Everybody loves blaming rap music for Black on Black crime. Nobody wants to talk about how poverty creates the conditions that cause Black on Black crime or white on white crime which is normally referred to as crime
blaming rap is just a lazy take because addressing structural issues is too much work and might make the people who benefit from the inequalities uncomfortable.
Not only that, but they immediately tell on themselves by only whining about "black on black crime" in the first place. Most crime happens inside a local community, and most singular communities have a similar makeup. They're not winning about white on white crime, or Pacific Islander on Pacific Islander crime, or any other group. The entire premise starts out anti Black right out of the gate. That nonsense argument was *never* about crime. Not once, ever. It was always an anti Black talking point, and one that literally got it's start on the oldest WP forum on the internet.
@WhatsGoodEnglish You have it backwards. Crime creates poverty, not the other way around. When Bill Clinton clamped down on crime with the Crime Bill crime rates went down.
It's interesting that white impoverished people and Asian impoverished people can manage their circumstances without a 54% crime rate. Trying to suggest that gangster elements within hip hop doesn't have a negative influence is laughable. And even if you point out white children are exposed to hip hop, they're also exposed to their own white cultures filled with a plethora of healthy influences, not to mention they also typically have fathers and grandparents who are the antithesis of a hip hop culture that also guide them and expose them to healthier ideals. Also white children have a huge influence of scientists, philosophers, artists, and media personalities that constantly expose them to different ideals. Look at Hank Green and his brother, millions of white children can easily identify and see themselves within them, black children have very few media influences that are corrective and healthy.
@@nefariouscloudchange the name and joke still lands. It’s ridiculous either way. Never mind the fact that you could’ve had the takeaway that hip hop is more multifaceted than just gangsta rap but instead you also cherry-pick.
Rap was not my thing when I was younger, so much so that I barely paid attention to it, and when I did, it was superficial. Like a lot of people who grew up in rural America, nowhere near a large city or urban population, my perception of rap was influenced more by the people around me who were listening to it, and the people commenting on it, than the music itself. It wasn't until decades later, when I was introduced to the artform from a proper perspective that I learned about the history of rap, and actually learned the context behind a lot of the songs that I had no time for when was a kid in the 80's and early 90's. All of which is to say, them dudes making these claims are giving rap a bad rap. Dad joke punchline aside, it's 2024 and that narrative needs to be kicked to the curb for the final time.
There is also rap in other countries. And I know that in my country, the Netherlands, nobody made that connection. Rappers are pretty mainstream personalities here. And are most of the time associated with humorous and witty persons. But the rap scene here is often a cooperation of Moroccan, Caribbean and Surinam and white people.
Been listening to Crip Hop since I was 5 years old in 1988. I guess it influenced me. I’m a married mechanic and I help my wife write grants for her 501c3. I’m getting better at Gardening too. Gonna listen to some C-Bo and do some yard work now.
Exceptions don't attenuate from the rule. There's hundreds of thousands of black children who are quite clearly negatively impacted by their listening of hip hop. I don't understand the denial in black intellectual spaces to acknowledge that. I think it's perhaps because you see aspects of black culture in yourself and sympathize. There's a cognitive dissonance present.
Abosultely crazy they put MF DOOM on the thumbnail, he died of a rare reaction to medication. Even if we ignore that fact i can't think of a single MF DOOM in all of his albums that support gang violence, he was pure lyricist through and through and showed it through his multiple rap personas going by different names (JJ DOOM, vaudeville villian, nehruvian doom to name a few)
You hit the nail on the head as far as im concerned. Violence in the black community goes back long before gangsta rap hit the scene. The violence is a result of a system built around the systemic destruction of the black community. It fuckin figures that these same people that actively ruin these communities turn around an blame the carnage on those who use that pain an anguish as fuel to power this art form.
I have personally seen people get amped up listening to certain songs. But to say that music has a macro affect on black communities as a whole is a stretch. Does the music spur the violence or does a violent person find reasons to do something after listening? Too much to cover in 15 mins. Oh, drugs are usually involved.
I wore my Tupac sweater today! Rap and hip hop hella have a spot in my heart. I'm goin to see RBL posse in May, cant wait. Music makes me calm, content and brings me right back to younger years. ❤Good times. 😊 violent people may listen to music but thats not the origin of their issue. They more than likely watch snuff films and have a TOR browser for dark web access🕸 Good shit Jeff, you always keep it 💯 👌 til next time Sir. 👋
The same people who argue rap is associated with violence say the same about video games and will also deny that hate crimes increased under trump. I love rap it really helped me through some difficult years of my life, I started listening to it a lot when I started transitioning.. I am not really sure why that is the music I gravitate towards at that time.. The Spiteful Chant is still one of my fav songs of all time
I don't know why, but for some reason your thumbnail made me think you were going to be on the opposite side of this and thank Jeebus I was wrong about that.
@@WeGonBeAlright dont, if people click thinking youre gonna give reason as to why that false narrative is true you stand a better chance of changing their minds on it
The problem I have with rap has little to do with rap and more to do with record producers and industry executives who are over eager to sign some sound cloud rapper talking about his experiences in gang violence rather than other artists who capture the essence of a more typical black experience
reminds me of the 'metal music leads to devil worship.' I've been listening to it for almost 40 years, and i'm an atheist, lol. i have yet to see music make anyone do anything.
When I was a kid they told me listening to heavy metal turns you violent and will become a devil worshipper. The more things change the more things stay the same.
Same in my country, The Netherlands. Now we sent an hardcore song to The Eurovision Song Contest this year. And it’s already very popular on RU-vid. Quite possible it wins. Than it official mainstream. (It’s called Europapa, happy hardcore) What I want to know is why rap music is still thought to cause violence. It should have passed that station long time ago.
I was an unpopular rapper from 1997-2015 and the most violent thing I did was drive my car at 120 mph in a 35 mph zone because I was in a race in a residential area. My crew, their most violent acts were; starting a food fight at a festival, starting a snowball war with a group of kids in the park during Christmas break, engaging in a water balloon war during summer and putting on martial arts and boxing demos for kids in the community. Yeah, we were savages.
They will blame ANYTHING except themselves, institutional racism, and the perils of capitalism. Blaming rap is just their favorite combo of blaming entertainment plus racism.
Notice: Tupac and EZ-E ARE NOT OLD SCHOOL. Notice: The Last Poets are the OGs of rap. Rap is something you do. HipHop is something YOU LIVE. If you know you know.
Our society always tends to try to simplify complex issues. It's a way to deflect and not actually deal with the core issue (man made poverty...sssssssssshhhhhhhhhh). There are inherent issues in hip hop culture but as you share, no more than any other culture and that the issues in the black community are complex. Thanks for sharing. Think we need to address education and propaganda.
While music 🎶 can and does influence people I thinks the individual is ultimately responsible for their own actions.. ☺️ This is akin to saying watching a lot of crime drama on t.v. increases the likelihood of someone becoming of criminal from being heavily influenced by programming.. 🧐
The most depressing thing about this video was learning how many people died from heart attacks, drug overdoses, and self-inflicted gunshots. Yet the ACAB continues to talk as if none of these causes could be addressed with better gun laws, regulate the manufacturing of firearms, stop funding endless wars that produce weapons that continue to circulate throughout the world, and universal healthcare that includes mental healthcare. No, it must be songs from people expressing their guilt, grief, anger and fear through music.
We need you and the facts. We as a people always refuted the claims that rap made for violence. And to tell you the truth, and as Martin said as he didn't condone violence, he understood why riots happened. That was the next leg of The Battle and the reason why he was murdered. And yes, every time we see these claims, ask for the reference. And I don't trust any studies coming out of Texas unless done by someone I trust.
I grew up around a lot of real violence. Listening to gangster rap calmed me down as a youngster, it sounded like exactly what was actually happening in my daily life. It didn't make it any worse or better, time and growth and people made it better, but it sure helped me when I was a kid.
@@aick Thanks for sharing. I grew up in the South Bronx. Anecdotally, Music and drugs have lead to some stupid situations, but again, not something that I would say is a widespread thing.
@@virtualchoirboy1 99% of the time I go up to some person in a car bumping loud aggressive music like punk rock or gangsta rap, ask 'em who the band is they don't pull out a gun, they usually tell me excitedly because people like to share musical taste. IDK, but to me music brings people together, it doesn't cause violence.
Let me say this, as a white man, I don't think the rap "music" promotes violence. First, I don't think the rap is "music" in the traditional sense, I see rap as poetry. Poets for centuries have used their voices to speak about social injustice, so why should we hold these modern poets of the street to a different standard than say Francois Villion.
Rap is both poetry and music. Just like lyrics can belong to both a poem and a song. Further, you don't get define another cultures art as a damn thing. So, hush.
Everything about this post was ok until you said you don’t see rap as “traditional music” You’re contributing to an entirely different problem, that of white people trying to control black art.
@@jamiAkosYour comment was just silly. All art is subjective and that includes rap, i.e. poetry and any individual can comment on their feelings about a particular piece of art or of the art form. For example, people spend million on Jackson Pollocks "paintings", whereas I think his stuff is crap and you would have to pay me to hang it in my house. So, it's only about criticizing it from a personal perspective and then only the form it takes. If anyone feels that rap is music, that's fine it's simply a disagreement on the art form, poetry verses music.
IMO/V/E as a BM even though there's nothing wrong with the medium of Hip Hop the vast majority of "mainstream" hip hop IMO contributes heavily to single black mothers / the innercity / etc... along with feminism (which WF's made because of her own WM) and the CRM, these along with Hip Hop causes a lot of problems in the world.
Besides...not all rap music is vulgar or intense. Many songs have positive beats and inspirational lyrics. And there are gospels and country songs with uplifting elements mixing hip hop beats too. There are; Allen Thomas with "Mercy," Dijon with "A Kid's Point of View," Linkin Park with "Waiting for the End," and Nelly with"Over and Over."
In your next video mention Death Metal. Death Metal promotes violence. Bands with names like Death, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse ffs🤷♂️ Pretty sure I just told you how old I am with that list…🤣
Chicken/Egg. Do violent people listen to violent music, or dose violent music cause violent people???? I think it's more likely that disposable people treat others the same way.
He took it easy on rock and country with “Pumped Up Kicks” and “Folsom Prison Blues” haha. He could have mentioned the first line of “Disasterpiece” by Slipknot haha but he took a more chill approach.
If it’s fair game to blame pop culture and rap- then when do we start outlawing football? As a foreigner it is shocking how violent this USA “past time” sport is to just watch- let alone play and enjoy.
Does anyone else remember the Oliver Stone film Natural Born Killers? 1993-ish? It explored the relationship between pop culture and violence, but I don't remember it saying much about rap and hip-hop. I could be wrong. But I wonder if the stigma hadn't completely taken hold by then?
I never understood the "rap causes crime" bullshit. By that same logic, Irish drinking songs cause alcoholism and barfights. Weird, no sensationalist media pieces on that... I used to perform (and still sing for fun) chorale in Latin. I can belt out Laudamus Te, but strangely it didn't make me a Christian. What could possibly be different about rap music and culture that makes it threatening? Hmmm....let me think...
Hence why we can't solve the problem. We act like the music has no relation to the violence when we know it does. Tupac and Biggies murders are directly tied to what they were saying about each other in music. Everyone knows why 50 cent got shot. 50 cent and Game crew had a shoot out outside of hot97. Countless boys became blood because they idolized lil Wayne. Now we have a drill rap culture where rappers are directly ridiculing homicide victims only to become victims themselves as retaliation, going as far as desecrating graves and taunting grieving mothers. To compare this to Selena or Lennon is disingenuous and highlights the distance that privileged Blacks enjoy that allows them to trivialize this. Rap is not responsible for all our ills, but to say it is entertainment or just a symptom is cowardly.
🤦♂️Its as stupid as saying "violent video games make people violent" Reminds of the moral panic by Republicans when GTA 3 was first released. And its funny how rap is the only genre that supposedly makes people violent, meanwhile we have music such as Death Core Metal (which as the name implies has VERY dark and violent themes), but nah, its just the rap thats bad and makes people crazy, nothing else. Its very hard for me to not see people who say that about rap as prejudice or potentially racist tbh.
I honestly can’t understand why people consider “old school” hip hop to be tracks that came out in the late 80s and early 90s. It’s like everything else before that never happened.
Each claim that a specific form of music is correlated with crime or satanic movement is nonsense. I don’t understand why people still think that about rap music. Actually that should be the research topic. In my country they used to think that there was a relation between violence and hardcore music. Not anymore, fortunately. (Now we sent hardcore song to the Eurovision Song Contest 😀)
I'm a little torn on this because there is a correlation but not a causation. Because if we got to be real about the subject rap as an entity, It is not the cause of crime. But you do have a stream of rappers and stream of rap music that rap about crime. Drill rap, gangster rap and trap are direct examples of crime being highlighted and glorified and using that music to recruit new rappers and new criminals. This is a large problem overall. The rap in general is not the problem. But there are a lot of bad actors. 21 Savage, Chief Keef, Tory lanez, that's not even going to YNW Melly. All these guys are still out here gangbanging to keep up an image or what have you. The rappers like Jay z Nas Ice-T ice cube started out gangbanging and shifted over. I think the difficult part is going through all of this and parsing out the lies from the truth. But when you're trying to sell a story, it is real easy to say all rap is bad.
While art can definitely have an effect on culture, it doesn't tend to happen until after that same art has shown a deep and insightful reflection of that same culture. Rap artists have always told stories or explained the mindset of people they interact with through artistic expression. It's also very personal, because an MC is directly telling stories through their voice and image. This isn't a secret. Anyone who thinks Hip Hop drives crime is failing to understand that they are just lazily falling into the incredibly toxic and weaponized idea of the "great man theory" so they don't have to look at the long, terrible history of American marginaliztion of communities, especially Black communities. Blaming rap for violence is a social placebo that people with varying levels of heightened privilege and power gladly and unquestioningly swallow not because they don't understand how people are shaped by culture, but because they just don't want to admit it because that means they'll have to think about how they fit in culture . It's always easier to other someone than understand them, so bad faith actors will always exist to capitalize on that ease.
My problem with Rap has never been the lyrics. Instead it's the waste of some of the best, most harmonic voices in the world on blunt, clipped lyrics. Dig into early blues or soul music and the talent is obvious. Not so much with rap/hiphop.
I’m 63 and I love rap and hip hop. It makes me feel young to dance around my house like it’s disco daze. Furthermore, rap is educational and to anyone who says “I hate rap,” I reply, “Is it rap you hate or the people performing and playing it?”
Bruh,if they didnt have the option to listen to straight murder music and get clout,we would still be going to college at high levels like 10 years ago,ironically the same time Chief Keef came out
With the health and developmental effects of lead ingestion being as well-documented as they are now, I kinda wonder if the resistance to replacing lead pipes is driven by a desire to deliberately keep poor people dumb and violent so that lower income communities have more crime and poverty than wealthier suburbs.
2 people, in the last ~80 years… of which only one was “mowed down”… accidentally…in the aftermath of WW2…. How many rappers have died in the past 10 years?
@@WeGonBeAlright I mean you just admitted only 2 classical musicians have been killed in the past 80 years. Why have less classical musicians died than rappers? Uncomfortable question I know
So, the American mainstream was readied for rap by Rex Harrison's monotone singing in _My Fair Lady._ The first rap track released in a popular format is recognized as _Zilch_ by the Monkees, from which was famously sampled the immortal line: "Mr. Dobalina! Mr. Bob Dobalina!" But I say "Why Can't the English?", the first big song in _My Fair Lady,_ is that first popular rap track. Do you have any idea how much violence _Zilch_ and _Why Can't the English?_ have inspired over the years since the middle-'60s? Yeah. Exactly. Hip Hop, as is exemplified in Mel Brooks's _Robin Hood: Men In Tights,_ definitely goes back to the medieval Robin Hood ballads about a gang leader who loves to fight and have crazy adventures going against the establishment, standing against the sheriff, robbing from the rich and giving back to the 'hood. And look how much violence Robin Hood has directly caused over the centuries. No, really: check. My guess is that almost every archery related accident since about 1200 AC(E) was caused by interest in Robin Hood.
You said rap is a reaction to violence, not the cause of it (14:41). That statement alone shows that you believe there's a relationship between violence and rap. Why would a rapper living in a decent neighborhood need to react to violence with a violent rap song?
Youre arguing a point that I wasnt making. Because this link between violence and rap you speak of can be applied to tv shows, movies, comic books and other genres of music.
@WeGonBeAlright First, glad to see you doing your thing. I admired you on the other platform. Anyway, I only quoted stuff from your video. I'm an older guy who was inspired by rappers like PE and KRS One to learn about Black history. Yeah, I listened to NWA a bit, but I had enough sense not to be inspired by them because they conflicted with my goals in life. Who knows what affects today's rappers have on those with little direction in life. I'm Dr. Umar on today's rappers.
Having assessed the situation in South jamaica Queens NYC for 20 years I have to say yes it is Rap music. It's just constant bad messaging and it's not really organically made by black Americans. If I say that rap music is a form of white supremacy any immigrant would understand what I mean immediately.
I shouldn't be responding to a comment from conetent that I made months ago, but "having assessed the situation"? You got data for us or is this pseudo science / anecdotal evidence like I said I would be getting when I made this video?
@@WeGonBeAlright you're welcome to continue investing in rap music. It will just keep destroying black Americans lol. That's why an African black person can come here and go to Harvard but a black American born next to Harvard can't keep a job. It's the bad messaging American black people get constantly through rap and media.
I think you’re missing the point of the video- generic commercial (Drake) rap is for sure pushed and amplified by the “mainstream” so that small tidbit of rap genre I agree could be argued as a supremacist agenda- but you’re basically advocating for the Black culture to renounce something because as a Black foreigner it justifies YOU putting down Black Americans. Want to know why Africans go to Harvard over Black AND poor white Americans? Because in your nations education is inscribed one way or another into laws. Even if the accessibility isn’t there yet, education is perceived as a need for economic growth and countries are ex-aiding it, not withholding education. Also, most Africans in USA generally skew middle class or higher in their nations, and the USA has ALOT of poverty. Stop justifying Black hate, living in NYC for 20 years is not a clear picture of the North east experience, let alone the Midwest or South of the USA.
@@jenbunnyaqua I agree with some of that but I live in Massachusetts now and I'm seeing first hand how Reggaeton (same rap nonsense now aimed at hispanics) is screwing up the hispanic community royally. It's just the stupid rap music, it's terrible messaging nonstop, disguises as innocuous "music." Just as an experiment, let's get rid of rap music, you'll see how well black Americans succeed in America with all the same opportunities they have now.
While I dont disagree that all forms of music are violent, "Pumped Up Kicks" is a song about a school shooter/shooting. Not sure it fits with youre examples.
That is a banger of a song by Foster The People. So they aren't villianized by media for singing about what they see nor does Pearl Jam for Jeremy, Good Bye Earle by Dixie Chicks, countless Hank Williams Sr, Jesus want to talk about old school Country music overall? But its celebrated Rap and Hip Hop gets villianized hmmm I wonder why?
@WeGonBeAlright based on my own experiences with nieces, nephews and all the kids I worked with at a pizza joint a few years back, I would say yes they are well aware of the meaning of the song. But that's just my small corner of the world.
