Is it possible that hip hop/rap has a different effect on black youth attitude's than on white youth attitudes, and a different effect than playboy or country music does on white youth attitudes? One should at least consider the idea that with vastly different experience in poverty, single parent households including much higher rates of parental (mainly fathers) absence, and racism in general - rap/hip hop is in a unique position to influence black youth, rather than white youth who have countering influence to the mysogyny etc. Should we at least consider the possibility that hh/rap might be filling the void for black youth looking for role models?
I think even more than that, current commercial (mainstream) hip-hop glorifies and make things look attractive. Bling and sex are accepted as things to aspire to have, especially when you are from a poor area.
poeple aspire to have those things regardless of socio-economic status hollywood glorifies those things as well name your 100 fabvorite movies and i bet a large majority of them will either exploit a woman, glorify sex, glorify violence, and/or glorify money and power
Again though, Hollywood may not be in the same unique position that hip hop is to influence certain segments of the population. That is where your attempts to compare Hollywood, country music, playboy etc falls down. Besides, playboy has good articles.
Bingo i'm a product of my environment my vocabularies like licking the gutter words that cut so sharp cuts like a hot knife through butter not my fault but then again schools and teachers were never my friends nothing's wrong with a little education but i don't need a new vocation i'm a product of my environment things that occur events take place that will wipe the smile right off your face freeways,trafic,smog, movies,theatres, lines of people, markets and banks who the hell i'm i supposed to thank?? i'm a product of my environment
For this to be true you would have to assume that there is no value system in place in black or poverty ridden homes that allow kids to differ between what is entertainment and what is reality. You would basically be saying anyone else (even black kids) can watch sex and killing on TV and movies and not be affected, but once they listen to rap it changes (i.e. if these kids really have no countering influences than why does rap cause these effects but not other forms of negative entertainment). Is that really your stance? Are you saying because you are poor and black that you won’t have a countering influence? And as far as rap not using real music, are you nuts? Even the Juve “Back That Ass Up” song started with a violin intro (I believe that was a violin..you can see whatever the dude in the wheelchair is playing at the beginning of the video).
A kids take: http://www.scribd.com/doc/202925/historical-analysis-of-rap-music The teacher of my 6th grade music class insisted upon the following point: “Rap is not music.” She outlined the necessary components of music and pointed out that rap was missing harmony, melody, and euphony. Artistically speaking, rap was just “noise.” She then launched into social commentary, illuminating for us the damaging aspects of rap that come about due to its association with violence, drugs, sex, gangs, and guns. The larger society agreed with my music teacher. In the late 80s, rap struggled with radio bans, censorship, and Hollywood derision. Though this black musical genre has gained more respect since then, there continues to be stanch resistance against it. For example, the slogan of a popular New York radio station is, “We play today’s best music, without the rap.” The station would ask, “Tired of listening to this?” Then it would play a sample of loud, boisterous rap so that its listeners can hear the noise that from which they are being saved. While the radio station is willing to admit that rap is music, it is considered bad music. My contention is that the persistent disparagement of rap is a reaction to rap’s racial and radical character. An analysis of the rap group, Public Enemy, and their song, “Night of the Living Baseheads,” illustrates the way in which artists utilize the form of rap music to communicate a racially and politically-charged statement. The negative reception of rap by the white American mainstream, as described above, is a repeat of the reception of other genres of African-American music. For example, one criticism against rap is that “anyone can do it” or make it up on the spot; rap music does not require the skill or polish of other types of music. However, blues, a musical form that commands almost universal respect today, started out as a “functional” music that was not sung professionally, but by improvisation by workers in plantation fields. Thus, blues music, like rap, began with a marked lack of “sophistication.” When blues first appeared, whites described the music using the adjectives that are now ascribed to rap: “raucous and uncultivated” (Jones, 30). They attributed the “basic ‘aberrant’ quality of a blues scale” to the incompetence of blues singers, to black people’s inability to sing in tune (Jones, 25). Likewise, jazz, with its unconventional sounds occasionally even consisting of squeaks and screeches, was considered “noise” that came about due to the black performers’ insufficient instrumental training. It took years until mainstream America could accept blues and jazz as “good music.” Rap, like blues and jazz before it, distorts traditional European-American musical forms. Using advanced synthesizer technology, rap artists distort voices and instruments and produce new sounds never before used in music. The technique of “scratching,” in which a phonograph needle is dragged across records, produces a sound that was never meant to be produced by a turntable, just as jazz artists used European instruments to utter sounds that they never meant to make. The “hoarse, shrill” vocals of blues singers, the screeching of brass instruments in jazz, and the distortion of voice and misuse of turntables all produce a sort of phonic dissonance and discordance, a cacophonous chaos that is so opposed to the Western aesthetic of regularity, harmony, purity, and intonation. For this reason, rap is irritating, annoying, and even unsettling to many Americans. Their conscious disdain towards rap is, on some level, an unconscious resistance to the discourse on race presented by the music. Rap music, just as it is a critique of the Western aesthetic, is also a critique of the dominant Western culture. With many rap artists re-arranging samples from other genres of music, from classical to rock, record stores of the 80s suffered great confusion over which section of the music store they should place rap albums. Just as rap music deconstructed the categorical orderliness of record stores, it destabilized the assumptions of American society. Rap is a subversive musical form whose main emotions and themes consist of rage, alienation, and despair. It arises from the fall-out of mainstream culture, and as such it challenges the system and the authorities that regulate American society. Evidence for this conjecture can be seen in the fact that policemen, while they have been the heroes of many mainstream American movies, appear as some of the most frequent antagonists in rap music videos. During rap’s rise, many Americans rightly intuited that rap is a threat to order.
You're absolutely right! But the gap between bling and middle class is much smaller. A middle class kid's alternative is much more attractive than the alternative for an economically challenged youth, even if the middle class kid doesn't realize it right away. You're right...but hip-hop gets the microscope here. IMO, that's not right.
(That looks much more like either a) a college student paper, or b) a kid's parent's take... especially if you read the whole piece in the link...) carry on
why not? that's what one would consider a club or party song but then again i don't hold your opinion in high regard on this subject
that's what you would consider a r****ded song other like to party to it just like foxy lady or another song like that
Ahhh, so now we get to the truth. You just think rap is retarted, or at least some of the songs. So it’s clearly not the “they don’t use instruments/it’s not music” garbage that you were clinging to earlier? FYI, I noted that song because even though it was meant to be a dancing song (and it REALLY held it’s own in that regard), even it used live instruments in the background beat. In other words, it’s not all about spinning records….making a beat constitutes bringing many musical sounds (including instruments) together. Rappers just happen to speak over these sounds instead of singing over them.
I think that song is. Its a song for special education kids to dance to at recess. I'm sick of people "speaking". We get it. Move on. Do something else. Play some music.
No, it’s a song made to get women to dance in the club. You just don't like to dance to it.... They do play music. Instruments are used to create beats (at times). Similar to how instruments or records are used to create the background music that Whitney Houston or Beyonce sings over (neither plays an instrument). Educate yourself……
