London, Sept 4 : Rapper Jay-Z has rubbished all criticism of hip-hop by well-known African-Americans who believe the genre degrades their ethnicity.

The superstar said the protests were only for "publicity purposes".

Hip-hop recently generated a lot of disapproval from prominent black celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Bill Cosby, who say it is misogynistic and frequent uses the racial N-word.

An annoyed Cosby even went on to pull off a hip-hop album that was "without the profanity, misogyny, violence and braggadocio".

However Jay-Z thinks otherwise. The hitmaker says rap portrays important issues in its own style.

The Daily Express quoted him as saying: "Put it like this; everything is birthed from somewhere real, right? These emotions and this anger and this angst in reality rap is coming from a real place.

"People in those circles try to dismiss it, buy you can''t because it''s part of culture. They only attack hip-hop because, and I hate to sound like a cynic, but this is all done for publicity purposes, right? You don''t attack the real issue - you attack the thing that''s popular." (ANI)