What makes people listen to rap/hip hop and not alternative?

I think that Rap and Hiphop are so easy to grasp for people, because it works with the most archaic methods of music.

Repetition: By looping a simple drum rhythm or melody over and over, the listener is easily captured. It's a similar process with an earworm. Rhythm or melody don't even need to be good at all, it's the repetition that makes you listen. The lyrics provide a minimum of variation which makes up for the earworm-type approach.

Lyrics: As the majority of the song texts in Rap and Hiphop revolve around social status, sex, money and gang warfare, the people who easily cling and identify with such topics will find satisfaction in hearing someone talking about it. They put themselves in the position of the singer, making them feel like they are in a similar situation. Aggression (in the voice) is also a primitive factor which makes you want to listen to a song, no matter how dull it is. Verbal abuse, just the same.

The simplicity in the vast majority of those genres leaves you with hardly any variation and the element of repetition gets you hooked on a song very easily. After you heard such a song and got used to it, it's easy to listen to it again and not be rattled by sudden changes in rhythm or melody due to it's monotonous character.

This is true for most of the commercial Rap and Hiphop in the mainstream media with modest pretensions. But there are fine examples of artists, which make use of certain elements of these genres, filling the gaps which ghetto style artists fail to deliver.

TripHop is a fine example for that.

Q1: Radiohead, Rolling Stones, Nick Drake, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd, TV on The Radio, Trouble, The Mars Volta. I'm a gigantic fan of unique, and among the bands or artists concentrate to are unique. Some I simply get into at random occasions. I obtained into Radiohead seeing that of you, Rolling Stones seeing that of Wes Anderson's movie Bottle Rocket, and Tom Waits seeing that of the film Knocked Up. Q2: Radiohead - OK Computer. It's an intriguing, strong album. Not to say it used to be quite motivated through Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, a notable album in itself. Q3: Trip Hop (Technically no longer hip hop so I can use it :P) Q4: M.C. Escher Q5: I in general learn wrestling biographies, I'm a gigantic wrestling fan. 'Pure Dynamite' through Tom "Dynamite Kid" Billington is my favourite. I additionally revel in Edgar Allen Poe's quick reviews and poems. He has a gloomy type of writing, I'm into that. Q6: A Perfect World, Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill Vol. one million & two, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Big Fish, Righteous Kill, The Departed, Donnie Darko, Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly, Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino, Requiem for a Dream, The Wrestler, Mulholland Drive, 12 Monkeys, Brazil, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Bottle Rocket, The Darjeeling Limited, Rushmore, The Time Bandits, The Shining, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I'll Stop Now, otherwise I'll be going all day. Haha. BQ: Away With Words w/ Cook is GREAT! I'm a gigantic fan.

i think because it's more publicized. It's what media wants us to believe is the type of music we as a society should listen to in order to "fit in". If alternative was played on all the big radio stations, and the media portrayed it as the 'cool' music, then we would see a huge boom in the alternative industry. In the end, we do what the media tells us to do.

How dare you make rash generalizations about a genre you know nothing about. How dare you, how dare you.