Revised Hip Hop Negative Effects

Rufus Osby

03/07/11

English 4

Mr. Stein

Hip Hop Negative Effects

I made a sharp left turn, And there was my crew lookin’ for a def jam in order to rock/ Because it’s gonna hit the fan at twelve o’clock/ Then there was this fly girl, she said she wanted to know/ Why are you all dressed up with no place to go? She said she’d take us to place where we could hear some hip-hop/ But little did we know she meant the house that rocked; (Grand Master Flash).

This is how hip-hop was stated on the streets and in the neighborhoods of urban America. When Hip Hop was born and wrapped by the founders, I bet they would have never imagined that it would be where it is today. What fueled their creativity was pure passion for an art-form that they themselves created, something many of today’s artist can’t relate to. For example in 2006 the academy awards-winning song was, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp”. The lyrics are, “It’s hard out here for a pimp, when you tryin to get the money for the rent, with the Cadillac and gas money spent, it’s a whole lot of women jumpin ship;” (Three 6 Mafia and Cedric Coleman). Lyrics such as these are what has become the norm in today’s Hip-hop culture. It’s as if artists that are the most regressive are the ones that are being highly regarded these days. It has transformed from a fun and vibrant hobby to a highly recognizable culture that represents violence, integration, abandonment, alienation and elf-hatred. Very few have held on to the expression and art that it was intended to represent.

There are many definitions and thoughts on the origination of hip-hop. According to Source Magazine’s 2009 September issue titled “Hip-Hop is dead” hip-hop is a culture and form of ground-

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breaking music and self expression. If the words of “hip-hop” are taken apart, one may grasp a better understanding of the meaning. Hip means to know. It’s a form of intelligence; to be “hip” is to be up-date and relevant. Hop is a form of movement. You can’t just observe a hop, you have to hop up and do it. Therefore, hip-hop is more than music, it is knowledge and movement working as one to produce intelligent and/or relevant movement through expression. The origins of the term hip-hop are questioned, but many attribute it to the late Cowboy of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five due to the fact that they were the first and only hip-hop group ever to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; (Ricks 34).

In today’s times, hip-hop has changed its face in society and the meaning that it holds. In today’s popular culture, hip-hop is typically perceived as a form of rebellion. One of the major ways that this genre is used to portray this message is through movies. In the film Heat starring Al Pacino and Val Kilmer, there is a specific shooting scene that’s quite intense. As it leads into the bank robbery scene, a consistent thump coming from a slow melodic hip-hip instrumental can be hear. The Instrumental ability to slow and speed up changes the mood of the film. However, what changes the emotions of the viewer is the type of music that is playing and what that music represents. When a bank robbery is taking place, the director of the film does not play up-lifting music such as gospel. Rather, he adds hip-hop music to help exude what he believes the viewers will perceive as violent, ultimately creating a more believable scene. According to Greg Tate in a 2005 article The Village Voice, “like me and those disturbed by the violent, misogynistic and self-destructive lyrics in hip hop’s music,” (64). Since the hip-hop culture has developed the image of violence and self-hatred, it will be hard to convince the producers to use other genre in their scenes if they want to make the scene and the movie appealing to the viewer. According to Spike Lee in Vibe magazine’s 2010 June issue, “Using hip-hop or rap in a movie is not to betray the violence that is occurring, but to appreciate the art of music and film coming together. The art of both elements completing each other is an appreciation; not a depreciation

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and representation of the violence or degrading content in the fictional film;” (53). He also goes to talk about the hip-hop music and the genre in which it comes from is an area for mass interpretation of the listener. More over ,violence and negative images hip-hop has represented throughout the media and in movies can also be seen on T.V. I find this to be unfortunate for current and future generations.

Its almost as if hip-hop was given to humanity as a gift, but somehow it ended up in the wrong hands and has caused a widespread misconception of a misrepresented culture. In today’s urban American culture, music videos have mad a dramatic change. They’re going backwards instead of progressing in terms of modeling a sustainable lifestyle. The music used to be about making things better. Once the gangster revolution hit, the culture flipped and everything changed. It used to talk about a lot of the same subjects: survival, love, friends, but in a different way. Survival used to be about the struggle from poverty and oppression. Today, it represents survival form gangs, violence, and drugs. Love is not about family anymore, but more about the love for money care and “bitches”. Friends are not friends from school, but rather friends from the block or the jail cell. Each music video exploits this. It gives a false sense of hope to the viewer of what life is really like, and how they should feel about it. This is important because studies show that music has a very profound affect on ones mood. Music, according to Donald F. Roberts in the book The Effects of Violent Music on Adolescents state, “For most young people, music use is driven primarily by the motivation to control mood and enhance emotional states. Music’s ability to communicate emotion and influence moof has been widely noted; even preschoolers and infants as young as eight months can reliably discriminate ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ music,” (4). If this is the case, watching this type of music on television changes the mood of each viewer to a place of violence and the degrading of one’s character.

Why is watching it a bigger impact than listening? It’s because when one listens to lyrics it leaves room for interpretation and the visual images and narratives of music videos clearly have more potential to for attitudes, values, or perceptions of social reality than does the music alone. Because

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they add additional information and rely less on imagination, watching and not merely listening means that music video viewing needs less intelligibility and interpretation can vary across different listeners, much less interpretation is needed to understand a violent image. Even if the word that is used is not understood like “my heat,” which will normally be understood but it’s difficult to miss such visual standbys as threatening displays of weapons or fighting. The meaning of the song as shown in the video can become self-reinforcing---if the viewers listen to the song after seeing the video, they are likely to flash back to the visual images from the video. All of these combined affects have a huge impact in the less monitored sectors of media such as the World Wide Web.

The use of Hip-Hop on the web almost ties exactly into the use of Hip-Hop in T.V. and movies. Internet is a data base and source for many projects and albums streaming and video website. Sites like Youtube, Pandora, and WorldStarHipHop allow artist throughout the world a chance to be seen and heard. As a personal example, a simple search on Youtube will bring up a Rap video I shot in 2007. It created a buzz around town and even throughout the entire California Central Valley. After the word spread that I had good lyrics and could hold a crowd, I began to get shows. With the Internet being so uncensored, it can many affects on the individual audience members. Mixing the violent language and the visual images reinforces the negativity, violence and rebellious nature of the genre. However, due to the vast size of the Internet, it has become more possible to find hip-hop in it’s positive form. On sites such as SaveTheMusic, hip-hop is used as a positive light, giving people the opportunity to express themselves through music and create positive emotions and feelings to those watching. Although if researched there are just as many positive hip-hop artists as there are negative ones, due to the main stream culture and the revenue created that is created from playing negative hip-hop, positive artists have an up-hill battle trying to get film and/or video time.

Hip-Hop has transformed for being a fun vibrant hobby to a highly recognizable culture that represents violence, integration, self hatred, and self-destruction. They way Hip-Hop is used in relation

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to film and action scenes portrays an image of violence, sex, or drugs. In reaction, the media and t.v. shows continue to play music videos that exploit these negative images to the public. The Internet continues to give artists marketability exposure and networking; a road that can lead to riches and fame. The Internet also streams some the most graphic uncensored videos in the Hip-Hop genre. Saying that, no matter if hip-hop is the essence of your soul and being which carries all of your emotions and life to the world to hear and experience, or if it is the way to get rich quick by joining the mainstream and creating music that depicts violence and drugs. Each song and video is the image of someone’s story. Maybe instead of trying to hide the negative, we should embrace it and realize that some people do live these lives and are merely expressing what they had to go through to make it where they are today.