Let's Talk About...

26. Pop music and the dark side of hip-hop

Can music arrest the development of an entire community?

You bet.

In his Youtube video "Propaganda and Manipulation: How mass media engineers and distorts our perceptions," psychology professor Jerry Kroth shares the research made by African-American Professor Patricia Rose and quotes racist literature from the early 1900's, when black men were stereotyped as brutal predators and sociopaths with innately savage, animalistic, destructive and criminal traits, deserving punishment and even death.

Today we rejoice that things are very different to African-Americans in the US. We even have a black president. Thank God, those racist days are over.

But are they?

Let's talk about hip-hop and imitative learning, one of the techniques used by the mass media to program people's behavior. Hip-hop has proliferated in our society, affecting fashion and our values. Rose says she used to like hip-hop and artists like Public Enemy that were really powerful grassroots, political and artistic. But hip-hop scared away people, and then something happened to it around 1996: the music industry bought all hip-hop labels—40 of them gobbled up by 4 major musical conglomerates—to co-opt the subversive genre that gave voice to African-Americans and defied the system.

Hip-hop content then changed. The music industry wasn't interested in artistic value or political references: it wanted to keep people dumb and oblivious. Now that it had hip-hop in its pocket, it laid down the new rules: hip-hop music should focus on obscenity, sex and violence. As a result, today's mainstream hip-hop artists look pretty much like thugs armed with guns, closely resembling the racist caricatures of black men 100 years ago.

Look at 50 Cent and his Keep Thinkin lyrics: "I'm candy till ya fuckin' skull get popped and ya brain jump out the top like Jack-in-da-box in the hood. Summer time is the killing season, it's hot out this bitch that's a good 'nuff reason."

He's basically saying to his girlfriend that he's kinda irritable and may just blow her head off with a gun because it's summertime and that's a good season for killing. Nice idea to dance to. That's hip-hop after 1996.

Or take Lit' Wayne's Like a Lollipop. As Kroth notes, the song's video plays like an infomercial for a black male growing up, or even a white male. The positive reinforcements come in the form of gambling, drugs, promiscuity, partying and glitter, that is, something cool to copy. None of that comes by merit, tough: it happens by luck, and here we are miles away from the positive role model established by the Cosby Show.

The modern mainstream, money-making hip-hop songs underscore the following stereotypes about black males in the US: obscene ('You mutha fuckin gangsta killing mafia ass'), pimp ('Put my other hoes down, you get your ass beat!'), thief ('When it's to eat a meal I rob and steal'), misogynist ('On the silly games played by the women, only happy if I'm goin up in them'), sociopath ('For bread and butter I leave niggaz in the gutter'), violent ('I bleed them next time I see them, slit his throat, watch his body shake'), drug addict ('Love to pump crack, love to stay strapped'), and promiscuous ('I need me a chick to pass on to my boy as soon as I get through').

You would think this is the language in the inner city. It's not. Patricia Rose says it's the language of the white businessmen who took over the hip-hop industry in 1996. Opha Winfrey defines hip-hop as "hate speech with a beat." Jazz trumpeter Winston Marsalis says "it's nothing more than ancient stereotypes wrapped up in contemporary rhyme." Ashley Judd calls it "the contemporary soundtrack of misogyny" with its rape culture, insanely abusive lyrics and depiction of women as "hos." Gladys Knigth says "It's distasteful... vulgar... it has not elevated the African-American community... has lowered our self-esteem."