Hip-Hop music promotes materialism, misogyny and criminal activity. It is responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes of young black men and women. Discuss.

“Hip-hop is a tool...It can be used for good or it can be used for evil.” - Hasani Pettiford.

Hip-Hop is a genre of music which is originated from the Bronx, New York in the 1970s. It slowly became throughout the 1980s and It features other forms of expressions such as graffiti, break dancing, MCing, and DJing.  I personally disagree with this statement and believe that hip-hop is such a wide genre of music, to paint all of hip-hop music with the same brush is simply ignorant. I also think that hip-hop music does promote materialism, misogyny ect. However, I think there are positive as well as negative attributes to Hip-Hop music just like any other genre of music out there. For example, one the positive attributes to hip-hop music is that it could positively influence young people, so that they aim for a successful future. However, one the many negative attributes is that most hip-hop music/ music videos/lyrics do actually promote misogyny and materialism.

The media has always been biased towards hip-hop, and is part of the reason why young black men and women are negatively stereotyped. Since hip-hop music is sometimes associated with gangs and violence, many people seem to believe that all rappers are criminals. For example, there was a huge media frenzy when legendary rappers Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls were shot dead in the late 90s.People theoriesed that those two rappers were really popular, but people quickly assumed they were gang-related murders. There was also a huge media uproar when Kanye West interrupted Taylor Swift’s winning speech at the 2009 Video Music Awards. This begs the question, would the people have made such a big deal if it was a white pop singer instead of Kanye?

I think hip-hop music is also responsible for perpetuating negative stereotypes of young black people. The majoriry of rappers do use the controversial n-word is their songs, which is why all of hip-hop music is censored. Rappers Jay-Z said during an interview with Oprah Winfrey that hip-hop music helped the the power out of the n-word. He said " "People give words power. For our generation, what we did is that we took the word, and we took the power out of that word. We took a word that was very ugly and hurtful into a term of endearment,". So while the use of the n-word in hip-hop music might seem absurd to other people, it has a whole different meaning to rappers.

There is the issue of gang culture when it comes to hip-hop music. There are so many rappers and hip-hop artists that glorify being a gangster. Even the word 'gangsta' is used normally, for example Coolio and Snoop Dogg had a song released called ‘Gangsta Walk’, and Eve and Alicia Keys had a song called ‘Gangsta Lovin’. This casual mention of being a gangster and gang culture misleads kids into believing that being a gangster is okay just because these singers are talking about it. There's a subgenre called "Gangsta rap", which does glorify violence, drugs, racism, murder, objectification of women and homophobia, just to name a few. However, i think that despite the voilant nature of these lyrics, these rappers all have a story to tell. Also, Many seem to believe that Gangsta Rap is the epitome of hip-hop music and that reflects badly on other hip-hop music and rappers.

While some of hip-hip music and some artists do condone negative stereotypes, not all of hip-hop music is like that. Some hip-hop artists promote love, change and hope in their songs. For example, artists like 50 Cent and Eminem went from having bad childhoods and dealing with drugs to becoming the richest and most successful artists of their genre. Given, neither of them are perfect role models but it sends out a positive message to young people who might be in their situations, it also it might motivate them to do something good with their life, especially those who come from unprivileged backgrounds.

Misogyny is unfortunately widely associated with hip-hop. The majority of hip-hop music videos include half naked women, and fully clothed men. An example of this is ‘Tip Drill’ by Nelly.  Although they clearly don’t mind, the women in the video are clearly being treated like sex objects. Other examples of music videos like this include ‘Still dre’ by dr.dre, ‘Candy Shop’ by 50 cent, ’Gold Digger’ by kanye west, and many more. While it may not be the actual music that's the problem; it's the lyrics and images which refer to men and women as pimps and hos, and shows women half naked while the men are fully clothed. A lot of rappers are aggressive and violent in their lyrics when it comes to treating women. Eminem is a good example of a rapper who promotes misogynistic views through his lyrics; these are lyrics from his song ' Kim';
"Don't you get it bitch, no one can hear you?
Now shut the fuck up and get what's comin to you
You were supposed to love me
Now bleed! Bitch bleed!
Bleed! Bitch! Bleed! Bleed!"
Although we obviously do not know if these lyrics reflect his personal views, it sends out a negative message to young boys.

When it comes to materialism, hip-hop definitely does promote it but in both positive and negative ways. The negative side of hip-hop’s promotion of materialism is that it could tempt young people to go down the wrong path and sell drugs or steal in order to get materialistic goods. The positive side could be that it might motivate young people to do well in life and school so that they, too, can become rich and successful. Also, a lot of hip-hop artists become spokespeople and ambassadors for certain brands and get paid to promote them. For example, rapper Tinie Tempah is an ambasador for Lucozade Sport and his song is used in the adverts. Will.i.Am from the Black Eyed Peas, said in an interview in 2002 “These corporations – Nike, Sprite, Coke, Panasonic, Motorola – they’re gonna utilize urban music anyway to sell their product because most urban people buy these products. Every rapper talks about Motorola in their video for fuckin’ free. So why not get paid for a commercial when people are doing it for free anyway? Why not give it back to Hip Hop?”. Basically what he's saying is that since most rappers use namebrands in their videos, they might aswell make money out of it.

There's even such thing as “Christian hip-hop", which is a sub-genre which is pretty much hip-hop but with a christian view and the opposite of gangster rap. It doesn’t promote sex, drugs, violence, and all the other stuff that regular hip-hop does. Although it's not actual christian hip-hop, Kanye West's Jesus Walks focuses on religion and spiritiality. He also talks about how the media can't take anything seriously if religion is involved.

To conclude, it’s not the genre of Hip-Hop that’s the problem but the way that some rappers and hip-hop artists use their power to promote things such as materialism and misogyny when they could be using their fame and popularity to promote positive things. However, the media also has a part in it as it is slightly biased towards the genre.