Effects Of Rap Music On Inner City

Dan Jackson
March 10, 2010
Research Paper
Mrs. Paventi Rap Music and its effects on inner city life

Rap Music was created in the early 1970s in the Bronx, New York. “DJ Kool Herc originally created this style of music” (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). It was created as a way for people living in poverty in the inner cities to be heard. People outside of the cities didn’t take it very seriously until rappers such as Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. used well-written rhymes and nice beats to catch the attention of people. People started to notice the conditions that people were living in and it was embraced and brought to the spotlight as a major problem in some areas, but looked down upon as not a problem at all in other areas.
It eventually became all about drugs, money and degrading woman. People started to feed into the negative stereotypes that this was causing. Big chains, drugs, and talking down to woman, making them feel like objects instead of people, became very common in the inner cities. “The big chains and cars and drugs were a way for people to try to hide the fact that they were just as poor as the person standing in line next to them” (Rose, 156). People in these parts fed into these stereotypes as a way to hide their insecurities and attempt to save the little bit of reputation they may have had. Younger people and older people alike both became increasing interested in the use of drugs, but for different reasons, The younger kids became interested in it because all of their friends began to do it. It was very common in gangs, which the majority of kids were in at this point in time. The older people became increasingly interested in it because it gave them a way out. It gave them something to blame all their problems on. Many people began to use it as a way to forget about their problems; the high for a little bit was enough to get them hooked. Most children as they got older began to become extremely frustrated growing up the way that they were, and many of them were exposed to drugs through their parents. So many kids began to take matters into their own hands and deal drugs. It was a
He moved to Oakland, California, where the environment was just as bad, maybe even worse then before. Gangs, and drugs were everywhere you went. You couldn’t throw a stone without hitting a territory owned by a gang or a spot owned by a drug dealer. This environment definitely had the greatest impact on his music. Where he lived most of the friends that he made where in gangs but he never was affiliated with one. It was at parties for his friends that he realized the true potential that he had. Comments about his talent and compliments that he received helped him to realize what he had was true talent. This talent extended to the class from as well. He was always an advanced English student, especial in poetry because he already had such an advanced song writing ability. Many of his poems are now well known, “When Ure Hero Falls” and “The Rose That Grew From the Concrete” (Shakur,