Eh, there are different levels of appreciation for music and there’s no right or wrong way to experience or judge it personally. For me, it’s music first, lyrics second. If I can’t connect to the music, the lyrics won’t change that. I might as well go read a poem. If the lyrics are shit, it may make listening to the music a bit more of a challenge, but the music, instrumentation and delivery are still most important to me.

I listen to all kinds of music from all over the world, not just contemporary music but traditional and classical as well. I also love opera and go regularly. I’m a native English speaker so do I have to know German, French, Italian, Ukrainian, Albanian, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, Estonian, Russian and whatever the fuck made-up language Jonsi sings in in order to decide if I think something is good or not? Hell no. I judge it on how the music makes me feel. Yes, I often miss a lot of wordplay, cultural references and so on but the damn internet is right there to help explain it all.

So when it comes to rap—and granted, I’m new to the genre (other than real old school from the very beginning—I can still PERSONALLY assess a rapper’s skill by other measures than their lyricism. To suggest that as listeners we’re unworthy of making personal judgments if we’re not fluent in whatever language is pure elitism.