Negative Influences Gangster Rap

Have you ever wondered if letting children listen to whatever music they wanted to would ever have a bad influence on them? Parents today try and control what their kids listen to, but they sometimes end up failing. Since teens and young adults have the largest influence on music, they are the ones who will decide what will be the most popular music genre in pop culture. Some parents believe that letting their children listen to “gangster rap” or any other form of harmful and vulgar music will turn them into a psychopathic cop killer. With the this being true in some cases, it can be a cause for concern. The problem that most parents actually have with these types of harmful music is that it changes the way their children act and speak towards
them and others that are around them. Even though most people think music is always a positive influence they fail to realize that it can sometimes be a very negative influence on certain people.
According to an article appropriately titled “Debating Hip-Hop,”
“Record executives, if you talk to them privately, will say that it's white kids who have the disposable income to buy this stuff," says hip-hop historian Yvonne Bynoe. "Black kids are going to buy bootlegs or dupe songs themselves. But you need young black people to give a rap record the imprimatur of authenticity" (Katel 529-52).
With the way modern society is organized, the largest influence on music comes from teens and young adults. It has been the teens that have always changed music. They are always trying to be with the status quo and being the most up-to-date on music. Mass-marketed hip-hop is what is in style, while rap has slipped to No. 3 in nationwide music sales, accounting for 11.4 percent of a recorded-music market whose total retail value was $11.5 billion in 2006. Meaning that just because people tell them not to listen to a certain kind of music, doesn’t mean that they will necessarily listen and obey them.
Secondly, parents think it will make their children become a cop killer.
Some of the most famous rappers have songs named, “F**k The Police”, “Crooked A** N***a”, and “Cop Killer.” (“Negative Influences Gangster Rap What Can Be Done About It”). These songs, like so many others, also talk about murder and disrespect of women. Lives have been lost and people have suffered, yet the gangster rap industry is still flourishing. Society has noticed the negative influence this music has had, yet they still continue to make it succeed through a number of record sales. Even though there is no way to solve this problem it’s still a benefit that parents do not let their children listen to the music and have them grow up hearing these types of
things.
In a recent study about how music affects the way a person feels, these conclusions were drawn: a group of twenty-eight to thirty-one year olds were presented with 40 musical excerpts conveying several different emotions, those being; happiness, peacefulness, sadness, and threat.
While listening to these excerpts, participants were asked to rate their feelings and monitor each excerpt for the occurrence of an auditory target. Compared to younger adults, older adults reported experiencing weaker emotional activation when listening to threatening music and showed a higher level of liking for happy music (Vieillard 2225-38).
That in itself suggests that younger people have a lower maturity level and that makes them more susceptible to irrational and impulsive behavior that is incited from violent music. A different point of view on this situation is that people claim music is a positive influence. Truthfully that is the most popular opinion in today’s time, but some people are on the side of it being negative. A few years ago this topic came to the surface after a radio host named Don Imus went on air [and] called women on a college basketball team, "Nappy Headed Hos". His remarks about the women set off a firestorm with people calling for him to be fired. He in turn countered and claimed that he made the unsavory remarks because he was “influenced by rap music” (Davey). By that statement alone it only seems that music is mainly a negative influence instead of a positive one,
because if he had not been moved by the music, he would not have said those things. With how easily music affects someone, people can see how negative effects can be a site for concern. A young person's mind can be swayed to think a certain way when the music they listen to always has a negative connotation. Because young people have a low maturity they tend to be persuaded by negative things. Still people seem to think music is always a positive influence, but they fail to realize that it also is a negative influence on certain people. It could make them want to commit heinous crimes as well. The youth of America are the main reason rap is such a big thing, they make it what it is. So next time you think about your next purchase of music, ask yourself if it’s a negative or positive influence