Youth Culture and Rap Music's Influence on Society

The question of whether or not rap music should be embraced in a society has sparked a debate for the last two decades. Rap music started as an Afro-American culture, which hitherto has taken roots to hip-hop with both black and white artists. There before, at its inception, it was deemed to be the African American artistic style. The most beguiling question of the effects of rap music society holds as a contentious issue with some supporting it while others are entirely impugning it on the ground that it drags all evils and ingrain negative behavior among the youths.

Furthermore, most fail to comprehend the impact in bridging the gap between the two cultures white and the blacks. From inception as Caribbean music, this genre has transcended to hip-hop, which bridges the rift between the two groups. In spite of the fact that rap music has a positive impact, it has a predominantly negative influence in society. Rap musicians will often explicitly exploit their power to impose their deranged values onto their audience, which leads to the disruption of youth lifestyle from poor role models and objectification of women.

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Although rap music mostly has negative influence, the society should, however, absorb the positive effect. For example, since the historical era, this genre has been used as a platform to air grievances and create political awareness among the youths and society in general. At the start, rap music took a form of narrative intertwined with instrumental sounds (Bonnette, 2015). The music is updated with daily events, thus communicates the challenges facing society more conventionally.

Nevertheless, there are consequent evidence that the music breeds negative impact in the public eye and ought not to be grasped by any stretch of the imagination.

Recently there is the ongoing debate on gun violence in the United States. Trap music has been heavily linked to promoting gun violence. According to researchers from the department of Criminology in University of California, Dunbar, Kubrin, & Scurich (2016) say that many rap musicians are behind bars due to cases of abuse. While this behavior is predominant among the musicians, youths are keen to identify their role models. The teens and youths are bound to follow the steps of the egocentric rap musicians. At its commencement as Caribbean music, this genre was found educative and exciting. However, nowadays, most of rap artists are located in the gangster era. They live in friends’ circles, which in many instances are perceived to be gangs and drug dealers. The rappers live an extravagant lifestyle, which is imitated by the youths who are from humble families of abject poverty. They are thus pushed to stealing to accommodate the life of their role models. The rap music has also hurt youth’s education more so in North America. Most of the rap musicians come from ghetto families. Once they grow successfully in the music industry, poor kids in the ghetto label them as their role models. With good house, good cars and a lot of money considering the level of the musician’s education, what then would be the apparent reason to refrain from engaging in the rap music sector? The teens from the abject poverty families are tempted to dive in the street music to cater to their needs (Dunbar et al., 2016). Some engage in drugs, which must be complemented by acts such as stealing and sexual abuse in the case of girls.

In a more conservative society, rap music cannot be accepted. The goal of modern society in this epoch is to promote a culture that escalates the glory and role of women in the community. Most of the rap music has lyrics that glorify women’s body parts. To a more massive extreme, this may create emotional problem to the women. According to Coleman et al. (2016), rap music also influences youths to negative behaviors such as sexual immoralities. Moreover, praising women with huge body parts may demoralize their counterparts resulting in eating disorders to make them grow equally. The music is egotistical. By this, it means that every rapper describes him self as the best, most robust and maybe hardest. For example, “I’m the best,” “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but chains and whips excite me,” “Feel so good being bad” (Rihanna, 2007). When this is combined with the theme, as mentioned earlier of violence, rap music becomes a scary thing. In most schools, a teenager exposed to rap music has hit a teacher, some conducted sexually transmitted infections, and some have a couple of sex partners. It is for these harmful behaviors that society remains adamant to embracing modern pop culture.

Even though rap music has some positive impacts on society, music has a predominantly negative influence. Evils such as gun violence, drug abuse, sexual acts, the rise of street gangs, and school drops are perceived to emanate from the rap musicians who are. The society should, however, absorb the positive effect and leave the dark side of rap music.