"When one of my students asked me why rap and hip-hop developed among black people, I speculated that rhythm is threaded within African ancestry in a strangely existential way. Where Western music seems to be far more reliant on chord progression and tonal development, in black and African music, the focus isn't so much on how the music sounds as notes go higher and lower, but with how long or short a note is, and with how you can manipulate those lengths into patterns. With rap, you’re hitting all those short beats and long beats and letting the words hit you in a way that feels more primal, more linguistic than either song or casual speech. The student seemed more or less satisfied with this answer. I went on to confess how I often feel useless at rhythm. Hip-hop and rap demand you to be in the moment of the rhythm itself and want to stay there; often there’s no melodic movement. But I always feel like I want to go somewhere. And all these longs and shorts confuse me and my mouth gets filled with things I can't understand, cannot taste properly."