Rap is the lowest form of music.

black rap is. Korean rap by zico gdragon is good

I agree, except rap isn't even music.

Definitely. Ever listened to Doomtree? Doomtree and its members are amazing.

There's certainly nothing wrong with disliking rap--or any other music genre. It's pretty easy to just shoot a genre down, though, based on judging it by the worst examples or by jumping on the bandwagon because it's hip to bash it.

It's a hard knock life 

I admit I haven't listened to too many rap artists, but I have heard Kanye, and I agree. I mention Doomtree because that's the group that really opened my ears and eyes on rap. It can be such a fun, expressive, and heartfelt medium.

Give people jobs and opportunities and they don't veer towards gangs or crime. Then you'd get raps about the problems of a steady stationary supply to the office.

Even when it's not so blatant as that, there are often a lot of racial overtones to common criticisms of rap. People stereotype it based on a narrow, prejudiced idea of what they think it is, and then lecture on what the music should and shouldn't be--what kinds of stories it ought to tell, how it ought to sound, and so on--which usually comes from people who don't know and don't care to know the inspirations and experiences of the people who make it.

Technically true. Western music is melody backed with chords. In pure rap there is no melody and no chords, so technically it can't be music. The best I can figure is that whomever invented rap accidentally left the initial "c" off the name of that genre.

Rap is as musical as the vocals in Gregorian Chant.

Brittanica defines rap as "[A] musical style in which rhythmic and/or rhyming speech is chanted (“rapped”) to musical accompaniment. " It seems they consider it musical. "This backing music, which can include digital sampling (music and sounds extracted from other recordings), is also called hip-hop,"  Splitting the vocals from the music works the same here as with "western music", and is a pretty piss poor argument for it being illegitimate.

Gregorian chant is melody, and it's not Western music. Some guy talking is not. Rap is just some guy talking (I'm being nice: "shouting" and/or "swearing" is more accurate) while (sometimes, if it's hip-hop) playing somebody else's music in the background. You might as well turn on the radio and shout at your wife and call that music.

P.S.--The title of this thread says "rap," not "hip-hop." Trying to say that one is the other is a pretty piss poor argument.

I never said rap and hip-hop were the same thing. I'm saying that your mention that rap isn't music, paired with your appraisal of it, is either an invalid point of criticism or a non-sequitur to it.

Defining "music" is quite a controversial thing. And if it isn't, that doesn't make it bad.