THE ARTS:Hip hop has been accused of creative stagnation, misogyny and homophobia. In answer to recent criticism of the music in these pages, Barry Shanahanargues that diversity is its strength and that many artists are trying to resolve its paradoxes

ARGUMENTS AGAINST hip hop's worth tend to run along familiar, repeated lines: it is anti-musical ("just noise"), misogynist, homophobic, violent, grotesquely commercial, intellectually disengaged, and not as good as it used to be. Evidence can be found from a huge variety of sources to point up each of these apparent failings. Indeed, to argue against the assertion that an uncomfortable proportion of hip hop has serious problems when it comes to the portrayal of femininity and homosexuality in particular would be difficult, if not impossible.

Thankfully, the bigoted and reactionary stylings of hip hop's underbelly do not require a defence, for one simple reason. Distasteful as they are, they do not account for the totality of the genre, as is acknowledged by critics and fans alike. However, it is not uncommon for hip hop's haters to conclude that this musical form, the most dominant popular music of the last 30 years, has become completely defined by its most objectionable practitioners.

The worth of hip hop derives from its variety, and always has done. It's a form that is defined by a range of paradoxes. The most common of these is the role that specific places, neighbourhoods, play in often internationally successful records. New York rapper Nas constantly refers to the area of Queensbridge in his raps; an album, or concert, by gangsta rap pioneers Public Enemy would not be complete without repeated references to Long Island; and NWA's genre-defining 1988 album, Straight Outta Compton, said as much about the state of American race/social relations in general as it did about those particular to that specific Los Angeles district.

Those who attended Jay-Z's concert this summer at the RDS in Dublin, unfamiliar with hip hop's complicated understanding of origin, would have been bemused at the spectacle of Bono leading the crowd in a chant of "Jay-Z is a Dub!", while the self-proclaimed Best Rapper Alive used the same event to extol the virtues of his native Brooklyn. Hip hop on the subject of "home", or roots, is as complicated a commentator as is present in our popular culture, where the very fragmentation of the contemporary urban community is reimagined as standing for a broader communal understanding. Simply put, divided hip hop stands.

This is not to say that because the undoubtedly gifted Lil' Wayne habitually "shouts out" to New Orleans on his hugely commercially successful albums, his unfortunate tendency towards the rhetoric of "bitches and hos" is more palatable, or acceptable. Rather, the paradox within hip hop, of the specific becoming general, of the particularities of a given experience being relied upon to stand for a more general one, illustrates an inherent broadness to the genre that is often overlooked by those who criticise it. And so it is with the problem of bigotry in the form.

IT IS PERHAPStoo simplistic to declare that for every allegedly misogynist, homophobic or otherwise misanthropic rapper there is, somewhere, a more politically correct, socially aware artist rhyming about equality and emancipation, and that between them they manage to provide balance to the hip hop force. However, there are "conscious" artists making a significant contribution to the genre.

Artists such as The Roots do not sell as many records as their more aggressive, lyrically questionable counterparts, yet it was they who were asked by Jay-Z to accompany him on his MTV Unplugged session. Perhaps the most "visible" hip hop moment of recent years was Kanye West's diatribe against the actions of the Bush administration in its response to Hurricane Katrina. Whether or not one agreed with West's assertions that the situation was mishandled because of racial prejudice, it was an exhortation to the political consciousness of rap music, coming from one of its most commercially successful artists.

That said, socially aware rap, which traces its ancestry back to the Furious Five's 1982 single, The Message, through Gil Scott-Heron, Amiri Baraka and beyond, is not content with critiquing or commenting on the current situation of urban African Americans. As much energy, if not more, is spent on attempting to re-educate hip hop itself. There is a recognition of the presence of difficulties within the genre, and attempts are constantly being made to establish the transformative qualities of rap music, to remake or renew it as a force for good as opposed to simply a mirror of the status quo. These attempts are not always successful, as charts and ticket sales show. However, their significant presence puts paid to the assertion that hip hop has become so reliant on certain bigotries that it has lost all worth as a popular, relevant form.

THE AESTHETIC VALUEof hip hop, meanwhile, is a different question, and yet the influence of the genre's defining paradox is apparent here too. Hip hop's roots, in its original DIY form of DJs isolating rhythmic, percussive sections of funk and soul records for MCs to rhyme over and partygoers to dance to, mean that it has always been open to accusations of being musically moribund. What creativity lies in spinning records of music someone else wrote and performed?

The answer lies more in the process than the product. The vision and innovation of early DJs in their manipulation of existing technology, such as turntables and mixers, resulted in a music that was, from then on, more self-conscious in its artifice and so endlessly self-critical. Thus, rather than remain static, rap music's practitioners recorded in constant fear of losing touch, of falling behind. Since then, the form has been far more inventive than is admitted by those who allege that it is over-reliant on "the holy trinity" of two turntables and a microphone.

The mainstream success of progressive producer Timbaland, the innovation of a variety of producers and rappers on Lil' Wayne's 2008 album, Tha Carter III, and Kanye West's bold departure from expectations to synthesizer-led non-rapping on his recently released 808sand Heartbreakall testify to the strength of a form that is, even at its most prominent level, still dedicated to artistic progression and experimentation.

Meanwhile, in the live arena, the shows of "underground", up-and-coming rappers are still tied to the traditional set-up of DJ and MC sharing a stage with a pair of record players and some amps, though this has as much to do with cost restrictions as any other factor. Unfavourably comparing the visual impact of a self-produced hip hop show with the more exciting experience to be had in other arenas makes as much sense as criticising four unsigned 19-year-olds with guitars in Eamonn Doran's pub for not looking like Kanye West's Glow in the Darktour.

A defence of hip hop lies in acknowledging that it is immeasurably more than the reductions stated as fact by its detractors. Some rappers are undoubtedly bigoted towards a remarkable range of classes, genders, races and sexual orientations, while others are artistically backward-looking and resistant to change. However, since its inception, the role of hip hop has been to shape and document an immeasurably broad urban experience, and so, within it, there are bound to be discrepancies and differences in approach.

In fact, it could be argued that those criticising hip hop are themselves as crucial a part of the genre as the practitioners themselves. Given its raw materials, rap is probably doing something wrong if it's not annoying somebody.

• Barry Shanahan is a PhD student at the Clinton Institute for American Studies in UCD, working on a project on hip hop and its use in TV, film and literature