Ubiquitous in popular culture, including fashion, design, movies, literary works, and most importantly, music, hip-hop culture plays a major role in the formation of identity for its most prominent audience: teens and young adults. While it remains extremely influential for America’s younger generation, hip-hop music has also evolved to condone negative themes and risky behaviors. For example, popular hip-hop music promotes substance abuse, prostitution, misogyny, violence against women, gangs and gang-related crime, suicide, etc., as displayed through the lyrics of many popular hip-hop songs. Today's popular hip hop musicians portray such an idealized projection of themselves to better explore their own desires and capitalize on the similar
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Individuals figure out exactly what lifestyles they want to live, what their core values and beliefs are, the careers they want to build, etc. (Santrock 2008). With the accelerating pace of technological advancement, including smartphones, social media, and other devices, the speed at which popular culture influences young individuals has increased to unprecedented levels (Henfield, Washington & Owens 2010). Music today remains integral to the lives of American teenagers. Adolescents of between 14 and 16 years of age listen to music an astounding 40 hours a week on average (Wells 445-454). Music is also present almost everywhere in a person’s daily life. Supermarkets and malls will have music in the background; drivers will play music using the car radio; television often has music accompanying commercials. Refuting the counterargument that children and adolescents pay little attention to lyrical content in music, studies demonstrated that 17% of male adolescents and 25% of female adolescents expressed that they enjoyed their favorite songs specifically because of the lyrics (Roberts, 395-410). Simply put, music is a large part of adolescents and young adults’ lives. During this phase of many individuals’ lives, they are most easily influenced, for their identities have not fully formed yet. Their fragile identities …show more content…
Regarding misogyny, rap music often reduces women as objects “only good for sex and abuse” and “perpetuate ideas, values, beliefs, and stereotypes that debase women” (Adams and Fuller 940). Rap music tends to stereotype gender roles and condone the “acceptance of women as sexual objects and men as pursuers of sexual conquest” (Martino, Collins, Elliott, Strachman, Kanouse, & Berry, 2006). Analyzing the lyrics of hip hop music from 1987 to 1993, a study by E.G. Armstrong (2001) concluded that 22% of the 490 rap songs condoned violence against women in forms such as murder, rape, and assault. More than one in five of the 490 rap songs were either about rappers priding themselves on harming women through sex acts, threatening women who challenge male dominance with assault, or simply promote acts of violence against women (Armstrong 2001). In a follow-up study by Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) of hip hop music from 1999-2009, of the 403 hip hop songs analyzed by the study, 67% of the misogynistic lyrics in the songs related to sexual objectification of women. Frequently occurring themes within these songs were legitimation of violence against women, promotion of prostitution, and the sexual objectification, distrust, and shaming of women (Weitzer & Kubrin
Individuals figure out exactly what lifestyles they want to live, what their core values and beliefs are, the careers they want to build, etc. (Santrock 2008). With the accelerating pace of technological advancement, including smartphones, social media, and other devices, the speed at which popular culture influences young individuals has increased to unprecedented levels (Henfield, Washington & Owens 2010). Music today remains integral to the lives of American teenagers. Adolescents of between 14 and 16 years of age listen to music an astounding 40 hours a week on average (Wells 445-454). Music is also present almost everywhere in a person’s daily life. Supermarkets and malls will have music in the background; drivers will play music using the car radio; television often has music accompanying commercials. Refuting the counterargument that children and adolescents pay little attention to lyrical content in music, studies demonstrated that 17% of male adolescents and 25% of female adolescents expressed that they enjoyed their favorite songs specifically because of the lyrics (Roberts, 395-410). Simply put, music is a large part of adolescents and young adults’ lives. During this phase of many individuals’ lives, they are most easily influenced, for their identities have not fully formed yet. Their fragile identities …show more content…
Regarding misogyny, rap music often reduces women as objects “only good for sex and abuse” and “perpetuate ideas, values, beliefs, and stereotypes that debase women” (Adams and Fuller 940). Rap music tends to stereotype gender roles and condone the “acceptance of women as sexual objects and men as pursuers of sexual conquest” (Martino, Collins, Elliott, Strachman, Kanouse, & Berry, 2006). Analyzing the lyrics of hip hop music from 1987 to 1993, a study by E.G. Armstrong (2001) concluded that 22% of the 490 rap songs condoned violence against women in forms such as murder, rape, and assault. More than one in five of the 490 rap songs were either about rappers priding themselves on harming women through sex acts, threatening women who challenge male dominance with assault, or simply promote acts of violence against women (Armstrong 2001). In a follow-up study by Weitzer and Kubrin (2009) of hip hop music from 1999-2009, of the 403 hip hop songs analyzed by the study, 67% of the misogynistic lyrics in the songs related to sexual objectification of women. Frequently occurring themes within these songs were legitimation of violence against women, promotion of prostitution, and the sexual objectification, distrust, and shaming of women (Weitzer & Kubrin