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."
Kroth mentions what is known as "The Huxable effect" on the African-American community from watching the Cosby Show in the 1980s and early 1990s: SAT scores went up, in 1990 over 75% of black males graduated from high school, and Moorhouse college enrollments soared 37%. Now here's the Lil' Wayne era effect: SAT scores down, in 2010 only 47% of US black males graduated from high school, and black male incarceration rates went up 5% since 1990. You can't say that hip-hop caused all of that—but it certainly had an influence.
In this era, a hip-hop idol like Jay Z is elected one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine. He's the guy trumpeting: "Fuck all y'all haters blow Dick. I spits the game for those that throw bricks. Money cash hoes money cash chicks. Sex murder and mayhem romance for the street. only wife of mines is a life of crime. And since life's a bitch in mini-skirts and big chests, how can I not flirt with death . That's life's a nigga, long as life prevent us we gonna send a lot and pray to Christ forgive us. Fuck it."
With role models like those, it's no wonder prisons are filled with black men. Now you should realize that feeding new prisoners to prisons is great for the incarceration industry, as it's a lucrative, private business. Do you see why there's no real interest in effectively stopping violence and educating people to be spiritually elevated, and why there's so much violence in the mainstream entertainment to so normalize it? Violence not only serves the incarceration industry but it also keeps people confused and distracted, feeds the war industry and so on.
The inspiring 2007 film The Dhamma Brothers directed by Jenny Phillips documents a prison meditation program for murder convicts at Donaldson Correctional Facility, Alabama. In spite of its unquestionable positive effects for the inmates, the program was shut down after the chaplain of the prison complained he was losing his inmate congregation. After the prison administration changed years later, the meditation program restarted—even though local residents consider it to be "anti-Christian."
For one thing, acting out anger does not to diffuse it but rather fuels it. Professor Brad Bushman at Iowa State University conducted an experiment in 1999 with 600 students. Half of them were allowed to vent their aggression and hit a punching bag as much as they wanted, whereas the other half spent a few minutes in a quiet room. Afterwards, students from both groups were given the opportunity to vent their aggression. Those who had punched the bag register higher levels of aggression, proportional to how many times they had punched.
Now back to Kroth's summary of the research conducted by Rose. He quotes Kanye West's Niggas in Paris lyrics: "So I ball so hard muhfuckas wanna fine me. But first niggas gotta find me. What's 50 grand to a muhfukaa like me. Can you please remind me? This shit crazy."
Martin Luther King and Malcolm X gave their lives so that black people would earn respect and not be called negroes. Would they say this song—which has the black male portrayed as hypersexualized and obscene—is the genuine, true voice of African-Americans?
Kanye West's song sold 3 million copies. If he gets the average 8%-15% royalty for each copy sold, all the rest still goes to Interscope Records (and its white CEO), which is marketing this image of black people. "Hip-hop today amounts to 40% of all music purchase. Most of the people buying hip-hop are white teenagers and white boys who get off on the obscenity and the belligerence that's part of their pubescence and coming of age," says Kroth.
Let's take a look at hip-hop idols and focus on the distraction & denial programming technique. What's the media shouting out? Hip-hop idols are having parties, girlfriends, awards, scandals. That's the distraction. What's the story behind it being suppressed and denied? Follow the money and you'll find the white businessmen who control those artists. We know very little about them, yet they are the ones dictating what kind of songs go into hip-hop albums. Snoop Dogg is worth 110 million dollars, but his white boss David Geffen is worth 4 billion.
"Hip-hop is the corporate sale of racism" in Rose's words. White businessmen are marketing racist images of black people, especially black males, and they're the ones profiting the most from it. In 2014, the film industry decided to make another profitable product, the film Straight Outta Compton came out with a biography of the hip-hop group NWA (Niggaz Wit Attitudes) and quickly became the highest grossing music biopic of all times.
While the movie depicted NWA as a rap group dedicated to freedom of speech and social commentary—a notion reinforced by the media circus—there was no mention that the group's lyrics promoted a negative stereotype of the black community and glorified negative behavior. African-American filmmaker Lenon Honor, who grew up as a fan of the group, made a documentary focusing on a critical analysis of the four albums released by NWA.
He listened to song by song, analyzing the lyrics and listing the words that were used more often—think programming through repetition as a powerful tool for behavior change. Honor detected the following patterns: negative interactions of men with females, glorification of violence, ghetto-centric attitude, Illiteracy, destructive behavior objectifying women rather than teaching black men how to be good husbands and fathers, violence toward other black men, and drug use. He points out that this is staple to hip-hop and not particular of NWA.
What are the consequences of those patterns? They reinforce a negative racial stereotype; perpetuate cycles of abuse instead of breaking them; their disrespect to women affects relationships and the family, creating distance between men and women; African-American women are regarded as bitches and even call themselves bitches; unwanted babies are born as a result of promiscuity—how is this going to affect those children? Not only those patterns impact African-Americans (and all listeners) in psychological, emotional and relational levels, they also bring a deep impact in a verbal and intellectual level with their impoverished language.
I always say words are empowering. The more words you know, the bigger your capacity for abstraction and the broader your horizons. By limiting vocabulary in songs and influencing a whole community by doing so, you disempower it and imprison it in the confines of limited language. How can you function at your full potential, how can you advance in your career and other aspects of your life if you're unable to express yourself? Moreover, what happens when you address people in your community with violent and derisive language? "There's a lot of aggression in our language, a lot of violence in just the way that we communicate with each other," says Sadiki Bakari, one of the men interviewed in Honor's documentary.
From his word-by-word analysis, Honor came up with a list of the main themes in NWA's lyrics over the course of 4 albums: disrespect to women (553 times), black men referred to as niggas (385 times), black women refer to as bitches (208 times), disrespect to men (157 times), violence acted against men (88 times) and violence acted against women (31 times). This is a short list that doesn't include other recurring themes such as promiscuity, the glorification of material things, self-aggrandizement and others.
Now just imagine if you listen to each of their albums 10 times. That's 5,530 times hearing about disrespect to women, 3,850 times about niggas, 2,080 times about bitches, 1,570 times about disrespect to men, and 1,190 times about violence. Listen to the albums 30 times and you'll be exposed to the message reinforcing disrespect to women 16,590 times, and so on.
Do you really think that it doesn't influence your thinking and behavior at all? For one thing, it implants an idea in the brain and reinforces it through repetition so you get used to it and it becomes "normal." I once had a boyfriend who never disrespected me. However, on one occasion we had a fight at a party. He was drunk (so no conscious filters) and kept calling me a slut and a whore. I had never cheated on him or given him any reason not to trust me. So where did that come from? Perhaps from the bombardment of images portraying women as sluts and whores in the mass media?
Keidi Awadu, interviewed in Honor's documentary, tells that when NWA first went on the road and started talking about bitches and hos, the audiences booed them off the stage. A few of brainwashing years later, hip-hop artists are expected to throw the degrading language routine onstage. Repetition activates mind control. "A word repeated becomes programming, it impacts your thought and eventually your behavior as you act on that modified thought," says Honor. The film Straight Outta Compton reinforces those negative patterns as a legacy to the next generation.
In his presentation about the music industry at the 2015 Free Your Mind Conference (watch it, it's amazing!), DJ and author Mark Devilin also mentions the demise of hip-hop as an artistic and social expression. He compares lyrics by Kanye West before and after the mainstream music industry co-opted hip-hop.
Here's a passage of It All Falls Down from his first album released in 2003: "It seems we living the American dream, but the people highest up got the lowest self-esteem. The prettiest people do the ugliest things for the road to riches and diamond rings."
And here's a snippet of his 2012 hit Niggas in Paris: "What's Gucci my nigga? What's Louis my killa? What's drugs my deala? What's that jacket, Margiela? Doctors say I'm the illest cause I'm suffering from realness. Got my niggas in Paris and they going gorillas, huh!"
On my next post, I will wrap up this series with some conclusions. See you in a bit. I haven't had a chance to fully develop the final chapter of this series, so it may take a little while for me to post it, as I'm now finishing the first draft of RED 2.
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I hope this series was useful to you. Thank you for reading and embarking on this journey with me. If you haven't already, please vote for the chapters of this series and spread the word if you can, in order to support it for the Wattys 2016. It would mean the world to me!
xoxo