How Hip-Hop and Rap Lyrics Affect Males If you want to understand how gender roles affect aspects of our daily lives the music industry is one place to look. This is simply because music is a diverse form of media that is used in almost everything we do, see, or consume. Music surrounds us every day, whether we’re in the car driving, going to the movies, or simply watching an advertisement on television. It is one of the most influential types of media available to us. An article entitled, Influential Beats: The Cultural Impact of Music, states that, “We tend to learn something more easily and indelibly if it’s set to a rhyme or song. Advertisers know this and use it so effectively that we sometimes have difficulty getting their jingles out of our …show more content…
By understanding the Feminism Critical Theory we start to comprehend how incredibly misogynistic the music industry has become. Granted that the Rap and Hip-Hop industry tend to be male dominated which perpetuates the typical sexist language normally used. As a result, even females that take part in this particular genre of music tend to use the male gaze to partake in the patriarchy of the music industry. Take for example this lyric by Nicki Minaj, “Cause I keep a bad bitch, booty big and the waist thin”, scopophiliac lyrics like this, produced by females, confirms to males that it is perfectly normal to objectify women because women also use sexist language against themselves. Early Nicki Minaj traded her lyrical freedom for a chance to participate in the rap industry. For the most part, present day Nicki has a steady fan base so her lyrics don’t objectify women anymore, yet, the damage has been done. Artists who partake inthis trade-off not only show their support of the patriarchy in place, but also the effects it has on subcultures. In other words, there is power in the lyrics and the ideas they convey to certain