91Èȱ¬

Music taste is a personal thing, but it's interesting just how many rock 'n' roll veterans seem to be befuddled by one form of modern music in particular - hip hop. They had to battle their parents' scorn at the "dumb", rhythmic noise and raw energy of the music they grew up loving and, perhaps without realising it, they now espouse that same confusion and anger towards the music their children and grandchildren adore.

But not all of them. Seeing as it's a topic that keeps coming up, let's have the row right here. Here are five legendary rockers with rap issues, and five who are supportive.

[Warning: The 91Èȱ¬ is not responsible for the content of external websites]

The KISS bassist's principal complaint against hip hop seems to be one of pedantry: rappers such as Run-D.M.C. and N.W.A keep being inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and that's just bad filing, as far as he's concerned. He told : "Run-D.M.C. in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? You're killing me. That doesn't mean those aren't good artists. But they don't play guitar. They sample and they talk. Not even sing."

And he said this to : "I am looking forward to the death of rap. I'm looking forward to music coming back to lyrics and melody, instead of just talking. A song, as far as I'm concerned, is by definition lyric and melody … or just melody."

There again, Ice Cube did have his own thoughts on the matter:

A surprising addition to the list of outspoken rockers, Michael McDonald - lead singer with The Doobie Brothers - waded into the controversy surrounding Kanye West's petulant claim at the 2015 Grammy awards that, "Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé.”

In an interview with , he said: "When Kanye gets to a point where he can actually put a couple of notes together either vocally or two bars of valid music playing an instrument, then he might have a right to criticize somebody else. Until then I think he’s just talking to hear the sound of his own voice. The whole kinda cut-and-paste thing is a certain kind of artform all by itself. I don't know if I call it songwriting from a musician's standpoint."

While we're on Kanye, David Crosby has spent quite a bit of his interview time attempting to take his least favourite rapper down a peg or two, while also subtly hinting that rap's inherent lack of vocal melody might not be for him. There's the tweet above, plus recent comments on American TV show Watch What Happens Live: "The thing that bugs me about him is the, 'I'm the greatest living rock star.' Somebody needs to drive him over to Stevie Wonder's house right now so he understands what a real one is. Secondly, they should send him all of Ray Charles’s catalogue so he can learn how to sing."

As we pointed out recently, Keith Richards is a man with strong opinions, who doesn't see any reason to praise (or even ignore) things that don't move him personally. He may love his reggae, blues and soul, but hip hop has never quite made it onto this Rolling Stone's personal jukebox.

And like any tough guy watching lippy kids try to muscle in on his turf, he's very scathing, telling the : "What rap did that was impressive was to show there are so many tone-deaf people out there. All they need is a drum beat and somebody yelling over it, and they're happy." Which is a bit ripe when you bear in mind how much of his own song Satisfaction (the writing of which he explains above) is exactly that.

Ever the rock classicist, Noel went hard on rap in with David Walliams, saying: "I despise hip hop. Loathe it." Three years later came his infamous views on Jay Z headlining Glastonbury. "I'm sorry, but Jay-Z?," . "No chance. Glastonbury has a tradition of guitar music and even when they throw the odd curve ball in on a Sunday night you go, 'Kylie Minogue?' I don't know about it. But I'm not having hip hop at Glastonbury. It's wrong."

He did, however, partially retract his sentiments in a more recent interview with the , saying: "I love hip hop, up until the very early 90s... The hip hop thing was mainly about the videos, the way women are portrayed in the videos... Woman don't come out looking great in the hip hop scene. And that's not for me... But I don't despise any of it. Nobody will ever be as good as Public Enemy or the Beastie Boys."

And on that positive sentiment, here are...

If you've made your name playing rebellious music that aspires to tell grand narratives, it seems only right that you'd be able to spot a kindred spirit within the panoply of rappers. Roger Daltrey of The Who takes an almost exactly opposite view to that of Gene Simmons, claiming that all of rock's rebellious spirit has been taken up by hip hop, and abandoned by current guitar botherers.

He told : "The sadness for me is that rock has reached a dead end. The only people saying things that matter are the rappers and most pop is meaningless and forgettable… You watch these people and you can't remember a bloody thing."

Iggy's not just a convert to the idea of hip hop, he's made some effort to place modern rappers alongside the giants of minimalist composition while preparing playlists for his 91Èȱ¬ 6 Music radio shows. As he told : "It's really hard to play rap music on the radio because there are too many blasphemies. But there are people you can play - Joey Bada$$ is one, and I just like that name... I liked the grooves but I think it would also sound really good side by side with Steve Reich or John Adams, or some of the earlier Philip Glass stuff. There's a connection there in the repetition and the monotony."

Despite having come up with something of a classic snarky line in the rockers vs. rappers stakes - "They steal your riffs and then shout at you" - Jimmy Page has revised his opinion on the form. He even re-played the guitar riff from Led Zeppelin's Kashmir for Puff Daddy's Come With Me in 1998, partly in order to impress his hip hop-loving teenage son James.

"It was a real privilege working with him," he told in 2004. "He has incredible energy and a great imagination."

The lovely thing about this interview clip from Radio 4's Mastertapes is the extent to which Paul McCartney, who has some form in the innovative studio techniques stakes, is delighted by Kanye West's production methods. Kanye would get musical ideas out of Paul, sample and twist them - in fine hip hop tradition, let's not forget - and come up with unexpected new textures. Describing Kanye's methods, he said: "You just work with him and you leave him for a little while and let it marinate and hope he gets back to you."

It would be an act of severe perversity for the man who created Metal Machine Music - a double album of shrieking feedback, essentially - to criticise any musical form for lack of melody. Lou Reed was too interested in production to keep hip hop at arm's length in any case, and had a particular fondness for Kanye West's album Yeezus, which he reviewed glowingly for .

He wrote: "There are moments of supreme beauty and greatness on this record, and then some of it is the same old s***. But the guy really, really, really is talented. He's really trying to raise the bar. No one's near doing what he's doing, it's not even on the same planet."

• 91Èȱ¬ Music - The 5 best 91Èȱ¬ hip hop documentaries online now
• 91Èȱ¬ Music - 5 surprising acts Keith Richards rates and 5 he slates
• 91Èȱ¬ Music - Noel or Liam? Match the celebrity insult to the Gallagher brother