Wow, I must have missed this topic. Anyway....
I dislike Phish because their music bores me. There's nothing exciting about it. It's one song, on and on, with no changes in key. They play glorified scales. It was the same way when I went to see Medeski Martin & Wood in concert. I loved these guys' music when I heard it on their albums, and they have some great songs on the Get Shorty soundtrack. I went to listen to them live, and I fell asleep. It was a bunch of guys on stage, seeming to experiment with their instruments and see how long they could play the same couple of bars over and over again.
I've felt the same way about Phish in their music I've heard. Trouble is, I've only seem them perform live once, and it was on TV. I've just LISTENED to their music, and it bored me to death. I can only imagine what they would be like live. I'm in complete agreement with Eric (lsvtec)....their music lacks cohesiveness. It's like they just get up there with some noise-cancelling earphones on, and just start playing their instruments.
That said....onto the rap issue. The major problem here is, when younger people (shit, listen to me, I'm only 25) today think of rap, they think of the shit that's on the radio like Jay-Z, Nelly, Ludacris, etc. It's pure shit. Even Puff Daddy. He's the king of shit, and who I hold somewhat responsible for the degredation of rap music. No one thinks of EPMD, KRS-One, Eric Sermon, Tribe Called Quest, Pharcyde, De La Soul...I could go on and on. No one plays that stuff anymore. Radio? Nope. MTV? They stopped playing music a long time ago. The time that I'm talking about was before gangstas, before bling-bling, before anyone stopped caring about writing original lyrics or pleasing the fans. I can't listen to any of the local "hip hop" stations, because they never play anything worth listening to. The only places I can find are internet stations. Anyone here might want to check out
http://www.smoothbeats.com , it's a streaming internet site that usually has some good stuff. They've got their share of crap, but it's mostly good stuff.
[/rant]