He pleads for his brother to come “home boy” and make right with his parents, before they are called home, boy. The title is a play on words, as I am sure you can tell. This song, however, disproves many of the arguments that Noe makes. This song does not promote casual sex, rather, that this young man should come home to his high school flame, I read it to mean so that he can make a life with her. It offers this young man hard work versus jail and promotes family repair in this case.

          I know that this song is current, and Noe’s arguments are old (1995), but I would argue, that Noe’s choice of country music that she analyzed was old at the time. Merle Haggard’s “Mama Tried” is from 1968!