The Influence Of Rap

3 Pages 869 Words

The Influence of Rap Music


Rap music has many negative influences in our culture and society today. Rap music is a “genre of rhythm and blues music that consists of rhythmic vocals declaimed over musical accompaniment. The accompaniment generally consists of electric drum beats combined with digitally isolated sound bites from other musical recordings.”(www.rap.com) Rap music has been categorized as, “A cultural evolution of the Black oral tradition and contemporary resistance rhetoric.” (Smitherman,1997,p.21) Over time rap music has developed a lot of controversy in many ways, especially amongst parental units and their teenagers. One controversy is woman and how they are degraded in the lyrics. Another reason that Rap music causes problems today is by the way that they portray drugs, alcohol and money to be something they are not. In Rap music violence is talked about frequently to be a normal part of life.
The criterion to bad rap music is explicit lyrics and negative influences on the youth today. They talk about murder, rape, and assault as though they were okay. Almost everybody and everything that has to do with rap music is associated with drugs and alcohol. The ways that rappers address woman in their lyrics as “Bitches” and “Hos” give teenage males the excuse to do so as well.
The lyrics rappers use today depict woman in many ways. Not only do they call women by derogatory names, but also they portray women as property and not people. For instance songs like, “Back That Ass Up”, “The Thong Song”, and “I Like Big Butts” all make women look as though they are nothing to men but sex symbols. Many rappers
Make it seem like beating and killing their wife or girlfriend will make them a bigger man, when in reality it is frowned upon. For example, rapper Eminen talks about killing his ex wife, putting her in the front seat of his car and driving around town watching everyone laugh at her. ...