Is All Rap Music Promoting And Glorifying Crime And Degrading

Is all rap music promoting and glorifying crime and degrading women? This is a question that is asked often and the general consensus is that, yes, it does. Is there any evidence however to back up these claims and are the rappers intending their music to be seen in a negative aggressive way. I don’t necessarily think that rap music does anything but give the musician an outlet for their talent and use topics like women and crime in their songs for commercialization and to create an image that rappers need in order to succeed in that genre. We will come to an overall conclusion at the end of this essay after we source different arguments on the topic. A popular argument used on this topic is that rap music promotes crime including the†¦show more content†¦It s said that some rap music has tapped into feelings of male powerlessness as a result of poverty, racism and fractured families and made it not only fashionable but also empowering for young men to demean women in this way (the guardian, 2004) Not only do they rap about women in a negative way but their music videos feature women semi naked and at times fully naked. There was even a paper published by Tipper Gore named HATE, RAPE AND RAP which directly linked sexual assaults to rap music, there was clear links made that rap encourages violence towards women. The public has even tried to involve Michelle Obama hoping that she could convince rappers to tone down their lyrics from being so depraved towards women. Women in hip-hop are portrayed, in songs or videos, as either silent, willing strippers or complaining, troublesome meddlers. Female rappers are either boy toys or tomboys, both of which are personalities constructed around a masculine norm rather than a female norm. Another argument used is that rap promotes violent behavior towards women as it is influential in the behavior of men. In published journals they define misogyny as the â€Å"hatred or disdain of women† and â€Å"an ideology that reduces women to objects for men’s ownership, use, or abuse† (Adam and Fuller p. 939). They carried out research that showed many rappers continuouslyShow MoreRelatedPopular Culture and Violent Behavior Essay11795 Words   |  48 Pagesrevenue. Low culture is what is sold to the masses, ergo, low culture equals mass culture. All these terms refer to popular culture, defined in the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology as: à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦accessible to everyone. Popular culture is far more widespread than high culture and in the United Statesand in Europe, for example, it is dominated by television, films and recorded popular music. [2] I have chosen to study popular culture and its influence on violent behaviour