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The Rap Game: Hip-Hop’s Negative Influence on America’s Youth

“So I guess I was a lame / ’cause I wasn’t with the game / motherf*ck cocaine.”

Atmosphere rapped those lyrics in the song The Major Leagues from the album To All My

Friends. On average, a teenager who listens to hip-hop/rap music hears 251 drug references a day

(Tardio 2014). This boy named Josh listened to rap so he don’t really have much of a drive to do

his school work because all the rappers talk about dropping out so much he thought it was cool

because how they have nice clothes a lot of money and a lot of women so eventually he dropped

out. His parents kicked him out of the house so he listened to rappers talk about how robbing

people and selling drugs all the time so one day he wanted some money so Josh decided he

would go to his friend that sells drugs so he can sell drugs so he can get enough money to survive

on his own so Josh applied for a job but he was also selling drugs every day so one day Josh goes

to his friend house saying that his girlfriend is having a baby and needed more money so when

he stress he start listening to rap music and smoking so he listening to music and the songs talk

about robbing people and taking their belongings so Josh goes outside with his friend talking

about how robbing people will get them more money so on a friday night around 10:30 Josh and

his friends are at the corner store waiting on someone that looks weak to leave the store so they

follow this man down the street so his friend run up on him telling him to get on the ground the

man refused and josh was scared to do it cause he actually realized that he was easily influenced

by today rap music and he have a child on the way so when he tried to tell his friend to stop the

man pulled out a gun in shot josh and his friend. ​Hip-hop/rap music is a negative influence on

America’s youth because it promotes drugs and violence, degrades women and rappers are

bad role models.

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Today, trap music talks about drugs and robbing people almost every line. A person

comes across 251 references of drugs per day. Rappers use a lot of drug references in they songs

half of the songs be about drugs rappers have songs when they talk about drugs the whole song

and trap music is a huge affect on the youth as a teenager I know that today trap music is the

reason kids today sell drugs carry guns rob people because that is what all trap music talks

about.Rappers drug abuse is a very big affect on the kids two big music stars have overdose off

drugs Lil peep have died off a drug overdose his cause of death was xans and another rapper

Fredo Santana died of kidney failure but the drug he was on for the longest caused that he was

drinking codeine almost everyday. Most drugs in hip hop today are weed, codeine, cocaine,

percocets. They are song with drug names as the title or drugs are the chorus. This rapper named

Future have a song called Mask Off he repeatedly say Molly Percocet repeatedly throughout the

song. Future is repeating drugs basically the whole song. There is another rapper name O.T

Genasis he have a song called I'm In Love With The Coco which mean he is in love with

cocaine. Some of the rappers do drugs which lead them into shootouts or selling drugs that

eventually leads them to jail. Some rappers been to jail for selling narcotics or assault. One of the

most popular rappers today, NBA Youngboy, went to jail for a shootout around last

Thanksgiving. And another rapper named Bobby Shmurda is in jail because in his song he talked

about shooting someone so the police looked into it and now he is in jail for seven years for

giving evidence out. Rappers know fans are looking up to them so with them being in shootouts

kids going to think that is cool cause that is what did it. Plenty of rappers been to jail for assault

or selling drugs so the youth think it is ok to do those things most teen sell drugs just to fit in
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with other teenagers.The things rappers do they might not think it have a big effect on the kids

but it really does.

The disrespect to women is another consequence. ​As hip-hop turned into a global

phenomenon it began to influence language, fashion and ways that youth interacted with each

other (Saengian 2008). ​Rappers are showing the youth to have less respect for women.Women

also lose respect for themselves. ​"What's changed over time is the greater sexualization of

hip-hop. Initially, it started off as a revolutionary form of music. Now, large corporations

produce images that sell, and there is a blatant link between hip-hop and pornography" (Saengian

2008). ​This Lil Wayne song called “Love Me” is an example. In the song he says, “These h**s

got p*ssy like craters can’t treat these h**s like ladies”. He is saying that he can’t treat women

with respect. The disrespect towards women in hip-hop has been around for more than 20 years.

For example, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre released a song in 1992 called “B*tches Ain’t Sh*t”.

That whole song is disrespectful to women. ​According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "’Black

girls are not seeing positive images of who they are and what they can be,’ said Carolyn West,

associate professor of psychology and the study of prevention of violence at the University of

Washington. ‘Looking at the sexual imagery really impacts on the functioning of teenage girls’"

(Saengian 2008). ​Rappers have women feeling down about themselves. Degradation of females

is when people don’t give credit to women; they just make them feel like groupies, baby mamas,

girlfriends etc. Their songs never show the good parts about women: their success, etc. The

degradation of females is all over the music industry. Rappers make females feel like they are

only good for sex, nothing else. In all their videos, there are just naked women walking around or

doing sexual things. Some videos you have to be a certain age to even watch because rappers
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sometimes have sex scenes in the videos. In every song you hear rappers saying they do sexual

things with a female then when they are done they kick her right out of the house. Like the artist

YG has a song called Toot It and Boot It, which means he has sex with them then when he’s

done he kicks them right out of the house. Since the 80s rappers have been accused of

objectifying women. The late 80s rap group N.W. A. is the first rap group to start calling women

out by name and having no respect for women. They opened a door with the disrespect towards

women then many others came behind them. Rappers treat women with very low respect barley

any respect rappers also show abuse to women a artist name Famous Dex beat up his girlfriend

in a hotel hallway. NBA Youngboy went to jail for fighting his girlfriend too. He went to jail for

assault and kidnapping her. The rapper Kodak Black has been to jail for sexual assault on a

female. Rappers are bad role models to the youth. Rappers are very big on violence. The rapstar

Gucci Mane said, “I got a AR, AK and I will turn your a** to swiss cheese”, which means he
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will shoot someone. He has a trilogy of mixtapes called Trap God. In every song you will hear a

quote about either violence, drugs or talking about women in bad ways. In the song Bullet

Wound he said, “I leave f*ck n*ggas with bullet wounds”. On the same mixtape he has a song

called Breakfast in which he says, “I smoke weed for breakfast I drink lean for breakfast half a

pound for breakfast”. Another rapper from Atlanta named Gunna has a song that is climbing the

charts in which he says, “Young n*gga he say my b*tch is fine a** hell but she don’t listen that's

why I fu*ked the b*tch and dismiss her”.

As the graph shows, rap lyrics rely heavily on referencing violence. Seventy-five percent

of rap lyrics reference violence with a weapon, 32 percent reference violence against women, 31

percent reference verbal violence, 29 percent reference violence without a weapon, 29 percent

reference sexual violence against women, 13 percent reference violence against the police, 13

reference death and 12 percent reference punishment.

The Chicago music style called drill music is a style of trap music originating on the

south side of chicago in which they talk about killing people, disrespecting people’s dead

relatives, going to people’s neighborhoods and shooting or killing them. The violence is so bad

in Chicago that the rapper Capo said in his song Chiraq that he will be “standing on the block

here come a drive-by innocent kids getting hit now let’s ask God why”. Then weeks later he got

killed the same exact way: he was shot in the back in the hip, and a one-year-old boy was also

killed. The violence of Chicago is crazy most of the deaths that take place are caused because of

the things in the music and the way that they show disrespect towards other neighborhoods. Lil

JoJo was a Chicago rapper who dissed this other artist name Lil Reese in a song. So on video Lil

JoJo is on his bike then he see Lil Reese. Reese told JoJo he was going to kill him then weeks
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later Jojo was found dead. All that controversy was over a song. The most music deaths come

from Chicago. The violence they promote in their songs is really matching their murder rate

there. There are a few rappers that dissed another rap in a song in that got killed just because of

what they said. La Capone is another Chicago rapper who got killed. Then, the two biggest

rappers of the 90s, Biggie Smalls and Tupac, were a big influence on the violence in rap today.

Those two males music were so big on the community, they made the West Coast and the East

Coast fan bases split up. The rapper 21 Savage says all the time he does not make rap music he

makes murder music. He even has a song called Red Opps in which he says “Pull up to your

mama house in put some rounds in it”.

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Works Cited

Acharya, Monica. “How Are Hip-Hop And Rap Music Affecting The Youth?” 11 Nov. 2015.

Bares, William. “How Does Rap Music Influence Modern Day Youth”. 1 Dec. 2016.

Blay, Zebra. “What We Forget About When We Talk About Hip-Hop Women Problem”. 2015.

Mengistu. “Is Hip-Hop/Rap Music Hurting Our Youth?”

Saengian, Kathy. “​Researcher cites negative influences of hip-hop”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 13

June 2008.

Tardio, Andres. "’Number Of Rap Songs Mentioning Drugs’ Chart Released By Project Know”.

HipHopDX, 12 May 2014.