“I’m allergic to broke, I’m addicted to stuntin’, I’m infatuated with h*es, and I’m in love with money,” rapper Plies says in his song “I’m in love with money.”
Every category Plies just broke down in his chorus is the epitome of what rappers tend rap about in their songs. Even though their music is extremely catchy and the genre of Hip Hop music keeps booming, it is brainwashing the youth.
Who ever thought that a genre of music would be considered a lifestyle? In Hip Hop, everything is flashy, big, pretty, and worth an extreme amount of money. Unfortunately, everything that is seen on T.V. cannot be reenacted in real life.
The youth watch their favorite rappers in hopes that maybe one day everything they have can be attainable. The issue at hand is the lyrics and lifestyle. It is not uncanny to believe that lyrics in rap songs do not influence youths. Of course they are influenced by the lyrics and the glamour that comes along with Hip Hop. Lets be honest, who wouldn’t want a lot of money, fame and a fabulous life?
The roles of men and women in the Hip Hop life are depicted just as any form of masculinity and femininity. Men, for example, have all the money and are in power. Women are usually considered to be inferior and a lot of the time are exploited as being objects to men.
Young men see the images of being in power and having women do what they please, so they believe that life should be that way. This is where the issue comes into play. They can grow up to be disrespectful toward women and believe that the only way to have power is through having a lot of money by becoming an artist.
The interesting thing is that breaking into the world of Hip Hop is not as easy as many young artists believe it can be. Lets take myspace into perspective. There are many pages on myspace that showcase artists and their music. A lot of the artists are not well-known and may never make it into the industry. My question is, what happens to the youth that are extremely focused on music and don’t do anything else to try to set up their future?
Well, the Hip Hop world portrays a lifestyle in which it is fine to be thugs, gangsters, and drug dealers. I guess its ok to be anything as long as you’re getting money right? If your broke it seems as if the joke is on you. A vast majority of the time any occupation that has the words gangster, drug dealer, or thug in it will more than likely just get you into trouble and end up in jail. I don’t see how that lifestyle is glamorous.
The youth that is being extremely influenced by Hip Hop should realize that its not all that its made up to be. Most lyrics in Hip Hop are extremely offensive toward pretty much everyone. Now don’t get me wrong, Hip Hop is not the only genre of music that has offensive lyrics, but it is the one that many of the youth follow.
The lyrics are catchy, the dances are entertaining, and the lifestyle is portrayed as glamorous. Hip Hop is made to “stunt” (another term for stand out or be seen). There is nothing wrong with being part of Hip Hop. The issues only begin when the youth want to be Hip Hop so bad that it takes over their train of thought.
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This column is in need of an editor and/or second readers to help with issues of clarity and to fix errors that detract from the readability of the piece.
ReplyDeleteIn the first paragraph:
"Every category Plies just broke down in his chorus is the epitome of what rappers tend rap about in their songs. Even though their music is extremely catchy and the genre of Hip Hop music keeps booming, it is brainwashing the youth."
The writer has left out "to" in the line "rappers tend rap" and later says the music is brainwashing 'the youth.'
The youth? Who is 'the youth?' Saying 'youth' would have covered what I believe the writer means.
Later, the writer says:
"The roles of men and women in the Hip Hop life are depicted just as any form of masculinity and femininity."
Any form? What is 'any form' mean?
The idea that rap music might be a bad influence on 'youth,' is certainly worthy of a column, so the choice of topic is good.
But the column doesn't track from argument to argument and would benefit from a straight line discussion of the issues.
The writer should be credited with taking on a timely and probably controversial topic.