Tricia Rose - Hip-hop Culture

Dr. Tricia Rose received her Ph.D from Brown University in American Studies.  Born and raised in New York she spent her childhood growing up in Harlem and the Bronx, which I’m sure intrigued her to focus on studying African American culture and hip-hop culture.  Dr Tricia Rose is most well known for her book called, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, which is based on the study of hiphop.  She covers many issues of race, inequality, popular culture, mass media, gender, sexuality, etc.  Another book she wrote is called The Hip Hop Wars.  In this book she basically describes and defends the arguments of why the genre is bad to some, and why it’s still great to others.

These issues she speaks of are about the notion of our society, being a multiracial society, and how we all exchange our ideas about other races virtually.  Her biggest concern is we do not include the subjects and issues we should be speaking of that truly matter.  She stresses the fact that different races and gender do not share lived experiences as much as we think we do, but we all share one thing in common and share the most knowledge in one thing - pop culture. 

The thing I agree most with Tricia Rose would be her concept about rappers including all these sexual slurs and racial stereotypes because they need them to sell.  “Also, sexist images, which hip-hop has a lot of, seem to do very well across the cultural spectrum. So sexuality and sexual domination sell. Racial stereotypes sell. The market is more consolidated, which makes it easier for those images to perpetuate themselves.”  These artists at one point used to be very creative in there choice of words and verses, and now they have “dumbed” their music down to what society wants to hear and will buy and they are okay with doing that.  The thing that bothers me the most about hip-hop today is that it used to be so versatile, any age group could listen to it, it was clean (for the most part), but now you have artist talking about rape, shooting each other, blowing coke, using molly, and sex, sex, and more sex.  Their lines are clever, but the word choice is horrific.  I actually get a little embarrassed when they start screaming “pussy”, and “hoes” on the radio and I am in the car with my 70 year old grandmother or mother.  Music has changed and for the worst.  Not all of it, but the majority.  Its sad to see this happen, and I believe violence does come out of music, I don’t think everyone would agree with that, but with all the gang, shooting, and robbing songs, gives some people(weak people) ideas, and makes them feel it’s the right thing to do so they do it.

Just as in Cinderella Ate My Daughter, I believe there was a quote along the lines of “not being able to stop things from happening in society and changing the way people think about things” and people  - all you can do is try your hardest to steer your children in the right direction so they are not effected by the unfortunate changes in our pop culture

After readin this article, does anyone feel differently about hip-hop. And what is your take on violence that you hear in these songs? Do you also agree its bad for youth??