How did Hip Hop and Rap music become the fall guy for the problem with America's youth and values?

Question

How did Hip Hop and Rap music become the fall guy for the problem with America's youth and values?
I am sick and tired of hearing that rap/hip hop demeans women, that it teaches the wrong message. When will reassign the blame where it should be? With the parents

FYI: I am grown and I do have Children and I do understand.

romer151 you cant be ror real worst then porn?
Am I wrong in thinking that if FAMILY and Communities went back to rearing ther childern & and explaining that this stuff they see on tv & hear on the radio is not real , just entertainment and it's not their reality or does not have to stay a reality...the product will change.
ganster rap is not my world but because i know that its ok for me to visit. Why should it bother you that a complete stranger is allowing her/himself to be exposed in any way?
Remeber hip hop has family too. our up and coming artist will have answer to their famillies for what they put out so like i said it all starts at home

Answer 1

People need to realize that America's youth problem is bigger than Hip Hop and Rap. Although, I don't like alot of rap music, it is not the cause for why children turn out the way that they do. A person should be able to listen to music and decipher between what is positive and what is negative. If they are taught by their parents to distinguish between the two, that child should be able to make a good decision.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Hello,

People have said that about all rock and roll and pop music over the last 50 years. Most of us just listened to the beat and not the words which were hard to distinguish at the best of times.

While I have your ear, however I must say I feel Afro-American music has gone down hill horribly over the last 25 years. Rap was ok when it first came out but has been so overkilled much like the River Dance Irish and Celtic music.

In the 60's you had such a variety from Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes, Jimmy Hendrix through to Diana Ross and the Supremes, The Box Tops not to mention Dion Warwick through to the Jackson Five, Gladys Knight, Tina Turner and so many others too numerous to list here. What happened? Its all rap or that whiney Whitney Huston piano bar stuff.

I have no quarrel with the youth but I hope to see a new reneissance in black music in my last 20 or 30 years.

Cheers,

Michael Kelly

Answer 4

I believe in putting blame where blame is due and SOME of it is due to be placed on rap, specifically, and hip hop.

It's not just the parents. You cannot watch your child 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 1/4 days a year to make sure that they aren't accessing the things you don't agree with. They are going to find ways around you and the things that you teach them only go so far, especially the older they get.

Our popular culture DOES have some effects on young people as does Advertising no matter how much we try to deny it. Young people, especially, are vulnerable to the underlying messages and themes presented to them in the popular culture because they lack a frame with which to view it and discern whether it is appropriate or not. Parents, again, can only do so much to give them that frame but it is nearly impossible to encourage your children not to listen to a particular brand of music if ALL of their friends are. And, if you forbid it, they will just do it behind your back.

Rap, specifically, and Hip Hop DO have effects on young people who listen to it exclusively. This has been studied and strong correlations have been discovered. Negative thoughts/belifs about Women, promiscuity, drug use, and violent behaviors have all been documented as some of the effects of exclusive consumption of rap and hip hop.

I am sorry if that is your favorite type of music and you feel it has become a whipping boy. I do think that it is sometimes blamed quite heavily. However, it is by no means an innocent artform.
Peace,
Jenn

Answer 5

Because post-2000 hip hop and rap would appear to have been the ultimate minstrel show to sell to white midwestern high school students, but then they started picking it up all over in the black community!

Rap and hip-hop used to have meaning and purpose. Now it's just marketing. I love what Chris Rock had to say about it.... you can find it on YouTube.

I too wish parents were held to accountability, but there is NOTHING redeeming about the trash playing across the radios and TV's these days under the "hip hop" name. Especially in the last five years- it's not even music, all just manufactured garbage full of conceit, misogeny, and more conceit.

My whole life I've lived in either Detroit or New Orleans, and I marvel at the talented young doctors, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who manage to transcend these cultural surroundings.

I don't perceive the urban Black family to be any different from a family in any other culture- I perceive about the same ratio of upstanding citizens and moral failures, and every other family archetype- but out on the street, at the bus stop, in the workplace, at the store... any place you can expect to hear a radio, it's a cesspool!

We see Mo'Nique and other figureheads, really the only role models that young black chlidren have aren't they?, not necessarily portraying hood rats all the time but pretty universally bugging out to whatever's on the radio that month.

I wish the family, the community, the radio, and especially the schools would publicize more about Frederick Douglass. The last traces of racism were driven from my mind when I read his immortally powerful words in The Narrative. No finer American ever lived! Yet what can students of any race, in any place, tell you about Frederick Douglass??

What is taught, or independently researched, about black heroes to young hopefuls, is militant strivings of yesteryear without even so much as the context being properly clear to the student!

My earnest hope is for the return of an American identity, old or new, to the American household. I for one will be a father who reads regularly to his children out of the Bible, out of the work of Frederick Douglass, Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Carnegie- out of great literature, classical philosophy, the magical words of Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost, the stirring magnificence of Tennyson and Cicero, and maybe some race theory too.

Where is this rich inheritance today?? It's not in school, it's not in the home, and it sure isn't in the media. It's only by providential blessings and excellent good fortune that I've found any of these treasures. Where are they in the home today??

They say the media we get is the media we deserve. Time for better media.

Answer 6

Think about that for a minute, when you hear a lot of rap song what are they talking about how they shot this guy got these drug etc.... parents do have some fault in it but rap music has to accept some blame to. Do you honestly think people would be out robbing people and selling drugs if it wasn't said anytime they turn on the radio TV or hell even walking down the street...

I think its time for more hip/hop artist like Mos Def, Common, The Roots etc to get more play then all of these same sounding fool talking about sweep it on the floor I got shot nine times and I'm still alive this shyt is garbage and needs to be fixed as fast as possible because when I was growing up music was about fun now its all about stupid-ness....

Answer 7

Parents are only to blame for allowing their children to listen to that kind of music. Watch a rap or hip hop video sometime. They objectify women more and to a greater degree than porn does. Rap and hip hop also glamorizes the "gangster lifestyle".

Answer 8

as with all music, there is some good and some not so good. some of the hip hop and rap is very poetic and well done. on the other hand there is some that is downright vulgar and demeaning not only to women but to the world as a whole. as for parents, they are not always to blame. society as a whole has forsaken its care of our youth, but it's much easier to point the finger of blame elsewhere. music tends to always be the victim, as with rock and roll, psychedellic rock, etc. just learn to live with it, my friend, and don't take it so personally. times will change and this will pass with the changes.

Answer 9

When it wasn't Elvis, it was the Beatles, when it wasn't the Beatles, it was Black Sabbath, when it wasn't them it was Slayer, and now it's rap and video games. The actual problem, of course, lying in the fact that society is too weak to admit to the fact that they either raise children wrong, or that the kid him/herself was messed up in the head. No, it's all about having scapegoats, and that's why society is in the rut it's in today.

Jenn Smithson, I do listen to music that can be considered vulgar and even violent. However, I'm also a straight-A student and have hardly disobeyed my parents during my lifetime, because I was taught respect as a child. Not to mention the fact that I was raised by a single parent. So, no, I disagree- it is almost entirely the parent's fault that messed-up kids end up that way. Oh, and people listen to violent music because they are of a violent disposition, it almost NEVER works the other way around.

Answer 10

Well, rap/hip hop, does demean women.
Most Black people dont buy, but White people do, so they are going to support them if they like the song, since they arent the ones being talked about badly in the songs anyway.(Sorry if I came off as racist).