The Role Of Violence In Hip Hop Music

This qualitative study takes a look at the relationship between gangsta rap music and violent behavior because there is little research devoted to this area.

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”.

Hip hop is something that has been around since the 21st century. When it comes to the hip hop community, there are so many stereotypes that the media portrays. This essay will show that the stereotype of violent, crimes African American in rap music can become self-prognostication for the hip hop community. This is a behavior that has been corresponding in the rap music and has become accepted as a social norm by the African American community.

In this essay, Joan Morgan talks about how the hip hop allows African Americans to articulate their pain. She considers that the beauty of hip hop comes from is its ability to express all kind of feelings, but many feels that hip hop lower women to just a sex object. In her journey to understand what is happening to men in the black community, she exposes herself to the music of famous male rappers. To her surprise, she discovers that the macho appearance is just a disguise to hide how hopeless they feel when it comes

. However, Sharpley-Whiting also believes that “violence in hip hop is a manifestation…for a much more prevalent American violence that much of (white) America would rather ignore” (Sharpley-Whiting, 75). In other words, this violence has stemmed from another culture onto hip hop’s (Sharpley-Whiting, 75). First of all, one important aspect to examine to better understand the unique relationship women have with hip hop, is sexual abuse (Sharpley-Whiting, 58). More specifically, the nature of “the relationship between hip hop culture and sexual abuse” (Sharpley-Whiting, 58).

In society today, it is highly noticed that the role of rap music messages and video images of violence causes an increase in negative emotions, thoughts and behaviors which could lead to violence amongst youth. Rap music has been at the center of concern in regards to the potential harmful effect of violent media on social behavior amongst youth. This potential behavior could be seen in the music video titled “Kim” by Eminem. In this music video, the storyline, language and sound encourages hostile thoughts and feelings amongst its audience. In the music video, Kim husband catches her cheating on him in their home with another man, while he is away. However, when Marshall gets home and finds out that his wife is cheating on him, he gets upset, angry, and abusive and becomes violent towards his wife Kim. He screams at her saying that, if she moves again, he will “beat the shit out of her” (Line 11). Violence in rap music has increased in response to the complex interplay of changing social conditions such as the elevated levels of youth violence in the changing commercial practices within the music industry. Hence, the media influences violence in four negative ways, which contributes immensely to anger amongst youth which leads to aggressive behavior such as social violence, substance abuse, domestic violence, and negative perceptions of women.

The premise of the article, “Changing images of violence in rap music lyrics: 1979-1997” is that from 1979-1997, there has been a drastic increase in the level of violence in rap music that is being viewed in a more progressively positive light. As a result, social conditions must change in order to reduce youth violence. The results indicate that there has been a dramatic and sustained increase in the level of violence in rap music. The percentage of songs mentioning violence increased from 27 per cent during 1979-1984

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.

1) While Denise Herd argues in her article, “changing images of violence in Rap music lyrics: 1979-1997,” that the impact of gangsta rap lyrics was extremely harmful that “lyrics celebrated a rape culture,” it is necessary to recognize that lyrics provided the message to the colored people to take a stand against the authority who were against them (396).

Back then, the mainstream rap was what the genre describes as “hard” or “gangsta rap.” That is to say, raps about drug dealing, police brutality, guns, women who were only referred to as “bitches,” and having extraordinary amounts of money thanks to the fact the rappers have become popular. The rappers would typically yell over their beats, a method they used to sound more aggressive while they rapped. Sometimes, amidst the yelling, the rappers would address prominent social issues. Songs like “Fuck tha Police” by rap group N.W.A. and “Holla if Ya’ Hear Me” by 2-Pac criticize police officers, claiming they unfairly discriminate against African Americans. However, most of their work comprised of the artist bragging about how affluent they have become, or how tough they claim to be. “Gansta Gansta” by N.W.A. was written for the sole reason of proving this claim, with lines like “Takin a life or two that's what the hell I do” and “The first niggas that I saw, hit em in the jaw” (N.W.A 1) demonstrating that the members of N.W.A would not step down from fight or be afraid to kill any of their enemies. The music of this era typically involved police sirens, gunshots, synthetic noise, record scratches, and digital

Introduction Any great genre of music has the ability to be identified beyond the restriction of one nation or culture. However, the overall musical composition and identities are rooted in whichever community the genre originated in. The community might be small in size, but the artists are able to create compelling subject matter that reflects their current knowledge of their community. Hip-Hop music is an example of a community based genre, whose lyrical content reflects the community from which it emerges. The lyrical content that is used throughout the genre is a testament to the current state of the artist’s community.

With things, such as explicit lyrics and depiction of women, drugs, and violence an assumption can be made that gangster rap represents a masculinity that rappers portray themselves as in their songs. Dating back to its origins, African Americans had always been the face of gangster rap, with such names like Tupac, Biggie, Jay-Z, DMX, and much more, as covers of rap magazines. Gangster rap had always been seen as what people interpret it to be and that is a raw rhythmic and explicit version of poetry in motion, but gangster rap depicts more than what people interpret it to be. Gangster rap depicts the image of how a strong African American male should look like, a bold, angry, rebellious, and fierce man. Strong African American males are subjective to gangster rap, mainly because of how gangster rap portrays masculinity. In “Brotherly Love: Homosociality and Black Masculinity in Gangsta Rap Muscic” Oware argues that although gangster rap music portrays the masculinity of African American males through the use of hyper masculinity, misogyny, and violence in lyrics, gangster rap music also provides a way for rappers to express themselves to commemorate their fellow friends through lyrics that depict family/friend relationships, success by association, and have a tribute for lost friends.

There are various amounts of strengths throughout this article. The first strength seen is that is analyzes thirty-eight songs of diverse types of rap such as “gangsta, materialistic, positive, and pop,” (Tyree et al., 2015, 63). Another strength was the type of analysis used, textual analysis which aided in the interpretation of the lyrics of each song. Continuingly, the researchers also used a thematic analysis which helps define patterns present within “conversation topics, vocabulary, recurring activities, meanings, feelings, or folk sayings and proverbs,” (Tyree et al., 2015, pp. 64-65). Using these analyses allowed the researchers to find the presence of stereotypes or misogynistic language in the lyrics. With every strength come weaknesses

Music Lyrics being NON-VIOLENT Rap music can be considered a style of art, and a way for the artists to express feelings through their words on paper. However, there are quite a few rap artists that get criticized for their lyrics. In my essay, I want to discuss why rappers use certain lyrics in their music and why people shouldn’t believe that it causes violence among the younger generations. People shouldn’t censor the music just because of violent, vulgar and abusive messages it promotes to the world. I believe in my own mind, that there is a reason for these types of lyrics that rap artists use and I will simply explain those reasons in this essay. Rap has been called one of the most important music forces to emerge in two decades.

There are a number of Rap songs of today that have a nihilistic undertone that promotes violence, hyper-masculinity, and misogyny all while perpetuating racial stereotypes commonly associated with the African Americans. Many songs glorifies the idea of using violence against an enemy to effeminize them or cause harm to create a persona of being a man. In Eminem’s song “Kim” he blames the murder of her husband and child her by saying “So now they both dead and you slash your own throat, So now it's double homicide and suicide with no note.” He describes how he gets revenged on his ex by murdering her, her husband, and his child for leaving him. A number of songs sexualize women and use her as an object made for receiving. In Future’s song “My