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ok...I like rap music (some of it). But it is a shame to see "hip hop" being recognized as a culture. Don't black Americans realize that they have so much more than that in their history.

As I walk the street and seee ignorance at its best (pants hanging off of a$$e$, gold teeth, drinking 40's on the coner, youth purposely making themselves look ugly and poor) it comes to my attention that because they are taking hip hop as a culture, that the images of mass media are brainwashing our children to emulate what they see.

After all, they aren't educated on the amount of contributions blacks have made to this country...so who else but the rich rappers should they look at as heroes and people to want to be like.

I am currently in a legal battle of my own, and everytime I go to court, there is nothing but black youth on trial for senseless acts of violence and drug possession....


Rap music, even though it is a form of entertainment, is helping to keep our inner cities and ghettos opressed. We need to make a stand and educate our children at home, and dump money into our communities to start minority outreach programs...

Not only that, but more blacks need to be made aware of the ones that are out there.

I write all this because everytime i walk out of my door, I am reminded by the state of helplessness and emergency going on in our community.....

We support timberland (owned by a known KKK leader), we support Hilfger (who doesn't design clothes for "blacks) Our kids get arrested for stupidity because it is now being glorified in our own neighborhoods (he is a badman). We fight at parties, we support underage drinking in the name of making a dollar....and we let our children buy explicit albums from artists who have nothing positive to tell them.

And here is the biggest shame...Our outlets of mass media promote those artists that have nothing to say more, than those who try to spread a message (Nas for example).....our children are teased with images of success and money and loose women in videos..when we are at home telling them to go to school and be like mommy and daddy (who can't show them these images of richeness)....The same artist who are flashing these signs of wealth are telling a story of their life filled with drug selling, jail and killings...

Now I wonder why our children wouldn't try to get arrested or sell drugs......That is the only way they see a black man being rich and powerful....cause now he has a story to tell.

More Images like the Cosby's are needed in real life. But to me it seems like blacks are masters of resource. They gave us pig scraps we saw chitllins, etc. The youths that can't buy top name brand will make lookin' bummy & poor fashionable, bad gramma, exciting communication.


Changes, and direction immenient.

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I got harem full of Hoes'. Its my Mystique that's got dem tearing off my Clothes....I'm so Sincere.

this is very true. Our youth need more positve role models and people in our communities, those who are able to vote have a civic as well as moral resposibility to help nurish and raise teens. It takes a village to raise a child, that saying has yet to fade out. We need to elect people who will represent us all year round, put pressure on them when they slip up and force them to provide us with the same resources in urban communities that are given to those in more upscale suburban neighborhoods. If we want more postive media than we need to do something about because we live in a freakin democracy and instead of talking about it, we need to do something.

There is power in numbers. we need to protest and actively DEMAND what we want, we elect a governing body to represent us, we pay their damn salaries so let these motherfcukers work for us. If we want our kids to respect us, than we better start making a more positve image for them to look up to. We as communities need to clean up our neighborhoods, look out for one another and be more of a participant in the lives of our youth. Stop shunning them (us rather) and give us some place to go, resources and postive images to aspire to.

deejee

i feel what u are saying in ur post and agree with most of it except the huge blame that is being placed on rap music as an influence or reason for much of it. The sheer despair that inherits our inner city has forces our youth to seek the easier way out from pimping to drug dealing. Further compounding the problem is that lack of stable homes for our youth, sub standard educational systems and the flat out frustration of our youth. Jay-z and DMX are not the only ones being emulated, so is Keyshawn Johnson and Rasheed Wallace. That y parents make the effort to develop their child's basketball, baseball and football skills to the point the wake up early on Saturday mornings to make sure they kids attend practice but won't spend an extra 30 mins helping them with their home work.

Economically we are prayed on by every race, class or creed, look at our communities. We are invaded by Jew, Chinese, White, Indian, and every other race u could think off. Those people primarily own every retail outlet in our communities. yet when u go to the communities you can't find one black entrepreneur, when was the last time u say a black own store on canal street. Our entire mindset need to change it really has nothing to do with rap music.

yes the mass media does push the violent rap music. there was even a study that showed that the more violent the songs became the more the "white" listeners bought the music.

although some types of rap music seem to push the limit, we have to remember that in this day and age the majority of people that listen to rap music are "white"

Why arent their communities faced with the same problems?

Maybe because they are not faced with the same issues and situations in their own community & see it as a kind of fairy tale story.

As I said in an earlier post I think the bigger problem is that parents are not handling their responsibility and are relying on BET, other programs on tv, & other people to raise their kids.

Then we can find a reason for parents not handling their repsonsibilities and a cause for that and a cause for that..etc.
So it's hard and I guess we have to focus on that one issue that would do the most good

good topic

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I blame rap music for the limited ambitions of the black commumity...

fast cars, big jewelry...material things in general are what blacks aspire for...it is our measure of success. Meanwhile, other races are looking for property and other types of ownership to define their success.

Rap made it cool to have the best rims on the block but still living with mama.




Stranger Gone.

I agree...There was a time when I used to think like TDog, and that it was someone else to blame and not rap.....

But I see things really different now. When I see little 7 year olds cussing and carrying on every morning (I live across the street from an elementary school) and singing explicit rap lyrics, there is a huge problem.

No doubt most of the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the parents, but the music and images it is promoting isn't helping either.

As far as kids wanting to be sports starts......ummmmmm....ok, maybe some.....but I could show u 500 kids right now who want to be the next 50 Cent.....so they on the block hustling, doing all sorts of sh&*t so that they too can have a story to tell...

and what makes it worst is that 90 percent of these artist (including 50) have little to no talent. Listen to a JayZ accapella without the beat and tell me what the fack he is talking about...




Self Destruction,
we headed for self destruction

deejaytrixxl,

Blackyouth! Madam what yu wrote was right enuf but negative. Hate to be a pain but it's not that easy. I really hated what you said cause it so true. We all know the problem. What is the solution? As if you would know.

I *hate* to see ppl blame rap music for our problems, as if talking in cadence over beats and music is somehow inherently satanic.

Anybody ever hear of artist like Roots, Mos Def, Common, Dead Prez, Talib Kweli, Black Eye Peas, Kam, Paris, Afu-Ra? No? You must be watching too much MTV/BET. Anybody remember artists like Public Enemy, X-Clan, Tribe Called Quest, KRS-ONE, Bran Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers, De La Soul, etc etc. I could sit here all day listing positive hip-hop artists. If all these positive elements have always existed (and still do) in hip-hop, exactly how is hip-hop to blame?

Everything in life has a negative element. Name me anything in this world and I'll show you something negative about it, down to the preacher in the pulpit. But the pure and good is not what makes it in this media.

The problem is not hip-hop. The violence/materialism in hip-hop you're lamenting is a symptom of the problem; a problem I like to call America. People act like there isn't sex, drugs, violence, materialism, and everything else negative in every other form of media, TV, news, movies, video games, books, magazines, etc. And doesn't anyone ever realize that the more *popular* hip-hop became, the more of the *negative* of hip-hop you saw?

If, by some otherwise impossible circumstance, hip-hop became 100% clean and pure (unlike anything else in this world), it would immediately cease and desist to be a force in mainstream America. It would have nothing upon nothing more to offer a culture that always illuminates and supports the most negative elements that life has to offer.

There is absolutely positively nothing wrong with hip-hop. Stop the endless scapegoating. The problem is with people in this God-forsaken culture of excess and depravity, of all things material and of nothing of a spiritual or uplifting value.

America, not hip-hop, made it cool to base your life on the value of "things." As a recently-oppressed people in this country, in this Hemisphere, we're simply feeding on it (and taking it to a whole next level). There is nothing less evil about a white-collar criminal stealing millions of dollars from poor and working people, nothing less evil about a corporation impoverishing an entire nation of people in far-off lands for their material benefit, than it is to sell drugs on the corner to get rich. They've all got as their aim the acquisition of wealth by any means necessary -- any means, that is, that are readily available to the criminal. It just happens to be a lot cooler/easier to lambaste the common thug criminal in whatever medium than it is the others.

Reminds me of when, in Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore asked the producer of "Cops" why they don't cover investigations and arrests of white collar criminals (who cause as much if not more damage than -- for lack of a better term -- blue-collar criminals). He plainly stated the obvious, which is that it wouldn't get ratings. But crime and material worship is all around us, not just in rap videos.

Anyways, I hate to say it, but this country is one that is built on crime and possession. These youth are simply following the American dream to the letter. God bless America!