Rap Music...Does It Cause Violence?

15 Pages 3654 Words

instream audience. Their song Rapper’s Delight was a lighthearted song with catchy lyrics and beats and was about getting the party started with their words. Soon the message in rap music came to reflect the street life of New York and urban areas all over the country. Rap was a way for young stars, mostly men to have their views heard and to vent about life on the streets (hiphopanonymous.net). Rose (as cited by Krohn et al. 1995) says,

“Rap music is the central cultural vehicle for open social reflection on poverty, fear of adulthood, the desire for absent fathers, frustrations about black male sexism, female sexual desires, daily rituals of life as an unemployed teen hustler, safe sex, raw anger, violence, and childhood memories. It is also the home of innovative uses of style and language, hilariously funny carnivalesque and chitlin-circuit-inspired dramatic skits, and ribald storytelling. In short, it is black America’s most dynamic contemporary popular cultural and spiritual vessel.”

Without a doubt the artists who create rap music are extremely talented, and it has gone beyond the African American culture as many of today’s artists are of varying races and ethnicities. Music and cultural critics praise rap’s role as an educational tool, they point out that black female rappers are examples of aggressive pro-women and represent an even smaller population. Supporters defend rap’s ghetto stories as real life reflections that should draw attention to racism and economic oppression rather than to questions of obscenity (Krohn et al 1995).
The major debate that has been raised surrounding rap music in the past few years is what the effect of the lyrics may have on our societies’ young people. The negative implications of rap music have become almost as popular as the music itself (Krohn et al. 1995). The messages that are being sent are violent, misogynistic, and promote drug use. Whether or not they are a real ...