Yes its as TOXIC
Posted on 08/21/2013 6:54:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I listen to rap. I grew up listening to rap. Since I was old enough to enjoy music, rap has been one of my favorite genres. It remains so to this day.
I'm not just talking about mainstream or party-mix rap. I am talking about hard-core rap, underground rap, and rap performed by artists that nine out of ten rap fans have never heard of.
So given that I am a genuine rap aficionado, how can it be that I largely agree with liberals like the late anti-rap activist Delores Tucker and conservatives like Bill O'Reilly who argue that rap is a destructive influence on underprivileged black youths?
Rap music has been targeted to middle-class suburbia almost since the genre's inception. Millions of white people listen to rap, which means that characterizing rap as "black" music or music intended predominately for a black audience is inaccurate.
Yet there is a fundamental difference between how rap -- and "gangsta" rap in particular -- resonates with suburban middle-class males (who are predominately white) and urban lower-class males (who are predominately black).
Growing up in a middle-class Boston suburb, for me the themes of violence, gang life, and drug dealing woven into the lyrics of songs by NWA, Mobb Deep, and the Wu Tang Clan were abstract and foreign. It was akin to watching a movie about a fantastical adventure, like Rambo or Indiana Jones. I did not live in an environment depicted by these rappers, and had no opportunities (and no need) to engage in the destructive behavior --robbing, selling crack cocaine, joining a gang, etc. -- that they were glorifying.
Moreover, I grew up in a stable two-parent household, in which my parents disciplined me and regulated my behavior.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Music? That’s a stretch.
Among the many problems with rap is that it really doesn't speak at all, at least not in a language resembling English.
It doesn't speak to me at all because life is way too short to waste listening to that crap.
More like schoolyard Mother Goose type rhymes with a black thug gangster mentality. It sounds very juvenile most of the time but that’s just my opinion of course.
There is something about rap and hip-hop that make them profoundly annoying, like nails screeching across a blackboard. I think that it is an acquired taste, influenced a lot by peer pressure.
I remember feeling the same way about acid rock back in the late 60s/early 70s. I couldn’t stand the stuff... and no amount of peer pressure could get me to like it. Yet peer pressure does seem to have a strong influence on musical taste... given that neither “acid rock” nor rap/hip-hop have any discernible tune, their popularity must not be based on their artistic value.
It is purely destructive cr*p not worthy of the time to turn it on.
These are truly end times, people. No denying it.
rap is not music
gangsta rap is just horrible
Eugene Enslaved still doesn’t get it.
The answer in part is not to listen to, and thus promote, rap music.
It is a construct, a fiction.
It is not an expression of "life as it is" for anyone.
Rick Ross is not really a gangster. He is a former corrections officer.
50 Cent was not an underground kingpin. He was a small time dealer and worked at a gym.
T-Pain grew up in the suburbs and his mom bought him a home recording studio so he could record songs in his bedroom.
Lil' Wayne was a honors student in high school and was starring in a production of The Wiz with his drama club when he recorded his first single.
No one seems to understand that it is all an act.
“NWA, Mobb Deep, and the Wu Tang Clan”
Same here, except Mobb Deep whom I thought sucked. Beastie Boys, DMX, Tupac, ODB. Biggie etc. Honestly, it didn’t “speak” to me but I liked the way it sounds. Naturally when you’re younger, you want your music as hard as it gets. Then you start moving to metal like Megadeth etc. Just like listening to your preferred music, they’re a release..
Funny how my aunt back then told me how I can listen to DMX, about robbing and killing other n8**ers’ or metal’s Cannibal Corpse (about beating someone else’s brains out in Hammer Smashed Face). Obviously you must be dumb as hell to actually do them in real life.
While I agree with the posters here, I’d venture a guess that unfortunately except for the poster, the responders didn’t read the editorial but assumed since it’s about Rap, they’d hate it. Folks, read the editorial; it is enlightening, and, when you are done, you still can hate rap music. Actually, it will give you more reasons to hate it.
RAP: Retarded African Poetry.
“frontin is frontin”
so young ghetto dumbasses who grow up listening to that crap are not influenced by it because its FICTION??
Rap speaks? It’s loud, hateful, narcissistic gibberish.
They are heavily influenced by it apparently, they act it out all the time it seems
Rap is not music. Rhyme with a drum beat, but not music. Nothing about it is worth listening to.
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