Hip-Hop/Real Rap
Nayeli Munoz 01/15/13 Rap Most people are unfortunately misled as to what is rap music. Many people seem to have only heard commercial rap; commercial rap is “gangster rap”. Most of the commercial rap songs talk about getting money, gang banging, and some kind of explicit love or sex. Two examples of commercial rappers are “50 Cent” and “Soulja Boy”. True rappers have some kind of poetic flow. Real rap has a deep and meaningful topic, it is like poetry but with more emotion. “Tupac” and “Snoop Dogg” are two great examples of real rappers.
A positive influence that rap has on today’s youth is that it shows us what is going on in the real world; however, rap music can influence youth to be very violent. Another negative about rap is that it is very degrading towards young women. Through their music rap artist show a realistic picture of what is going on around them and how hard it was growing up in poverty. An example of this is when “Tupac”, a famous rapper, in his song “Thug Mansion” says “picture me inside the misery of poverty, no man alive has ever witness struggles I survived”.
Later on in the same song he continues with “seen the politicians ban us, they’d rather see us locked in chains, please explain why they cant stand us”. This song is reflects the issues of discrimination toward African American by the government. Rap has opened our eyes to show us the circumstances of poverty, drug use, violence, and how easy they can access guns. Rapper “Too Short” raps about the importance of staying in school and getting a good job.
Rap influences youth to be very violent; in “Big Pun” song “Brave in the heart” he says, ” I’m from where the guns love to introduce they self. Reduce your health little bulletproofs get felt. The street’s a trip; either you deep or you sleep with the fish”. This song tries to tell us that we need to use violence in order to survive, this influences youth to believing that they do have to use violence and therefore they start being violent. Some rappers include new drugs that have not been very popular in their lyrics and when youth listen to it they get urious about the drug and want to learn about it and try it. Violent lyrics can influence youth to start fights or even kill people for what they want. Women in rap videos are usually degraded. Very often young women are laid out as sex tools or sex slaves. They are displayed with not much clothes on and they use their bodies to acquire material objects. Young women are exposed to these abominable videos and it can affect their health, their self-esteem can lower and they may think of themselves as useless and worthless.
Research shows that many of the young women who listen and watch rap think that they cannot be successful without using their bodies. It is clear that rap can extremely influence today’s youth both positive and negative ways; however, the negative effects are much larger than the positive effects. It is up to us to decide if rap is going to affect us in a positive or in a negative way. Bibliography: Sid Kirchheimer,(March 3, 2010). Does rap put teens at risk. WebMD. (Online)
