Look,
if you had one shot, one opportunity
To
seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would
you capture it or just let it slip...
You
better lose yourself in the music, the moment
You
own it; you better never let it go
You
only get one shot do not miss your chance to blow
This
opportunity comes once in a lifetime (Eminem, Lose yourself)
Think
about rap music. What is the first word that came up to your mind? I’ve asked twenty
of my peers that question and nineteen of them answered “violence”. People
generally have a negative view of rap because they believe that it always
relates to gangs, guns and other social issues. Aside form their subject
matter; rap lyrics are generally not appropriate. It is certainly not the kind
of music that parents would want their children to listen to. However, over the
years we have seen a rapidly increasing amount of consumption of rap. Most of these consumers are teenagers. It is
my position that rap music has a negative influence on society. Based on the lyrics of the rap, the audiences
and the rapping industry as a whole, it is easy to show how rap can cause crime
and discrimination in a society.
Rap music,
usually known as “rapping” – also known as emceeing, MCing, spitting, or
rhyming – refers to "spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics" (Wikipedia). Conventionally
speaking, it occupies a grey area between speech, poetry and song. By saying
grey area, I mean that we can’t easily distinguish the difference between
rapping and speaking. It is just like telling the story in a rapid and rhythmic
manner. The ample amount of lyrics in the rap music allows singers to express
their feelings in a more detailed way, because they contain an extensive amount
of information.
In the
last two decades, rap music has undergone some important transformations. One
of the most significant of these changes occurred in the early 1990s, with the
emergence of “gangsta rap.” Gangsta rap was identified by The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture as the most controversial
type of rap music. The genre receives global attention for “its vivid sexist,
misogynistic, and homophobic lyrics, as well as its violent depiction of urban
ghetto life in America” (Abrams 2000:198). The content of the lyrics usually relates
to strong feelings: despair, anger or ecstasy, for example. Usually, the song tries
to be relatable for the audience. For instance, in the song “I Need a Doctor” (Eminem ft. Dr. Dre
& Skylar Grey), Eminem raps two verses about his mentor, thanking Dre for
believing in him in his early days. Eminem conveyed his feeling through a
series of heartfelt lyrics such as, “…You
picked me up, breathed new life in me. I owe my life to you, before the life of
me, I don't see why you don't see like I do…”(“I Need a Doctor” by Eminem ft. Dr. Dre & Skylar Grey). From
this we can see that rap music can be very emotionally charged, and therefore audiences
find it relatable to the audiences.
This kind
of rap makes the listeners feel that the story being described in the song is
what a real person has gone through. It presents the drama of someone’s life to
audiences. Normally, we don’t have to
interpret what the meaning of a rap song as we do for other genres of music,
because we can easily obtain the story through the clarity of the lyrics. Sometimes the story described in the song
resonates with the audience, which is the reason why more and more people
listen to rap music. In this sense, rap can be very easily related to people’s
real lives, and so the audience is easily influenced by the music.
In most
cases, the rap lyrics rhymes at the end of each sentence, making it fairly
catchy. According to This is Your Brain
in Music (Daniel J. Levitin), “We listen to music that has a pulse,
something you can tap your foot to, or at least tap the foot in your mind to.”
(Levitin, p165). Research has shown that people tend to remember lyrics very
quickly if the lyrics were sang in a rhythmic manner. The rhythm provides a
certain pattern or beat to the brain, and – according to Levintin’s experiment
– the cerebellum appears to be involved in tracking the beat when we listen to
music, which enhances our ability to remember the song. As a result, the lyrics
might be recited over easily and stick in people’s heads for quite a long time.
It is important
for us to understand that there is a possibility a lyric will become stuck in
people’s heads because, as we go through a song lyric, a majority of them discuss
alcohol, drugs, guns, and crime. We hear swear words and disrespectful sexist comments
in the song. All of these represent negativities in our society. Once those
lyrics go through people’s minds repeatedly, they will make people start to
think about the negative subject matter. The more we listen to the songs, the
more of this negativity we are exposed to. As a result, rap music gradually deteriorates
people’s opinions of their society. These kinds of influences are subtle but
long lasting. As Levintin mentioned, “Music appears to mimic some of the
features of language and to convey some of the same emotions that vocal
communication does, but in a non-referential, and nonspecific way”.
So what
will these negative views in people’s heads lead us to? I believe that they can
actually lead to more crime in our society. Take teenagers as an example. They
are the biggest consumer group of rap music and they are absorbing staggering amounts
of new information every day during adolescence, and developing their view of
the world. Teenagers are the group of people who can be most easily influenced
by strong emotions. Not all of them have been involved in major social
problems, so listening to rap music is a very common way for them to get a
sense of what social issues exist. Therefore, an increase in consumption of rap
music exposes them to social negativities much more frequently than they would
be otherwise. However, most rap music is full of biases and inaccurate
representation of these social negativities. Some of the lyrics even promote
conducting crimes. It is difficult for teenagers to judge whether the opinions
in the rap music are legitimate or not. This type of rap music misleads
teenagers and they are likely to draw wrong conclusions, thinking that crimes,
guns and swearing are symbols of being ‘cool’, and that is ok to behave in such
a way.
Because teenagers
are impulsive due to their young age and they are less rational than adults,
what they think in their minds will mostly likely turn into action. This
results in the rate of teenagers’ crime going up. As a matter of fact,
according to research done by Dr. Ralph J. DiClemente from Emory University's
Rollins School of Public Health, teenagers who listen to rap music are three
times more likely to hit a teacher, over 2.5 times more likely to get arrested,
twice as likely to have multiple sexual partners, and 1.5 times more likely to contract
a sexually transmitted disease, use drugs, or drink alcohol. (Kirchheimer, Sid.
"Does Rap Music Put Teens at Risk?")
Of course, only strong emotion and oppositional lyrics are not enough
for rap music to make a huge negative impact on society. Any type of music
needs media to present it to the whole world. Teenagers today can get access to
technology fairly easily. Therefore, modern
technology acts as a stimulus for the wide spread of the rap music and the
influences that it carries with. For instance, before the Internet could be accessed
as easily as today, some of the most popular ways for people to get access to
rap music are listening to a radio station or purchasing an album. All of the songs
that were released in these ways are censored, which means that the
inappropriate lyrics were eliminated in order to be able to put rap on public radio
stations. Nowadays, with the website YouTube, people can watch whichever music
video are uploaded, whether it is censored or not. This greatly increases the
possibility that a people will encounter swear words and the inappropriate
content in many lyrics.
In addition, video clips allow
people to associate music with visual image. Before, we could only listen but
now we are able to see. This is not necessarily a good thing, as many music
videos are not appropriate for people under a certain age because most music
videos are set in ghetto or parties. For instance, in the music video “Love the
Way You Lie” (Eminem ft Rihanna), we see a lot of scenes where two people are physically
fighting with each other. These kinds of scenes can influence teenagers’ views of
abusive relationships and might lead to teenagers trying to mimic the violence
in the video. Since now we can’t control who sits in
front of the computer and watches a video, we can’t possibly stop young people from
watching them. As a result, the negative influences that rap music can bring
will be distributed even more quickly.
In
addition, data from the Survelum Public Data bank has shown that more males (47%)
listen to rap than females (13%). Conventionally speaking, women are more risk
averted than men, so even the women are exposed to the rap music are less likely
to commit a crime than men are. Men are more willing to take the risk and act
on the violent suggestions that’s been described in rap music. As a result, the
more they are exposed to rap, the more crimes are likely to happen.
Aside from the lyrics in rap music, a lot of negativities also exist in
the rapping industry. For instance, there is significant discrimination against
white people and women in this industry. Throughout history, the number of
white rappers and female rappers is so small that most of the time we can see
only black males rapping on the stage. It is as if black male have occupied
this entire industry. Although in recent years we are seeing an increasing
amount of white and female rappers, such as Eminem, Vanilla Ice, Bubba Sparxxx, Lil’ Kim, Nicki Minaj and Queen Latifah, their numbers are
still dwarfed by the black male rappers. We are certainly seeing some social
problems here: racism and sexism. This phenomenon is actually reinforcing the
stereotype that only black males can rap. Or by extending this phenomenon, we might
come up with another stereotype that all black males can rap. As I have discussed
before, society has a negative impression of rap music, as it is always
associated with crimes, guns, and drugs. As a result, biased views are easily
formed towards black male populations. People will think that all black males
are criminals. This is similar to the stereotype that all the Chinese people
know Kungfu, only much worse.
However, some
people might ask if the increasing of crime rate in modern society influenced
the emergence of rap music? While black men can
be stereotyped in rap, rap may have originated as a way for a stigmatized
community to express their frustration. According to Simon Jones, “Black
music generally and Jamaican music in particular have functioned as
transmitters of oppositional values and liberating pleasures…”(p231) From that
we can see rap as a medium that distinguishes black music from the white music,
as black music has a higher tendency to portray the miserable life of
low-income family, the underside of society, and the voracious quest for money
and better living conditions.
I would agree
that an increasing crime rate in society would lead to the emergence of rap
music. At the beginning of this essay I gave a quote from the song “Lose Yourself”,
which is from the movie “8 Mile.” This movie is a great portrayal of how rap music evolved from the miserable living conditions, facing
black communities in America. In many of the scenes from this movie, we can see
people using their life story as a source of rap lyrics. For instance, in one
scene, the workers in a factory are lining up to receive the food. All of them
are exhausted and tired of the repetitive, boring job that they are doing. As
they are waiting, an old lady started to rap – and her lyrics were complaints
about her life, the food she had every day, and the bad working conditions. Her
action soon disrupted the quietness of the line, and a man started to rap back
to the old lady, saying that he is tired of her constant complaining. He mocked
her for complaining about things that she had no control over. Then he started
verbally attacking other people in the crowd: an obsessed worker’s body size
and a gay man’s outfit. The whole interaction was in the form of rapping. From this,
we can see rapping as a distinctive way to release pressure. People can rap
about anything, but most of the time people will rap about things that they are
stressed about. So it is reasonable to say more crimes and social negativities
present people with more sources for rapping material. Therefore, it makes
sense for people to argue that an increase in crime rate can result in the
increase in the amount of rap music.
Crime and rap music are like two forces that are acting in different
directions. According to Newton’s Third Law, there is no such thing as a
unidirectional force, thus when rap music has an effect on the crime rate and
discrimination in a society, the negativities in that society act in opposition
to that force and provide a source for the creation of rap. However, the
magnitudes of these two “forces” are not the same. Rap music itself, by
transmitting negative lyrics to the vulnerable audiences and stereotyping
people in that industry, definitely have a greater impact than the other way
around. Therefore, overall, we are seeing the negative impact of rap music on a
society as the dominant force of the two.
In conclusion, rap music has a huge amount of lyrics that allows the
audience to relate their own lives to the music, which, is very influential. It
is emotional, but also contains a lot of negative views about society. The
rhymes in the lyrics enhance the ability for audiences to remember them. Teenagers
are the major consumers of rap music, so they are exposed to the negativities
and are more likely to act on the violence, a factor that also affects the
males. As a result, we are seeing an increasing number of crimes and
discrimination in our society due in part to rap music. The kinds of
negativities presented in the songs also extend to the rapping industry itself,
where white people and women are notably excluded. It also strengthens the
stereotype that black male populations are criminals. Though people can argue
that rap music has emerged from the negativities in the society, the impact of
rap on the society itself is greater. Therefore, I believe rap music definitely
has a negative influence on society.
Work cited
Abrams,
Nathan. 2000. “Gansta Rap.” P. 198 in St. James Encyclopedia of Popular
Culture, edited by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast. Farmington Hills,
MI: Thomson-Gale
Dr. Dre - I
Need A Doctor (Explicit) Ft. Eminem, Skylar Grey." YouTube. YouTube, 24
Feb. 2011. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
EminemVEVO.
"Eminem - Love The Way You Lie Ft. Rihanna." YouTube. YouTube, 05
Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Jones,
Simon. 1988: Black culture, White Youth:
The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK, Bsingstoke:Macmillan.
Kirchheimer, Sid. "Does Rap Music
Put Teens at Risk?" WebMD. WebMD, n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
Levitin, Daniel J., This
is Your Brain On Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, East Rutherford,
NJ, USA: Penguin Putnam, 2006. P165-188
"Rapping." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2012.
Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
8 mile, Curtis
Hanson, Brian Grazer, Jimmy Iovine, Scott Silver, Eminem, Kim Basinger and Brittany
Murphy, November 8, 2002. film
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