Mass Commication and How It Affects Today's Youth

From Eminem's hardcore explicit lyrics, to Lil Kim's outrageous outfits to the late Tupac Shakur's "thug life" image, the rap subculture has been under a lot of speculation. Many rappers lyrics contain violent messages that parents fear are encouraging youth to become violent. The media has a field day covering protests against rappers, such as Eminem about their explicit lyrics towards gays, women and their promotion of violence. The main concern is how rap is influencing today, particularly towards the youth community, and the answer can be found in the media. There are a lot of articles, books, movies and documentaries written and produced each year with hip-hop being the main subject. This great plethora of media not only affects the youth but other people as well. However, one needs to understand how the rap culture got started, and why the media found it interesting enough to give it a substantial amount of coverage.

According to Webster, rap is rhythmic chanting of usually rhyming couplets to a musical accompaniment (Webster, 607). The rap subculture began in the African community residing in the Bronx during the 70's with rappers free styling--when artists rhyme without memorization or writing down lyrics--in the park, on street corners and in apartment basements (Watkins, 63). This was a harmless way of determining who the best lyricist was. At the time artists such as Arrested Development made lyrics that sent a positive message to the African community. The group's songs address topics ranging from homelessness to the search for spirituality and African Americans' connection with Africa. Through their positive influence they received "Best New Artist" and "Best Rap Artist" during the 1993 Grammy Awards (Boyd, 44). During its birth, this subculture produced many other cultures such as graffiti art, break dancing and most notably rap music. This subculture was very expressive and paved the way for latter cultures' success. In his book, Fight the Power, Chuck D (a member of rap group Public Enemy) states, "Hip hop is a subculture of Black culture. It's another term for Black creativity. Rap music is here to stay because it's vocal over music, and as the music changes the vocals can remain the same because it's one of the few live vocal styles ever used for recording music" (p.g. 248). He was right because as the 80's were approaching; rap had spread almost to the entire nation. On a side note, although rap was primarily begun in New York it does have its California roots. The dance known as breaking, which was influenced by earlier dances know as locking and popping (these dances required a lot of body control, mainly in the arms, legs, and torso) were established in L.A. The dances received national exposure on the hit show Soul Train, and ultimately swept the rap subculture (George, 133).

The next big wave in the subculture behind rap music itself was DJing. The ability to mix music on a machine and scratch records was a phenomenon in itself. Rap music in the industry was nothing without a beat, and in order for the song to be a hit, the beat must carry the lyrics. Many of the beats at the time were fast pounding bah-bum-bah rhythms. DJing led to another culture in rap, which was beat boxing. Beat boxing was when a person made their voice sound like the beat in the song. Rhazzel, is not only famous for being a DJ, but also for beat boxing. Many times during a concert, he would just stop the music and beat box the melody. As a result of this influx of energy towards the rap subculture and its birth of many other cultures, Tricia Rose quotes:

"It was not long before similarly marginalized

Black and Hispanic communities in other cities picked up on the t

tenor and energy in New York hip hop. Within a decade, Los Angles

County (especially Compton), Oakland, Detroit, Chicago, Houston

Atlanta, Miami, Newark, and Trenton, Roxbury, and Philadelphia

have developed local hip hop scenes that link various regional

postindustrial urban experiences of alienation, unemployment,

police harassment, social, and economic isolation to their local

and specific experience via hip hop's language, style, and attitude

...In every region, hip hop articulates a sense of entitlement

and takes great pleasure in aggressive insubordination," (Rose 60).

This quote shows what happens in modern rap. Rap now tells a different story, one which does not send a positive message, but a negative perspective on police, and women. Critics even claim that this form of rap is not even "real." Real rap, as they characterize it consists of artists like Common, Rhakim, Eric B, Arrested Development and Public Enemy. Real rap inspires the minority community to end violence while encouraging youth that there is more to life than being in a gang or selling drugs. The wave of gangsta rap in the 1990's ended the positive lyrics of acclaimed artists. Gangsta rap was a new form of rap, no positive lyrics were heard here, just 16 or more bars--rhymes--of senseless violence. This was the so called "thug appeal." Suddenly no once cared about uplifting the African community, they wanted to hear its ugly side; the side which consisted of drugs, pimping and malicious acts. Rap fans insisted at the time (and still do) that performers be authentic representatives of ghetto life: that they live the life they rap about; that life conformed to are, so to speak (Bruck, 47.)

The obsession of gang life corrupted late rapper Tupac Shakur. For example, when he first came out, he read newspaper articles and wrote about songs that pertained to the community. He wanted everyone to know what was going on in the ghetto, for instance, his hit song "Brenda's got a Baby," was a story in the newspaper about a young girl who got pregnant from her uncle. His next single however, was degrading women, because he was following the mainstream of gangsta rap. Syke, a West Coast rapper and a friend of Tupac's explained why many gangsta rappers commit crimes, "If you're rapping this hard stuff, you have to live it, otherwise people check your resume and say, 'You don't look like you're hard from your resume, let's see if you are,'" (Bruck, 52). This sort of "checking" a rappers' thug resume, led to many rappers going to jail for assault and other barbaric acts of crime. With the