Why Is Rap Music Dangerous

Is Rap Music Dangerous?

Ever since the rap music came to be a genre of music, it has been a controversial issue in the society. The same piece of music can be felt and perceived differently. Rap music is a combination of repetitive beat patterns creating a background for swift, and often superficially swaggering lyrics articulated by the singer. Although rap music has been proven to help adolescents regulate their emotional regulation skills and increase their self-esteem, yet it is dangerous for the society given that it increases violent behaviour among the youth.

This genre of music often garners the opinion of the crowd that finds rap music offensive. However, it takes a positive perspective to understand that rap music has some benefits

The craze among the youth towards alcohol and drug use is a common, long-standing feature of the American Culture Lyrics of the rap songs are known to reflect and sometimes inform the adolescents about various drugs, such as, ecstasy. The music video and the lyrics together tell a rags-to-riches tale. Ecstasy is a recreational drug known to induce feelings of euphoria upon consumption. It is most commonly used in nightclubs, luxury cars and parties. During early teenage years, some adolescents perceive alcohol and party drugs as some kind of a status symbol. As mentioned in an interpretive study by the Institute for Community Research, “our content and textual analysis demonstrates that some rap music lyrics may have contributed to ecstasy being perceived as a trendy, high-status party drug among rap audiences, whereas others contributed to the growing perception that ecstasy was a hard drug more similar to cocaine than marijuana.” The lyrics have been interpreted by the authors in this study as to how they contain messages that are currently shaping the drug trends in the society. They contain messages that more often encourage the use of drugs or at least send ambiguous messages across. For example, some lyrics such as Eminem’s song “Drug Ballad” that goes like, “You’ve got a lot of drugs to do, girls to screw,

Teenagers are naturally quite probable to imitate what they see in the videos they admire. As they are usually not well educated about safe sexual behaviour, they tend to indulge in risky sexual initiation. According to a ____, “we found that high use of rap music in seventh grade is significantly associated with sexual initiation in ninth grade and that this association is partially mediated by perceived peer sexual behaviour.” The explicit lyrics suggest sexual behaviour. However, the writer of the songs is not the only culprit. The listener turns to his friends to verify whether or not it is acceptable or not. Frequently, the case is that the peers approve of it and hence begins the acceptance of early sexual experiences among them. Even though lifestyles have evolved overtime, sexual education is still a topic avoided and seldom discussed by parents with their kids. Perhaps, they cannot decide upon the right amount of sex education that is required. Usually the case is that the teenagers are told less than they are supposed to know in order to keep themselves safe. In such cases, the lyrics become the super peer providing them the guidance that they are seeking and unable to receive from adults or teachers. High exposure to rap music is menacing given that it is positively correlated with increased sexual behaviour. “Youth who listen to high amounts of rap music may personally