Michele Bowersox

ENC 2135
MWF 9:05-9:55 AM
Project 2 Final Revision
Over the course of thousands of years, music has continued to grow and
develop into different genres through the creation of new instruments and
sounds. This ever expanding art form is a reflection of the traditions of many
different societys and cultures throughout the world. According to Robert Garfias
Ethnological Reports, music must grow out of its own cultural context, with that
being said Garfias believes that artists have created their music as a reflection of
what theyve learned and from what theyve heard (7). The biggest contributor to
the creation of new music is personal experience; memories seem to hold the
strongest influence in musical genres. Genres such as Rap are lyrically written
more as a story than the traditional structure of the other genres, verse-chorusverse-chorus. The story like structure creates a unique style for rap music which
enables it to stand out more to an audience, allowing the audience to become
more familiar with the artists past, sense they speak from their own personal
experiences. I propose a question that will further expand the understanding of
the cultural affect society has on music: What cultural effects does society have
on the genre of rap?
Rap music is a compilation of stories from an artists past. According to
author, Theresa Martinez, rap ultimately is the voice of urban African American
youth, which that voice is a form of a resistance to and surviving from within the

prevailing social order (266). That social order consists of the white European
superiority that has been created over the period of hundreds of years ago
brought about by the invasion of the Americas. As well as taking political,
economic, and social power by force (Blauner). The over whelming feeling of
oppression has fueled the creative minds over the past 4 decades of many
influential rappers to create music that reflects exactly the society they are
surrounded by. The group NWA for example; in 1988 NWA was one of the
original groups of artists that brought gangsta-rap into the mainstream (Serpick).
NWA single handedly voiced the strong feelings over racial profiling that had
festered for ages in the ghetto. It was raw, with some revenge fantasy thrown in,
but it was the truth. (Alvarez). Groups such as NWA recognized that for years far
before 1988 police have brutalized people of color, and sought out rap to vocalize
their distress and advocate for a change.
Twenty-Eight years later police brutality is still relevant and a growing topic in
many popular rappers music today. Just as in 1992 with the many riots in LA,
people have once again united against corrupted cops that are a part of a broken
system. Places such as Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri are filled with rage
over the crimes committed against black citizens by police officers. These crimes
infuriated rappers and inspired them to create songs based upon the losses
theyve experienced and the agony theyve seen by the hands of law
enforcement. Therefore, just like NWA whose many songs refer to the unlawful
crimes committed by police officers, popular artists of today like J. Cole also
reference the same crimes of innocent lives being taken by the police over the

war on drugs. In 2013 J. Cole released an album, Born Sinner, with a song called
Crooked Smile as one of the top hits. The song encourages the audience to
recognize and accept your differences, never letting other peoples perceptions of
you dictate how you see yourself. Crooked smile was dedicated to Aiyana
Stanely-Jones, the seven-year-old girl who was shot and killed during a police
raid of her house in Detroit in 2010 (Gross). This is one of many tragedies that
have occurred in the past 10 years by the hands of police officers. Rappers
continue to exploit these unjustified crimes reflected the obviously flawed society
we live in.
Although we live in a society that incubates fear of law enforcement created
by the many crimes committed against the innocent, not the entire genre of rap is
influenced by this. Many rappers view their past has inspiration for their music.
They view their past, such as their childhood as a material in which their
audience can relate to. Their troubled past allows them to connect in a deeper
sense to their audience but they run the risk of exploiting themselves for fame. At
what price is it okay to benefit off of the loss of black youths. When rappers tend
to reference their childhood in their songs, it tends to involve violence, drugs, and
guns. How does growing up in such a toxic environment as described effect a
rapper? Trisha Rose speaks of the 5 different elements that contribute towards
the social conditions alike of those of rap songs: Chronic joblessness, urban
renewal, drug-trade expansion, automatic weapons and the drug economy, and
incarceration over rehabilitation (Rose). These environmental factors influence
the way musicians perceive the world and how the share it. The only way many

have escaped their pasts and lack of social advancement is through

commercializing their struggles. Rappers continue to justify the use of black
youth distress in favor to maintain a revenue (Rose). This use of
commercialization for entertainment is advocating for violence to continue in
these rural communities.
Although some rappers may have achieved fame and success through the
commercialization of their struggles, there are still millions of young black youths
that may never get out of the game. They might always have to sell drugs to
support their family, they might always know what pain feels like when they lose
someone to the streets, and they might always feel trapped when they hear the
success of the rappers they once related to but now never felt further away from.
The reality is rappers often do use their past as a way to form a bond with their
audience, but their past is just that, their past. Now they have all the money in the
world and dont know what its like to be a part of what they grew up in anymore.
The memories of their childhood is still the reality of their audience. Rappers
may use their music to talk about their past but all they are doing is
commercializing it, nothing is changing in the society that they once grew up in.
Its all the same and nothing will change if they continue to exploit their past as if
it is a necessity to experience in order to achieve greatness. What is intriguing is
why would an audience continue to listen to people that exploit their struggles, is
it because they like the fact that other people also feel the same pain? Research
has proven that people find pleasure in the failure and misfortune of others (BenZe'ev). People naturally compare themselves to those around them, therefore

listening to rap music for the case that someone does not face serious
challenges in their life might make them feel a sense of superiority to those
depicted in the lyrics. With this sense of superiority listeners justify the struggles
and challenges depicted in the songs lyrics, therefore receiving a sense of
satisfaction from the misery of someone else. Listening to rap music can give
some listeners a feeling of reassurance and verification of themselves, knowing
that someone else has it worse off. An audience may look around at the most
popular figures in the industry of music, especially Rap, and see that they may
only identify to these powerful figures pasts, taking note that not only the industry
but society has idolized these people whom prey on the victims of the oppression
they hoped to escape from.
Rappers take inspiration from what they experience, see, and hear around
them, most of these elements tend to be violence prone. The violence has been
sourced to the environment in which the musicians have grown up in, as Ive
spoken of recently, rappers use their past as lyrical material. Although I believe
rap music does not encourage violence, then why are rap music and violent
behavior so closely related? There are many contributors to violence, low
academic orientation being amongst those. Low academic orientation involves
the young adults, the parents, and the school. A students placement into courses
are determined by test scores, therefore if a student so happens to do poorly
they could be placed in less academically rigorous course. These courses are
not very challenging for the students nor do the teachers care about the material
they are instructed to teach (Crosnoe). If an instructor holds no hope or

expectations for a student than there is no extrinsic motivation for them to do

well, so that leaves the extrinsic motivation to do well up to their parents. Think of
an ideal living situation at home, you see two loving parents, enough food to
never go hungry, and a child to never need to want for anything. In reality 67
percent of black youth grow up in single parent households (Jacobson), and
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 7 million Americans work two
or more jobs (Tahmincioglu). With that being said although it is not the parents
fault, they are not home to watch the child and to make sure they are on track in
school. With the lack of extrinsic motivators such as teachers and parents,
adolescents have little intrinsic motivation to do well to please themselves. They
would much rather act out in delinquent manners to gain attention from someone
in negative light rather than doing well in school and receiving no positive
reinforcement for anyone. This absence of positive reinforcement at home and in
school creates the violence as depicted in common rap music. The depicted
violence feeds the stereotypical ideology of who rappers are and where they
came from, continuingly giving society a reason to label all rappers as dangerous
and bad influences, but simply they are purely a product of their environment.
If you agree with the understanding that children who enviably grow into
adults are simply products of their own environment, then you can recognize the
common influence amongst the life of struggling black youth in urban
communities as peer pressure. Peer pressure is designed to conform the
uniqueness of an individual and allow society to strip it away to create a uniform
group of people who can all be easily stereotyped and labeled. The need for

adolescents to fit in with their peers and gain their approval is necessary for their
self-esteem. With that being said, they could be easily persuaded to act
impulsively upon poor judgement simply to impress their friends. Mob mentality,
or how people are influenced by their peers to acquire specific behaviors, is the
same way that those who are in a gang act (Repogle). Gangs play off an
individuals weakness and use peer pressure to force someone to do something
they may not traditionally do. In the case of violence which can be a product of
peer pressure, a gang may force a new member to rob a convenience store or to
physically assault someone as initiation. The new member feels inclined to
comply to the request in order to gain approval of his peers, he only needs this
approval because of the lack of attention at home. If there was more parental
supervision in a household, a young adult would not feel inclined to fall under
peer pressure, none the less feel the need to join a gang. This causation of
violence via peer pressure creates a toxic environment conducted by the undying
need of many young adults to live up to the stereotypes of what society says is a
real man or woman. Society continues to create different toxic environment
which have continuously been exploited by the genre of rap, Rap will continue to
revolutionize itself and evolve as new issues seems to rise, but will always
continue to speak of the same oppression and injustice which seems to forever
plague our society.
In a recent study by Julian Tanner, Mark Asbridge, and Scot Wortley it was
found that black people are disproportionately portrayed in a narrow range of
roles and activities (principally those involving crime, sports and entertainment)
than members of other racial and ethnic groups; and when featured in crime

stories, depicted primarily as offenders (699), even though we live in a day and
age where society has progressed so much, it seems we have not simply
progressed enough to bypass the stereotype and prejudice still held by many. Is
it due to fear why other ethnic groups feel the need to be superior over blacks, or
just because they enjoy the power to inflict pain upon an entire race of society?
All we do know is that nothing will change if we wont start changing our own
society and its greatest influencers. Music is heard around the world and inspires
all to become new and ever evolving figure heads of their generation, if we
change what artists are speaking of in their rap songs. Rather than profiting off of
black struggles, we should transition into lyrics that are more about political
protest than anything, we may have a change to work closer to a society that
does not gain power from the oppression of others.

Works Cited

Garfias, Robert. Music: the cultural context. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology,
2004. PDF, pp. 7-8.

Martinez, Theresa A. Popular culture as oppositional culture: rap as resistance. 2nd ed.
Vol. 40. N.p.: Sage Publications, Inc., n.d. PDF, pp. 266-268.

Blauner, Robert. Racial Oppression in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. PDF,
pp. 52-54.

Serpick, Evan. "N.W.A Biography." Rolling Stone. N.p., Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Alvarez, Gabriel. "Men in Black: Why N.W.A.'s Message Is Now More Relevant Than
Ever." Complex. N.p., 2015. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Gross, Kali Nicole. "Six Years Later and Still No Justice for Aiyana Stanley Jones." The
Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 16 May 2016. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Rose, Tricia. "Hip Hop Causes Violence." The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk about
When We Talk about Hip Hop--and Why It Matters. New York: BasicCivitas, 2008. 3536. Print.

Ben-Ze'ev, Aharon. Subtlety of Emotions. N.p.: MIT Press, 2001. PDF, pp. 150-153.

Crosnoe, Robert. "Academic Orientation and Parental Involvement in Education during

High School." Sociology of Education 74.3 (2001): 210-30. Web.

Jacobson, Louis. "CNN's Don Lemon Says More than 72 Percent of African-American
Births Are out of Wedlock." @politifact. CNN, 29 July 2013. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

Tahmincioglu, Eve. "More Women Holding down Multiple Jobs." Msnbc.com. NBC
News, 21 Mar. 2010. Web. 18 Oct. 2016.

Replogle, Elaine. " Reference Groups, Mob Mentality, and Bystander Intervention: A
Sociological Analysis of the Lara Logan." Sociological Forum 26.4 (2011): 80103. JSTOR. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Tanner, J., M. Asbridge, and S. Wortley. "Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures
of Resistance." Social Forces 88.2 (2009): 693-722. JSTOR. Web. 14 Dec. 2016.

Self-Analysis Project 2

During my time working on Project 2, I ended up struggling quite a bit with my topic and
attempting to find something interesting and surprising that hasnt been spoken of
before. There also is not a lot of current research done on the associations of the
cultural effect that society has on rap music, which in fact that is pretty surprising to me.
I feel very strongly for trying to clear the name of rap music and dissociate it with the
causation of violence, and focus on my purpose that rappers are the story tellers to the
book of violence. I am very passionate and angry with all the great tragedies the United
States have faced in this year alone, and I believe that rap music plays a huge
component in exposing the injustice that many African Americans face. Many artists
have been underrated and looked over when their music preaches of nonviolence and
the urgency for America to wake up and recognize the great loses they are facing, far
too often. I believe that my paper effectively gets my point across of just about how
passionate I am for rappers to become recognized for who they are and what they have
been doing as a social movement. I found some research and studies on the concept
that people actually receive satisfaction and joy from the suffering of others and that not
only surprised me but really sickened me, especially because I have succumbed to
promoting the same music. In some rap songs artist will talk about the death and
murder of their loved ones, the great loses theyve experienced while growing up in the
hood, and I sit there listening to the songs on repeat not truly comprehending the lyrics
behind the rhythmic beat. It is not enough to just sit and listen to their songs, they
creating a social movement, asking for reform and we have to actually change and get
up and work for it. My research question always revolved around violence, society, and
rap music, but to nail down my research question I did a lot of research and discovered

what question fit best with all the information I found. My research question now is more
elaborate and complex giving me the opportunities to expand upon different
perspectives as well as my audience, so they are able to formulate their own opinions
too. It turns out research papers are very extensive and time consuming, I found this out
by spending plenty of time conducting research to find the right sources than reading
and re-reading the same sources again to familiarize myself with them. I did not want to
rely too much upon my sources for my essay because I wanted to have my own
perspective and not just every other sentence ending in a source of another persons
ideas. Moving on to project three I very much look forward to working in the different
mediums. This project will be much easier in my perspective because I am not the most
talented writer and would consider myself pretty creative. For project 3 I plan to create a
water color painting to express the fear and oppression that many face in society today
as expressed by rap artists, all through a symbolic painting. It is sometimes difficult to
express how one feels through words, in my case a water color painting is completely
subjective and the audience can take whatever message the pleas from it. I also plan to
write a poem, such a haiku to communicate my emotions of my purpose through that of
a short story like verse. My last genre I will use is a twitter poll/ interviews where I can
take the publics perspective and understand their point of view on the subject matter of
the events occurring in today. This way no one on twitter has read my argument and will
be completely unbiased in the topic and can get an anonymous majority point of view.
The most important part of Project 2 that I will incorporate into Project three is the
purpose on my research paper, in my genre I plan to incorporate the emotions that
many black youths feel on an everyday basis. The feeling of fear, hopelessness, and

oppression. This lack of power will be communicated throughout my three genres which
is all inspired from my research in project 2. By the end of project 2 I must admit my
topic does seem a little exhausted and my professor was right to really choose a topic
that youre extremely interested in, because it does make it a lot easier to complete and
dedicate all this time to.