Rap Impact On Rap Culture

Music and society have always been closely related. For years now music has been apart of people’s everyday lives all around the world. Having so many different genres out there, it makes it easy to be appealing to so many different ethnic backgrounds. However, one type of genre in particular has seemed to grab the attention of a younger generation. Rap music has undoubtedly had its utmost impact on African American youth, since many of the performers themselves are African American. An overtly masculine culture dominates rap music and creates gender stereotypes that become abundantly popular to the youthful audience. Three constant themes that are found within the rap culture are encouragement of violence, the misogynistic representation of women, an extreme hatred of homophobia. Each theme plays a detrimental role in the process of defining black masculinity as well as shaping the values, morals, and beliefs that its younger audience adopts after tuning into this “gangster lifestyle”.

Geoffrey Bennett’s article Hip Hop: A Roadblock or Pathway to Black Empowerment illustrates the influence hip hop and rap music has had on not only the music industry but mainstream culture, African Americans to be specific. Geoffrey Bennett, a senior English Major from Voorhees, New Jersey goes over many aspects of how hip hop came to be “the forefront of American attention.” He starts from its early history in the 1980s as an African American exclusive music genre to what is now a worldwide phenomenon. He reviews the affect it has had on the lifestyle of many people and the ways it’s changed the way people

Rap music has become one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past few decades. A major part of hip hop culture, rap, discusses the experiences and standards of living of people in different situations ranging from racial stereotyping to struggle for survival in poor, violent conditions. Rap music is a vocal protest for the people oppressed by these things. Most people know that rap is not only music to dance and party to, but a significant form of expression. It is a source of information that describes the rage of people facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday survival. Its distinct sound, images, and attitude are notorious to people of all

Indeed, McDonald's, Coca Cola, Sprite, Nike, and other corporate giants have capitalized on this phenomenon. Although critics of rap music and the hip hop culture seemed to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language, this genre offers us a paradigm of what can be. The potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial.

Whether you love it or hate it Rap music has come to be one of the most popular, yet arguable, music genres of the past decades. Today’s rap music has changed enormously since the 1970’s. Rap music was about having fun, being able to express what youth were feeling and a way to keep youth out of trouble. Rap songs usually use explicit and demeaning lyrics, which has huge influence on the youth of today. While rappers say that they’re plainly rapping about reality. They often use violence, the use of drugs and Guns as the main tool to tell the story of their lives and show how hard it is growing up in their neighbourhood. This surely does not set any good examples for the young men and women, listening to this trash and singing along with the

According to Alexander (2012) todays like minstrel shows of the slavery and Jim Crow era, today’s displays of rap music and videos are generally for white audiences and is televised around the clock for a worldwide audience. Alexander explains that it is a for-profit display of the worst racial stereotypes and images associated with the era of mass incarceration, an era in which black people are criminalized and portrayed as out-of-control, shameless, violent, oversexed, and generally undeserving. The majority of consumers of gangsta rap are white suburban teenagers. The profits to be made from racial stigma are considerable, and the fact that blacks, as well as whites, treat racial oppression as a commodity for consumption is not surprising.

The impact music has on the life of people is very powerful. It can easily revamp the way people act and take control of people’s emotions. Rap music is a very common and popular type of music within the world today. Rap music has existed since the mid 1970s, nowadays it is practically everywhere. It is easily a central focus of many young people’s lives. Rap music was essentially intended to create a voicing of one’s frustrations and disappointment with society, it has recently taken a turn and is creating a negative impact on the youth. It is the root that influences and encourages degrading women, violence, and is filled with sexual content.

Music is subjective which means people will often voice their opinions on it, and undoubtedly one of the most controversial genres that has sparked a barrage of disapproval is rap. It is believed and further encouraged by the media that rap music promotes a bad lifestyle. With corruption being apparent around the world it is easy for the media to put the blame on a genre of music that is filled with explicit lyrics about violence, drugs, and rebellious subject matters. However, further investigation will reveal that because of its accurate depiction of reality, and wide variety of categories, rap music does not encourage an unhealthy lifestyle.

Hip-Hop is an extensive and a broad conglomerate of various artistic forms that ultimately originated in the South Bronx and then quickly spread throughout the rest of New York City among African-Americans and other African-American youth mainly from the Caribbean and from Jamaica during the 1970’s. Over the course of decades and recent years, controversy surrounding Hip-Hop and rap music has been the vanguard of the media. From the over hype of the East and West Coast rivalry to the deaths of Tupac, Biggie, and even Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, it seems that political and broadcasting groups have been injudicious to place essentially the blame on rap and Hip-Hop music for a superficial trend in youth violence.

Rap music, also known as hip-hop, is a popular art form. Having risen from humble origins on the streets of New York City during the mid-1970s, hip-hop has since become a multifaceted cultural force. Indeed, observers say, hip-hop is more than just music. The culture that has blossomed around rap music in recent decades has influenced fashion, dance, television, film and—perhaps what has become the most controversially—the attitudes of American youth. For many rappers and rap fans during it’s early time, hip-hop provided an accurate, honest depiction of city life that had been considered conspicuously absent from other media sources, such as television. With a growing number of rap artists within this period, using hip-hop as a platform to call for social progress and impart positive messages to listeners, the genre entered a so-called Golden Age

From it's inception, rap indured a lot of hostility from listeners--many, but not all, White--who found the music too harsh, monotonous, and lacking in traditional melodic values. However, millions of others--often, though not always, young African-Americans from underprivileged inner city backgrounds--found and immediate connection with the style. Here was poetry of the

Rap music has received a bad reputation because of the negative connotation often associated with the genre. However, no one is addressing the issue that there are not more artists that promote a positive message in the music industry. If there were, perhaps more people would come to understand and appreciate the genre for what it is. Some scholars that are opposed to rap music often overlook the positive aspects of rap, focusing on the negative aspects of the genre. On the contrary, those who do support rap focus their research on the way it benefits youth - not the absence of positive message rappers. Many scholars have found that rap music can be beneficial to young people; especially if there are artists who promote positivity. Listening can benefit youth by allowing them to express themselves, being therapeutic, and bringing communities together. Rap music is a part of a culture that regularly gets cast in a negative light, but this does not tell the whole story. Rap music needs to be a more respected art form outside the African American community, and record labels can assist with this task by signing artists who represent the positive side of rap.

Throughout history, music has been used to express the feelings of people or groups whom may have no other outlet to express themselves. The best example of this occurrence would be the lower class of America’s use of rap music. Rap music started out as a fun variation of disco with the purpose to make people dance and enjoy themselves, but it later transformed into one of the best outlets to express the struggles of poverty in the United States. The genre gained popularity when the song “Rapper 's Delight” hit the charts in the early eighties; rap evolved into a plethora of different styles from there, Gangster Rap formed with NWA in the late eighties, and rap really hit it’s zenith in the mid nineties. Modern rap began in the early starts of the twentieth century. Because of the storytelling that rappers do in the music, it gained notice in the inner city where the demographic could relate. Many young teen in the inner city environment built dream to be famous rappers just like their own favorite artists . Rap connects to me by its style, its purpose, and its political incorrectness.

Though rap music is a genre typified by African-American urban culture, the audience of rap music is 70% young white males (Ogbar). Miles White argues that African American culture is “viewed as [an] alternative playground for members of dominant groups” such as white youth and corporations (White 20). Therefore, some white men and women might even perceive listening to hip-hop music as a way to understand and see a different culture. However, this becomes problematic

Since its origin in the late 1970’s in the South of Bronx in New York City, hip-hop has emerged as a national predominant form of music in America. Also known as rap music, it is consistent with fast rhythmic vocals that gained popularity for speaking the raw truth of matters many people were scared to deal with. Artists originally used this creative platform in order to give a voice to the urban poverty in America. However, the main issue in urban areas changed. The matter became more about the increase in violence particularly towards the harassment black communities faced by police. Consequently, rap music became more violent to this new racial uproar in the streets. It developed a new subgenre of rap called gangsta rap. Moreover, racial abuse continued to be present in the urban streets, such as the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Because of this gangsta rap remained as the main component of hip-hop to this day. Due to its explicit presentation of violence, it is assumed to be a genre of unconscious vulgarity causing critics to deem it as detrimental to society. However, rap music does not cause violence but instead brings awareness to the violence already present to the world, specifically urban areas. Despite common belief, rap music is beneficial to our society due to its creation of platforms for social injustices to be addressed as an attempt to bring awareness to these issues.