“Y-Love” aka Yitz Jordan performs in New York. The New York Daily News featured Modern Orthodox rapper/Jewish convert, Y-Love in “Tale of tragedy and triumph for struggling Hasidic rap star.” The article presents an interesting portrait of the Orthodox Jewish convert.
A quote from a rabbi cites that hip-hop is harmful and that “music of this type will not benefit the listener spiritually.” Has he heard Yitz rap? I doubt that Yitz’s goal is to promote harmful music. I’m not a fan of MOST hip-hop or rap but I’ve found a few tunes that titillated even me. While I don’t think the rabbi’s racist, I wonder if such blanket statements about a musical genre has racist undertones.
And moreover, I wonder how said rabbi feels about meringue and salsa, which both, incidentally, make me feel much closer to G-d.
Memoirs of a Jewminicana 
i think it’s fairly clear that many of these statements about “negative” cultural forms are made *because* the people saying them are racist.
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I think one of the reasons that some of the Rabbis are making statements like this, at least here in Israel, is partially xenophobic, but partially due to their lack of understanding of said subject. For example, how many Rabbis have actually listened to enough rap to know whether it is good or bad. Instead it is just easier to see the negative, which at this point is in greater number, and take that as the norm. Some of this also comes from how some Ashkenazi rabbis are the products of mentalities that were needed to survive in Europe. I now predominately listen to Israeli rap. My favorite group if HaDag Nachash.
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