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Profanity In Rap Music

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1. Introduction
This study deals with the employment of profanities such as fuck, nigger, motherfucker, bitch and shit in the selected rap lyrics by the famous former hip hop group, N.W.A .To be specific, N.W.A is an acronym for Niggaz With Attitude that was formed in 1987 by 5 members: Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Dr Dre, MC Ren and DJ Yella (Ogg and Upshal 1999, 115). Rap is a unique genre of music that has a wide fan base located in different parts of the world. It consists of rhymes, rhythm and written lines. Historically, the music of N.W.A provoked great discussions when they released Straight Outta’ Compton in 1988. They were one of the first hip hop groups that made headlines because of the use of profanity in their songs (Ogg and Upshal 1999, p.118). …show more content…

Accordingly, profanity adds meaning to words in terms of thoughts and feelings (Ljung. 2011. p.9).
For this reason, the appearance of profanity in the selected lyrics is worth investigating. The selected profanities for this study come from two different rap lyrics by N.W.A. They are compared and analyzed by investigating their frequency. The lyrics are “Fuck tha’ police” and “Straight Outta’ Compton”. The primary material is suitable for this study in terms of the usage of the selected

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