You don’t have to listen to it at all. Not even a little bit. Seriously. You’re not a bad person or bad artist for not sitting there and letting someone shit all over you. Don’t let anyone see you as a willing punching bag.

People can disagree with you and point out flaws and still be constructive. I know that, and it sounds like you know that. I think we have some strange worry that people will accuse us of only wanting to hear good things if we tune out unconstructive crit.

Maybe an unconstructive crit has a few constructive nuggets in it, and you worry you’ll miss out on those if you throw the whole thing out. Man, if it’s truly valid critique, other people will tell you the same thing without being assholes about it and you can listen to them instead.

I guess a metaphor would be, someone offers you a bucket of shit and says there’s a chunk of gold buried in the bottom. Dude, don’t go sifting through that bucket. For one thing, if it is gold, it isn’t worth it, especially when there are other people willing to give you a chunk of gold without feces all over it. More likely than not, you get to the bottom of that bucket and find out it was just bits of corn anyway.

I just delete my hatemails. Don’t ever reply. Occasionally write raps in retaliation, but mostly to exercise my rap skills. I don’t think about what those people say. They don’t want to help me get better, they just want to make me feel bad and I’m not gonna let that happen. If you’ve got a classroom situation and it’s a fellow student, ignore them as best you can, maybe bring it up to a teacher if it’s really bad. If it’s a teacher, get out of that class because you won’t learn anything. If it’s a friend, say you’re gonna stop being friends with them if they don’t cut it the fuck out. If it’s an internet person, block them. Whatever, they’re a faceless internet person. They’ll forget about you too when all their mail goes unanswered and their comments get deleted.

Focus on the constructive stuff and remember:

Haters gonna hate.