Rap’s Contribution to Violence Debate Thread

[nieman]

Violent crimes were at it's apex from say, the late 70s to the early 90s. The crazy irony is as gangster rap became more popular violent crimes decreased substantially. Don't believe me? Check the stats

New York Crime Rates 1960 to 2019

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www.disastercenter.com

I was having this debate with one of my friends a few months ago. I told them that the 80's to mid 90's were worse when we were growing up...but now you're an adult so you hear about it more. I had to pull up Philly stats to show them we were at 450-500 murders a year then...before a decline in the early 2000s.

Barry White was a damn Crip. Lol

Lol Gamble & Huff were part of Black Mafia

And to better understand the violence in our communities, America created these conditions. America taught us that it was perfectly OK to pillage, murder, and rape an entire people and take over their land and get away with it. That's gang mentality in a nutshell. After taking over said land, America has slaves to work the land for free all while conditioning them to be submissive by all means up to and including hating everything about himself and aspiring to look like and behave like his master. Doing this all while fighting against a host country for independence. I could go on.

To add on to your post- the rules of the street are exactly the same as the rules of the world. The only difference is that those in the world can regulate those in the streets, and there's really no one to regulate the world. They fight over control over blocks (countries), limited and finite goods (resources), extort, have no fly zones literally, make handshake deals, renege on them and go to war at the slightest hint of disrespect. They are gangs and cliques Now you limit the resources in a concentrated area, what do you think is gonna happen?

Society is nothing but a giant controlled social experiment, and Darwinism at its finest. And that is the root of the problem. Before, it was us (whichever demo you belong to) vs them (the powers that be). But they've managed to make the "us" smaller, so now it becomes mostly everyone vs everyone.

 

[trillanova]

Rap does have a negative impact on minds that aren't already developed or strong enough to fully seperate entertainment from real life. The lines become blurred and behavior can become influenced and shifted. Yes, the nature of rap has had sad consequences for those that indulge and are still trying define themselves. These rappers are like video game characters you can select and blend your identity and persona with and eventually your behavior unwittingly...especially the youth. But before rap, the streets influenced the culture that actually makes it so infectious. It's a real thing and can't be denied. It is art and there is a craft behind it. It represents something that is going on and people don't want to face it in full reality, so somehow we turned the pain into an entire subgenre/culture for the masses to consume. With the corporate connection, anything and anyone can plug into it and attain some type of effect with basic interaction and participation. Depending on who you are as a person and your surroundings, it may or may not have detrimental consequences, but most people aren't rooted in anything firm within themselves. They want something shiny, catchy and easy to lull them and numb them from reality.

Today's rap music is designed to push a certain image and message that doesn't benefit the listener for the most part. The concepts are all the same, just over different flows and beats with different but similar looking characters. It's become a death cult. The aggression that pushed it into the mainstream has been transformed into something else. Something that is profitable for the few that control it and detrimental for the unsuspecting minds that interact with it over time. Most of it is bad and that's the truth. It's empty but catchy and that's what the energy is doing and spreading. The violence is coming from the lack of worth and value put into the product and the consumer is interpreting that energy with a lack of value or worth in themselves. It's easy to take another's life or even let go of their own because almost every song talks about it...sings about it even if it's just a second. All the lingo has murder and violence coded into the simplest of lyrics but it's all being taken in by the subconscious of the listener(s).

 

[dora_da_destroyer]

Violent crimes were at it's apex from say, the late 70s to the early 90s. The crazy irony is as gangster rap became more popular violent crimes decreased substantially. Don't believe me? Check the stats

New York Crime Rates 1960 to 2019

New York crime statistics, New York , New York rape, New York murder, New York property crime, New York crime index, New York violent crime, violent crime in State, New York burglary, New York vehicle theft, New York larceny, New York robbery, rate, New York, ucr, fbi, index, New York crime...

www.disastercenter.com

Breh, the 90s is when a new wave of tough on crime laws started going on the books as a response to the rise in the 80s to early 90s. 94 saw the federal crime bill, 3 strikes law in Cali, Giuliani became NYC mayor with the goal of cleaning up the city, you had unequal sentencing laws for crack being enforced, etc. clearly gangsta rap ain’t the end all be all, but without the wave of tough on crime laws emerging in the mid 90s, crime would have likely kept going up.

 

[Hawaiian Punch]

The music is real negative lately and does have a negative influence. Plenty of people have lost lives over drugs they may have never taken or words that music hyped them up to say. Still to me the bigger issue is guns. Look no further than school shootings. It’s so common place now that school shootings are no longer even a top news story. Most schools now have active shooter drills. We have to worry about white boys in army jackets running into crowded areas acting like they In call of duty. The availability of not just weapons but high caliber bullets, extendo clips and lax laws is the perfect storm. Rap won’t solve that. Making more positive music won’t stop that. You don’t cure a disease by treating the symptoms. Problem is there’s no cure to the disease of guns in this country.

 

[trillanova]

Nobody denies the influence of rap music. Saying that the music is turning the youth into murderers is a stretch though. I'm sure we all know people and have even influenced by Hip Hop to some degree ourselves, but do we know any lone that has actually taken a life because they were influenced by Hip Hop?

And to further my point, if we take this stance of rap's influence on youth, we can't escape accountability when a lot of rappers, including our favorites, perpetuated a lot of the violence that these drill rappers rap about.

It's not a stretch anymore. It's a very real reality.

 

[JustCKing]

It's not a stretch anymore. It's a very real reality.

That is a stretch. There is NO direct link between music and murder. If that were the case, murders would have BEEN rampant. You really think rap just became violent. If you think that, you've been living under a rock. As I said, anyone pointing to current Hip Hop and thinking it just got violent has been turning deaf ears. I can't respect a stance of someone who is just calling out this new generation and not look at the previous one. That is why I am telling ya'll, if they banned current songs for violence, it wouldn't stop with just current rap. MOST of the Hip Hop that is heralded as classics would be banned. That is why we've been telling ya'll that you guys are pushing an anti-Hip Hop agenda that is letting racists off the hook.

 

[JustCKing]

The music is real negative lately

Lately. Come on. They were calling for bans on Hip Hop in the 90's and that was the government doing it back when they looked at ALL rap as gangsta rap.

 

[Rozay Oro]

shyt thread.
Gangsta rap made me do it ass nikkas

 

[Ghost Utmost]

I saw it happen in my neighborhood growing up.

Once we started getting Colors and NWA and other gangsta music and movies dudes started imitating it.

Before that dudes would fist fight regularly. Anyone who had to rely on a weapon was seen as a punk.

 

[bl2k8]

 

[Hawaiian Punch]

Lately. Come on. They were calling for bans on Hip Hop in the 90's and that was the government doing it back when they looked at ALL rap as gangsta rap.

You right. Can’t argue with that. But at the same time we wasn’t watching dudes making videos on the graves of their opps. We wasn’t hearing dudes makes songs listing all the people they killed or they gang killed. The standards of decency continued to devolve.

 

[JustCKing]

You right. Can’t argue with that. But at the same time we wasn’t watching dudes making videos on the graves of their opps. We wasn’t hearing dudes makes songs listing all the people they killed or they gang killed. The standards of decency continued to devolve.

But it's the same sentiment especially when rappers were beefing.

 

[Damnshow]

If you are a grown up adult sitting and listening to this murderous stuff and enjoying it, then something clearly is wrong with you.
This is not a movie, not a video game. This is real people claiming they are murdering people. A prison industrial culture.

 

[JustCKing]

If you are a grown up adult sitting and listening to this murderous stuff and enjoying it, then something clearly is wrong with you.
This is not a movie, not a video game. This is real people claiming they are murdering people.

Breh's grew up listening to Mobb Deep detail how they would murder people with their own body parts. We heard Pac diss several artists and talk about how he was going to kill them. Snoop made "Murder Was The Case" while being on trial for murder. Eminem rapped about killing his own mother and baby mother and had the body in the trunk on an album cover. I could go on. A lot of us grew up to this music and enjoyed it. How many of us are murderers?

 

[The Wolf Among You]

It’s strictly a cultural problem, it’s no coincidence that other races’ youth consume drill, gangsta rap etc. far more than Black youth and yet do not face the same cycle of violence. We revere the streets far too much and our masculinity is in part defined by our capacity to do violence against each other.