Nah you're right, I have a lot of respect for both rappers and metal musicians, there's a whole lot of skill involved in freestyling and the sheer power of metal is pretty overwhelming. Some of the culture that goes with them I think is wrong and often entirely fake, but as I said there's plenty of respectable and seriously talented musicians in both genres.
In answer to your actual question;
Metal I'd say has it's pros in its immersive atmosphere - metal gigs are an experience like no other - and like I said there's a lot of power and passion that goes into it at the highest levels, but I reckon its cons are in the hordes of young kids who can't really play guitar don't know shit about music and just want to play powerchords and thrash around on 12, and the lengths that some go to to prove their metal-worthiness with the look and the attitude. I don't think it needs to be such an anarchistic genre, and disagree with people hyping about it because they can't handle their pains and want to wallow in images of death and drugs rather than face up to their challenges.
Rap is in some ways similar; I think it gives an almost unrivalled power of expression to the artist if he has it in him to write naturally and produce raw lyrics without having to pragmatically sieve and alter his apparent emotions to find things that will rhyme. As soon as it becomes contrived and forced, as I think again quite a lot of it can be at times, it loses its merit and becomes a way for untalented youngsters to prolong their ideals of not having to take any responsibility by using a rhyming dictionary to force their way into the charts with fake stories of their ghetto upbringing and a kind of pain they can't even face.
inb4 tl;dr
This post was edited by Titch on Aug 23 2011 04:01pm