Lalanne,+Cedrick

Rap's Influence Table Of contents media type="custom" key="9775382" align="center"
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Cedric Lalanne Junior English Ms. Doherty The Negative Influence  As defined by Tricia Rose, “rap is a confusing and noisy element of contemporary American popular culture that continues to draw attention.” (Rose, p.1, pars.1)(1) Rap music has had a negative influence on the youth from its beginning. With the rap music broadcasting on television and the radio, sex, drugs, and violence are virtually distributed to kids. As a solution, using radio laws, the FCC laws, which will authorize my broadcast station, I can broadcast positive rap on the radio, and by “positive”, I mean rap songs that sends out a positive message.

 The issue is that rap has a negative influence on kids. This problem is nationwide, from the east to the west, north to south. This problem doesn’t affect every kid, but it affects a number of its listeners. I say that because of some of the songs send out very harsh messages. In example, lyrics explaining how an individual is going to kill another individual, and how one person is going to rape a girl. The most affected characters are the children, and I say this from my own mind, if kids are listening to the negative side of rap and they are doing the actions described and shown in rap videos, they are most likely going to grow up in a life of crime, and spend their life in jail. This problem is mostly found in urban areas and cities.

 Furthermore, there are different causes which explain why rap music has a negative influence on kids. First, kids practice action portrayed in rap videos and lyrics. Medical writer [|Sid Kirchheimer] states “teens who spend more time watching the sex and violence depicted in the ‘reel’ life of ‘gangsta’ rap videos are more likely to practice these behaviors in real life.” In other words, kids watching videos are getting influenced to do these actions shown in videos and described in lyrics.

 Comparing from people who rarely watch videos to those who do, researchers found that their actions are different. Statistics from researches (not named) show that girls 14-18 years old living in non-urban cities watching these rap videos are three times more likely to hit a teacher, Approximately 2.5 times more likely to get arrested, twice as likely to have multiple sexual partners, one and one half times more likely to get a sexually transmitted disease, use drugs , or drink alcohol. (Kirchheimer, pars. 2)(2) This statistic shows that rap videos are one of the causes that lead to different behaviors on kids.

 Furthermore, although bad behavior comes from rap videos, videos aren’t the only thing that leads to bad behavior. Cheryl Keyes, associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) says “parents need to get more involved in what their children are watching.”(2) This means that parents need to control their children’s TV habit, as in they should see what their kids are watching, and block anything that they don’t want their kids to see. Also, Susan Buttross who’s the spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) wants parents “… to know what their children are being exposed to. Certainly, rap is not the only music that portrays negative stereotypes or can negatively impact behaviors, and not all rap music should be implicated. But there have been nearly 1,000 studies that have looked at the effects that the media has on children’s behavior. And nearly all of them find there is a strong effect.”(Kirchheimer, pars.12)(2) This quote proves a point by showing that other forms of media affect kids and rap shouldn’t take the blame for all the violence, sex and bad behavior. It also shows that not all rap music falls into the category made by a lot of people “bad”.

 In effect to these cause most kids get involved in sexual activities, act more reckless as in raising their voices, hitting others, and most importantly doing violent acts. (WebMD Health)(6) If you think about these problems, you can see that they are worse than they sound. When you hear things like that, you can picture jail. The effects of rap music’s negativity makes kid reckless and violent. During an interview with Marco Cobar, a high school student, I asked him does he think rap will ever change, and by that I meant will it get worse or better, and his response was “No, it will get worse.”(3) I also asked how rap affected his life and his response was “rap affected my life during middle school and it brought reality issues that are being talked about.”(3) He didn’t specify what issues but my guess is poverty issues, and money issues. Well, the story is that Marco used to listen to rap, well he listens but not as much as he used, he used to wear baggy clothes, talked like a ‘gangsta’, but he was strong, he never drank alcohol, never smoked weed. He stopped listening to rap when he told himself that rap was getting a little out of hand. Now Marco gets good grades, and making smart decisions.

 This problem is very important, because it is making kids who the future of this world unsuitable for society. Kids are swearing anywhere, they have no respect for someone’s face, could be an adult or a kid. Also there is a quote from author Sherry Ayazi-Hashjin, and it is “Rap is a young member of a long and distinguish musical tree.” (p.8)(4) Well this quote points out that rap is still a new form of music. I care because I’m one of the kids who are immune to rap’s negative messages and I live every day of my life hearing messed up messages coming from a song most kids listen to. People should care about this problem because, with the youth going down in the wrong path, their communities are bound to get worse. With these violent acts, crime rates are bound to go up, and society will just lower itself. By that I mean that society won’t have social people anymore. Not all rap music is bad, and it should not take the blame as stated before, rap music isn’t to blame for a kid’s violent act, it’s the media, and that includes any form of entertainment which exists now. A positive change would be for kids to actually understand what there are listening to and this is where my solution comes in a radio station that sends out good message. Things wouldn’t be as Bill Cosby stated “They put the word ‘nigga’ in a song and we get up and dance to it.”(Brent Jones, “Cosby Calls to absent Fathers”, pars.1)(5) Well Bill Cosby is mostly referring to youth, because it’s very uncommon for adults in their 30s and up to just do as Cosby describes. Bill Cosby means that the youth now don’t take the “n” word seriously and if the beat to the song has a good flow, they are most likely to dance to it and this statement is confirmed by a personal experience. So, I went to this party and music was loud, although I wasn’t surprised that the music was loud, I was surprised at the music playing, the song “BMF” by Rick Ross was being playing, and it was the uncensored version, and I was even more shocked that kids were really dancing to it, the song has a lot of swears and the kids took it like it was nothing. So in other words, Bill Cosby’s statement is more than true.

 Moving on, there haven’t been many solutions to my problem, which makes me a surprised me a little, because all adults talk about is how rap music is bad and they don’t want their kids to listen to this noise. I came upon one solution, which included Russell Simmons, who is a entrepreneur and Ben Chavis, who is a civil rights leader stated “we recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and a third term, a common racial epithet.”(6) Well this an “all right” solution mainly because in the quote it says ‘voluntarily remove’ which means that the broadcast industries doesn’t have to remove them. Out of the three words, only one mainly refers to the male and the other two are usually used for females.

 Well, since I thought that Mr. Simmons and Mr. Chavis’ solution were pretty good and there hasn’t been any other solution for this, my solution mixed with their solution would be my final solution, which is to broadcast positive rap music throughout the state of which I currently live in. To start financially my solution is a bit pricey. First, I would need to fill an application to the Federal Communications Commission better known as the FCC. Then when they accept my form I would need to get a license to broadcast, because broadcasting without a license is illegal. After this happens I would need to get a permit for a station. So far it’s the license, the permit and now comes the money, the lowest price I found for a professional radio transmitter was 4,000 dollars, and that was the base price, there are extras that can improve your studio, but it’s still pricey. There are also fees to pay. On the plus side, when I’m done with setting up the radio and acquire a channel, all that needs to be done is advertising. Advertising is very easy because, since you have friends and they have friends and so on, and I can also build a website, and host radio events. When everything is done and paid for, I can accomplish my goal of transmitting positive rap music

<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;"> To end this, rap music has a negative influence on youth, <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">as a solution, using radio laws, the FCC laws, which will authorize my broadcast station, I can broadcast positive rap on the radio and by “positive”, I mean rap songs that sends out a positive message. Not all rap is bad that is why with the radio solution I can broadcast what is positive, there are many out there, they are just covered up by the negative rap. The negativity in these type of rap songs are destroying this generation of youth’s mind with all this violence and sexual activity. <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Annotated Citations
 * 1) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Rose, Tricia. __Black noise: rap music and black culture in contemporary America__. Hanover, NH: University P of New England, 1994. The author of this book knows a lot about music so she knows what certain things are.
 * 2) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Kirchheimer, Sid. "Does Rap Music Put Teens at Risk?" __WebMD - Better information. Better health.__ 3 Mar. 2003. WebMD, LLC. 4 June 2011 <http://www.webmd.com/baby/news/20030303/does-rap-put-teens-at-risk?page=2>. Well this source is good because it shows statistics for a certain group of people and it explain part of my problem well.
 * 3) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lalanne, Cedric “Interview” __School.__ 4 May 2011 Cedric Lalanne interviewed Marco Cobar.
 * 4) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Ayazi-Hashjin, Sherry. __Rap and hip hop: the voice of a generation__. New York: Rosen Pub. Group, 1999. This book shows its readers a close-up view of rap music and hip hop culture. It also shows how the basic styles came out of the traditions of Africa and how each generation in America is bringing it to new heights.
 * 5) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Katel, Peter. "Debating Hip-Hop." 15 June 2007. __CQ Researcher Online__. CQ Press. 11 May 2011 <http://library.cqpress.com>. This source talks about what rap music is doing to the black community, rap music to be exact. it shows statistics for sales of rap and a whole bunch of other things.
 * 6) <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">Sanneh, Kelefa. "Hip-Hop - Rap Music - Censorship - Racism - Don Imus - Russell Simmons - New York Times." __<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia __<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif; font-size: 12pt;">. 25 Apr. 2007. The New York Times Company. 19 May 2011 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/arts/music/25hiph.html>. This article is a good article because it describes what famous people did for rap, and tried to improve its reputation.