The Negative Influences Of Hip Hop Culture

Background: In the 1970’s, Hip Hop music came out and became very popular and many people started to like it. At the same time, people didn’t like this type of music. Since Rap and Hip Hop became big, it influenced people to cause violence in the world.

With their voice, hip-hop artists used music as an outlet for social change. Hip-hop’s ability to communicate with a large audience allowed for a significant influence on society's views of African Americans. It provided a means of economic mobility for those who were facing oppression. As stated by Austin McCoy, “Rap was featured prominently in movies and documentaries throughout the 1980s”. This expanded the network of hip-hop music and initiated the opportunity for more artists to become mainstream.

In the past, hip hop told a life story with a funky beat. Some artists told a story about how life was rough when growing up, how they didn’t have a dad, how their mother had to raise them alone, how tough it was growing up in the ghetto, and how they made it out of that area alright. Since then, hip hop has resorted to degrade women and the police with a materialistic focus on money and drugs. Within the last decade, hip hop has changed dramatically for the worse. Hip hop

Informative Essay: Hip Hop Goes Global Grabber(Topic Starter). Hip hop has been around since the 1970s and it has changed from what clothes they wear, and the rhythms you hear as well as the lyrics. Here we will go in further in how hip hop culture has impacted young people in different cultures, why hip hop is important to the listeners and what is hip hop culture.

Hip Hop was the wildfire that started in the South Bronx and whose flames leapt up around the world crying out for change. James McBride’s Hip Hop Planet focuses on his personal interactions with the development of Hip Hop culture and his changing interpretations of the world wide movement. Many of his encounters and mentions in the text concern young black males and his writing follows an evolution in the representation of this specific social group. He initially portrays them as arrogant, poor, and uneducated but eventually develops their image to include the positive effects of their culture in an attempt to negate their historical misrepresentation.

There have been many rap songs and albums that have been very meaningful, and have gained millions of fans that appreciate their music. For example, on Kendrick Lamar’s debut album Good Kid, m.A.A.d City, each song is a piece of his life story. He describes his struggles growing up in the ghettos of Compton, California. Kendrick addresses situations such as gang violence, peer pressure, and oppressed women. On the song “The Art of Peer Pressure”, Kendrick describes the inner conflict that he dealt with at a young age, trying to distinguish right from wrong in certain situations.

Firstly, McBride claims that rappers use violent lyrics as a vehicle to bring about awareness and thus promote social change through use of violence. In a section of the essay, he talks about how rappers have made hip-hop go from something you would hear at a party to something you would hear in a local news report because rappers use violent lyrics in order to talk about the issue in their society and how these issues must be acted upon now so that it can

The Impact of Hip-Hop Ever since its birth in the 1970s in West Bronx, Hip Hop has been known as “Gangsta” music and most commonly associated with black culture. Since its creation it has become a fast growing genre of music and has growing fame all over the world. The popularity of it has increased to all races, age and gender. However the growing popularity of hip hop has come with several controversies among scholars. Some scholars argue that the growing popularity of the genre is very helpful to low income families who can use this as their outlet into going to Universities, on the other side some believe associating the genre to black culture is bad for the culture as a whole and they should not be associated together.

The block parties, graffiti art, rapping, disc jockeying and diverse forms of dancing built Hip Hop by the black youth. They expressed their feelings, thoughts, but most importantly the problems they had to face, which were related to their race, gender and social positions. The rights that were given to black people during and after the Civil Rights Movement left the following generations at a lack of how to continue the fight for black rights. Hip Hop gave them this platform and with the usage of black nationalism, Hip Hop can explore the challenges that confront American-Americans in the post-Civil Rights Movement era. In the 1990’s Hip Hop lived its prime, sub genres started to appear and famous groups, MCs led the whole community, providing a voice to a group of people trying to deliver their message.

“Beyond Beats and Rhymes” Summary This movie was a broad discussion about hip-hop music (or more specifically gangster rap) and what kind of social issues the music not only showcases but seems to promote. The producer of this film, Byron Hunt, interviewed people involved in all aspects of the hip-hop industry, including famous rappers, to try to get to the bottom of this. Some of the most prominent issues discussed in the film were the over-sexualization of women, gun violence, and anti- homophobic attitudes. Hunt would ask those involved in the industry about why they think these themes are so prevalent.

Hip hop critics believe that hip hop is a violent subculture and supports crime and violence, but research has shown that there is no direct correlation between the two. One hip-hop artist that goes against this stereotype is Kanye Omari West. Mr. West lyrics allows the listener to understand that you don’t have to rap about having money and cars to get someone’s attention. In Kanye West’s Homecoming, he said, “Reach for the stars, so if you fall you land on the clouds.” This is an influential quote that encourages the listener to reach for their goals, but if you happen to fail on the way it’ll be ok because you have a comfort system to be there for you.

Nowadays, everyone wears the identity with pride. The genre was a testament to triumphing over hardships, to having enough confidence in oneself not to let the world drag you down, and to rising above the struggle, even when things seem hopeless. Violence in rap did not begin as an affective agent that threatened to harm America 's youth; rather, it was the outcry of an already-existing problem from youth whose world views have been shaped by the inequalities and prejudice they have experienced. The relentless wave of heroic new rappers arriving on the scene formed the golden age of hip hop in the 1980s, a newfound voice which rose from the impoverished ghettos during the 1980s and inspiring a generation of black youth to fight the police brutality they faced on a daily basis.

Subcultures are values and norms different from those of the majority and are held by a group within a wider society, these social groups are organized around shared interests and practices. A subculture is usually attached to clothes music and other visible fronts within the given community, that is part of the general society. Subcultures contain individuals who think alike who feel like they are not a part of the bigger culture of society and then create a sense of identity for themselves. The term Hip Hop is used as a subcultural movement. Scholars such as Carl and Virgil Taylor emphasize “Hip-Hop is not only a genre of music, but also a complex system of ideas, values and concepts that reflect newly emerging and ever-changing creative correlative expressive mechanisms including but not limited to song, poetry, film and fashion.”

Sex, money, drugs and violence. When you hear those four words, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Many people would say they think of rap or hip hop. Today, rap music is constantly mistaken for valuing the destruction of communities by promoting images of “the thug life”. However, the hip hop culture can have a positive impact on society.

Rap music has negative influences on teenagers and youth lives, as they are drawn to the lifestyle of drugs, sex, and violence, which is contained in the music lyrics and videos. Research has supported this, arguing that exposure for a long time to this music is likely to affect the overall mood, behavior, perceptions, and create fantasies among the youths (Miranda and Claes, 2004). This has had significant influences on their behaviors at school and at home. Parents are concerned, since they are unaware of the lyrics, as the teenagers prefer to download the songs and listen the music through the headphones. Research has proven that popular rap music effects explore the student schoolwork, social interactions, moods, and overall behavior.