Introduction
Within the past 20-30 years, rap music has made a drastic change within the music industry like any other genre of music. Artists have developed into such people that make their audiences follow everything they do, how they act and what they aspire to have. This genre of music is well-known for having a huge impact mainly upon the new generation of the youth. It is said that hip-hop has not only evolved within the past few years that have passed, but has changed continuously all along.
The contemporary factor of hip-hop, rather than having more positive values, through time, artists have evolved to put materialistic factors before anything else which is morally correct such as educating the overall target audience of the youths about being more peaceful for example; hence, instead, contemporary artists encourage the opposite of starting war instead of putting a halt to it; being one of many examples as to how the target audience of hip-hop music are being effected in a negative way.
P1 - 1980 artists' beliefs and ideologies within their music.
Artists such as Flava Fav, Chuck D, DJ Lord formed a group called Public Enemy famous for their 'politically charged' music. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Enemy_(group) This group formed in 1982 and targeted their own races' concerns within their music in order to get the word out as to how the African-American people felt at the time. For example, topics discussed within their music included political, social and cultural consciousness. As the racism topic was one of the worries of the African-American residents, the group was shown to attack the audience with their strong beliefs within people such as Elvis which were glorified within the music industry.
The lyric from their song of 'Fight The Power' stated "Elvis was a hero to most, But he never meant shit to me you see, Straight up racist that sucker was, Simple and plain, Mother fuck him and John Wayne,Cause I'm Black and I'm proud." Talking about how as white people such as Elvis or John Wayne believed in racism,and the members of Public Enemy believed within and were for this argument of wanting white people to be separated from the black people. This movement was called The Nation Of Islam, leading to influencing more people to create a divide between black and white people and ultimately causing more controversy within the 1980's as this era was arguably known for being heavily controversial.
Theories:
- Alvarado - As the members of this group are black, and as they may be seen as intimidating within society, it links to the idea of them being two of the four things that Alvarado mentioned of pitied and dangerous.
- (Going against) - Fanon - 'Hiding behind a white mask.' - This group goes against this theory and instead of trying to 'fit-in' within the white society, as the lyric of their song goes "Cause I'm black and I'm proud." showing how they are proud of who they are, linking to what they believe in of 'The Nation of Islam' which is the division between certain countries and the idea of if the countries did not have their own land, they would always be oppressed by white people.
P2 - Developing technology within the era of music
Thanks to YouTube, you can revisit the press conferences and
see how painful it was listening to their misinterpretations. Sites such as Rap
Genius allow the public to suggest the meaning behind song verses of any genre. Misinterpretations of rap are usually what helps to portray artists of being
negative however, beneficial websites such as Rap Genius explains what each
sentence actually means so that the misunderstandings and the negative
portrayals of artists disappear being one section of how quickly technology has changed within the past few years as within the past, old hip-hop would not have this problem occurring as much as not as many negative topics would be up for discussion as much as today's contemporary artists which include Lil Wayne, Drake, A$ap Rocky etc.
Quotes:
- 'The elder generation have an inclination of blaming rap for much of the violence that goes on within the younger world.' - Eminem: hip-hop’s Lord of Misrule (media magazine) - Going with my question of negative portrayals within the music industry and of contemporary artists being a factor of violence.
- 'Thanks to YouTube, you can revisit the press conferences and see how painful it was listening to their misinterpretations. Sites such as Rap Genius allow the public to suggest the meaning behind song verses of any genre.' - Eminem: hip-hop's Lord of Misrule (media magazine)
Theories:
- Perkin's theory of how there is some element of truth within things linking to the first quotation used.
- Medhurst's theory of short-hand stereotypes and how the stereotype of teenagers being seen as violent within the views of the elder generation as they associate rap with violence and link it to young people. Also dependant on their backgrounds for example, if they were born and raised within a black family, then this may lead more people to link them to rap and violence and stereotypically, most rap artists within the music industry are black and rap originally started off with a black person, DJ Kool Herc.
P3 - Gender roles within music videos
Although some artists within the music industry talk about the positive representations of women within their songs such as Usher for example on the basis of love, there also a lot of negative representations within not only the rap, but the whole music industry talking about the negative representations of women. For example, Eminem's old days of Slim Shady, his lyrics were easy to hear, hence, easy to interpret by the audience and as he did this, he would make women such as Kim Kardashian or Paris Hilton look like rich yet very 'slutty' women within the industry being one of the many negative representations for women being portrayed within a undesirable manner.'Rather than viewing this imagery as misogyny, it could be argued that Eminem is ridiculing them in a bid to show us how unrealistic some modern representations of femininity are: robotic, aggressively sexual and objectified.' This leads to the misleading representation of today's society showing women to be of a less importance and more of objects for men in order to meet their needs of sexual satisfaction.
Quotes:
- 'Rather than viewing this imagery as misogyny, it could be argued that Eminem is ridiculing them in a bid to show us how unrealistic some modern representations of femininity are: robotic, aggressively sexual and objectified.' -Eminem: hip-hop’s Lord of Misrule (media magazine)
Theories:
- Hegemony - This theory can be used within this section as the target audience of young men listening to music which ridicules women and portrays them to be objects, may influence this target audience, who may want to be like artists such as Eminem to also treat the women in the negative ways. For example, domestic violence also plays a big role within this, as within Eminem's very violent song called 'Kim', senseless lyrics are used such as 'Bleed b*tch, bleeeeeeeed.'. The song also talks about violent factors such as slitting his ex-wife's throat due to his anger being very sadistic and ultimately cruel leading to the encouragement of (domestic) violence and violence in general.
- Gender - The differentiation between men and women and how men are seen to look more superior compared to women within the music industry.
P4 - Censorship within music videos
Due to today's society of rap music developing into having lots of swear words, it could be argued that culture is evolving into portraying artists to lacking creativity. For example songs such as 'F**kin' Problems' it is shown that the song has two versions one being explicit and one being clean this is because as the song turned out to be so popular, it tended to be broadcasted upon the radio, mainly on hip-hop channels such as 89.5 FM - Ghetto Radio, this song would be played often and in order to be allowed to play, it needed a clean version. Further more, within the music video, there are a lot of women dancing around wearing clothing which may come across as provocative to men, leading to theorists such as Laura Mulvey to discuss that male gaze is one of the main reasons for the success of many explicit music videos some of which include F**kin' Problems, Dance A$$ ft Nicki Minaj, 23 etc. It can be argued that within today's contemporary Hip-Hop genre, the music videos try to relate to the category of pornography and due to this, it may encourage more people to be astounded and shocked by not only the explicit lyrics but also the scenery that is being displayed within the music video; by doing this creates a huge discussion and causes a lot of controversy as, as well as adults viewing the explicit music videos, the younger generation of children can also access and view the videos raising questions such as:
- Is technology evolving for the worst?
- Are children being brainwashed and encouraged to watch more videos which contain explicit content?
- Is it fair for the younger generation to be an audience of this kind of music?
Conclusion
