The Pros And Cons Of Ra Rap

Sam, a High School Senior in the lower class in Seattle, is an aspiring computer scientist. He has gotten perfect grades all throughout his schooling, and has gotten many scholarships for Washington State University. Lately, he has started listening to “gangster” rap with his friends, because he enjoyed the style the rappers used in their writing. Since he started listening to gangster rap, his grades have started going down, and he is getting more disruptive in class. What should his parents do? Rap, in many cases, has a negative impact on youth. However, it can also have many positive impacts. Some, but not all rap should be censored. This is because rap, which can be used to reach out to children, has both positive and negative impacts on youth today.

The first reason is because rappers can use their style of writing to write children’s books. According to the NY times, “Now that the music has gone mainstream, LL Cool J... and Doug E. Fresh… are hard at work at a different kind of rhyming. They are writing children’s books” (Lynette 2). This is showing that while LL Cool J and Doug E. Fresh are “Gangster Rappers”, they are using their writing style and abilities to teach children about language, which, while it isn’t very “gangster” of them, is doing something good. The second reason is that gifted children are turning towards rap because of the writing style of many rappers. According to Thousand Oaks, a website dealing with gifted children, “More specifically, because hip hop is a creative and excited male-dominated culture, gifted males gravitate towards hip hop culture” (Callahan 1). While rap often depicts the use of illegal drugs, violence, etc., many gifted students prefer the writing style and rhythm used in rap songs over other