How rap music has a negative influence on society

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

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/rochester/Doc?id=10130584&ppg=196

"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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