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A young, black, professional, Spelman College and UNC Law grad, and new mommy who practices law in the Chicago suburbs.

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Are we tired of rap music?

March 5th, 2007 • Related • Filed Under

Young Black Professional Guide Rapper Snoop DoggOr are we downloading it? Either way, rap music is struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture’s negative effect on society. Many former fans are simply sick of the negativity and violence that is glorified in rap songs.

While rap has been in essence pop music for years, and most rap consumers are white, some (including me) worry that the Black community is suffering from hip-hop. Aside from the way America and the media perceive Blacks, the attitudes and images being adopted by Black youth are far more important and should not be taken lightly. The most popular rap songs have to do with hustling, drug dealing, promiscuous sex, and being a pimp- topics that have serious negative influences on today’s youth. One rap fan, Bryan Hunt, made the searing documentary “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” which debuted on PBS this month. Hunt addresses the biggest criticisms of rap, from its treatment of women to the glorification of the gangsta lifestyle that has become the default posture for many of today’s most popular rappers. From a different angle, a student from the Black Youth Project wrote a review of the major theoretical arguments and important empirical findings relating to the influence of hip hop on the development of youth politics.

I’ll admit that every once in a while I like to snap my fingers and nod my head to tight beats, but honestly I can’t stand to stomach most rap lyrics. I don’t care how “real” rappers are being or if they are simply “reflecting the crushing problems within their communities.” Unless they are helping better their communities, unless they are active role models in their communities, and until they actually do something about these “crushing problems,” then they will never be more than mediocre entertainment and the soundtrack to minstrel shuck ‘n jive dances (i.e. Chicken Noodle Soup and Walk it Out).

Then there are those rappers who have tried to rap more positively, but were shunned by their fans. David Banner stated his fans rebuffed positive songs he made — like “Cadillac on 22s,” about staying way from street life — in favor of songs such as “Like a Pimp.”

“The American public had an opportunity to pick what they wanted from David Banner,” he says. “I wish America would just be honest. America is sick. … America loves violence and sex.”

Hmmm. Now that’s disturbing.

There Are 7 Responses So Far. »

  1. Comment by Brittania on 5 March 2007:

    I have been praying for the demise of rap for a minute. I cant stand the image that it sends to us and the rest of the world about what it means to be black. The entertainment industry shouldnt be as powerful as it is in controlling people minds and behaviors, but the unfortunate reality is that it is extremely powerful. I can only hope that once rap goes far, far away that things will not continue to fall apart as they have been in the last 15 years or so.

  2. Comment by Fredric on 5 March 2007:

    i wouldn’t count on it.

    just like tmz.com, ‘pink is the new blog’, and the egregious amount of paparazzi obsess with britney, people like crap.

    rap = crap, therefore it will exist. it sucks, but just keep pumpin’ nas, the roots, little brother, mos def, common, lupe, kanye (to a certain extent) and i dare say the academy award-winning three six mafia.

    :-)

    thats still pretty funny no matter what anyone says.

  3. Comment by Kimberly Michelle on 5 March 2007:

    (to Fredric) oh but wait, hold up! weren’t you just saying that now the Academy is just giving awards away? So three six mafia is above that crap rap because they won an Oscar?

  4. Comment by JC on 6 March 2007:

    (Disclaimer: As I type, I’m currently listening to a mixtape from Little Brother)

    I haven’t purchased an album of any sort since high school. I will playfully do the Chicken Noodle Soup in brevity, even in publicly. I snap my fingers and do the pool palace without shame. Drugs, bling, violence, and misogynism
    are omnipresent in the most popular songs of the genre. At the same time, this is nothing new. There might be a little more of it now, but it’s still more of the same. Mos Def and Talib Kweli still operate in the background (shouts to Talib’s recent performance on Def Poetry Jam) and groups like Little Brother remind us that it’s all about dope beats and dope rhymes. The biggest issue still remains: Our youth - and those who don’t have any other exposure to Black culture - are only shown one element of hip-hop(or rap, or Black music, whatever let’s not split hairs on that topic.)

    I just don’t wanna call another man’s hard work crap because he’s not necessarily talking about something positive or something that I can relate to. I DO think it’s crap that our representation in the music industry seems so lopsided, but I am NOT sorry for bumping Young Jeezy in my ride. We all like what we like, whether we’re trained to like it or not. But here’s to broadening the horizons of those who don’t know what other options they have when it comes to hip-hop.

  5. Comment by Jade on 23 March 2007:

    Yes we are tired of RAP music that portrays our people in a negative light.

  6. Comment by David McQueen on 23 March 2007:

    The thing is that if we are to believe that it’s mostly non white who purchase the majority of rap music then we need to ask ourselves why.

    I was in a college today talking about how people get access to rap in London. Outside of MTV Base it was all about copying from others. Personally I cant wait to see the back of those stupid idiots like Jay Z, Fifty Cent, Eminem and all those other faux poets. Give me Talib, Roots, Common, Rakeem, KRS One, Public Enemy, Immortal Technique, Keith Murray, Nas and Tupac (old school stuff), Redman and Method (freestylin) and am a happy man.

    Actually people need to be exposed to some decent French, UK, Sub Saharan African, Brazilian and Korean rap to realise that rap has long since left the sole domain of the US and is actually being used as tool of education and entertainment around the world

  7. Comment by MEB on 30 March 2007:

    Rap music is infused with enough negative energy to currupt its entire audience. We complain about the unfair treatment that minorities receive, yet our youth has fallen pray and has become enslaved by the violent influence of rap music. Our teenage girls look like pole dancers. Our teenage boys dream of mastering the deadly skill of mass murder. Yes, there are exceptions, but not enough. Anger control is a topic not adequately dealt with in black communities—read the headlines. Pushing/shoving someone in authority, on a school campus, would have resulted in severe, but well deserved lashings back in the day. Today we want to band together (something that blacks do too rarely) to refute the judgement and punishment for this very crime that was commited by a black 14 yr old girl in Texas. We know the United States of America is not a fair place for many minorities to be raised and even employed, but when crimes of the like are commited they must be addressed. I pray that God has mercy on that child as she faces the greately imperfect judicial system that will dertermine her fate.