Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Jordan Futrell
Ms. Huizar
UWRT 1102
27 March 2017
Shout-out to all of this ganja, blowin down trees like a new forest fire! I thought a
quote from my favorite hip hop group the Underachievers, would be an appropriate way to start
this off. Now what does this quote make you think of? Does it make you want to go do anything
in particular? Now hold your answer in your head, we will get back to it later. Are people today a
product of their own environment? Do the things that surround humans in media and
entertainment today, influence what we do in our own personal lives? In some instances, the
answer could be yes, like how we are influenced by the way our favorite entertainers dress or
how we perceive the correct way to eat and stay healthy is in the media today. But are there are
some instances, where the influences from societys favorite entertainers, can take a turn for the
worse in their own personal lives? Especially when those people are younger in age and more
susceptible to influences in their life around them, because they are not old enough to know any
better and their minds may be easily corrupted if not carefully monitored and watched by their
childrens best interest to listen to lyrics that are not violent, sexist, drug-oriented, or antisocial.
Even though they have no knowledge of any study or any link ever to the correlation of music
lyrics influencing and impacting the behavior of adolescents and pre-adolescents. When these
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children grow up, they are not going to have their parents there to hold their hands and keep
them away from all the harmful things, that can reach them and influence them in this world.
They are going to have even less of a chance to stay away from the bad influences and habits in
life, if they are not educated about them at an early age and taught about the effects and
consequences of what they are hearing and seeing in their favorite music and media. Adolescent
teens and pre adolescence should not be monitored and kept away from songs speaking drugs
and other bad habits because drug use in the United States has remained steady without spiking
for years now with minor exceptions, drug references in music have risen over the years,
education and legalization of some substances creates awareness for adolescence for that certain
substance, and there has never been one study ever that has been able to correlate music lyrics
Over the years there have been certain spikes in drugs around the United States. The only
real recent spike has been with heroin increasing 145% in use since the last statistics taken in
2007 and heroin is not a drug that rarely ever referenced in todays music, especially in hit,
popular songs. The most popular drug of choice is marijuana and the percent of adolescents
using the substance peaked around 1997-1999. It saw a steady decrease until 2007, and ever
since it has been on a slow but steady rise. The most popular drug of the 80s which was cocaine
has seen a steady decrease, since its peaking of popularity in the decade of the 80s. The rate of
use has fallen to just above 2% in all of United States teens. Other drugs have come into the
public spotlight over the years like Molly/MDMA, which saw an increase in use in the early
2010s, but has been declining in use ever since. In 2014 a study was done by the National
Survey on Drug Use and Health concluded that just 0.7% of adolescents between the ages on 12-
17 used molly in the past year. So, with the exception of marijuana, which has remained the
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consistent most popular drug among not just adolescents, but by the majority of people in the
world, most of drugs in todays society seem to be a running fad for a while and their popularity
and usage rate eventually falls, in a varied amount of time. The same things can be said about
hallucinogens, which peaked in the hippy age and have been in steady decline ever since or
methamphetamines/pain killers which have also been in a steady decline since its peak in the late
1990s.
Over the years music has increasingly become more and more graphic and personal as
time goes by. The world has come a long way since what was thought to be the new edgy music
of the day from artists like Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and the Beatles. One big difference is the
most popular genre of music in todays day and age. In 2015 per Spotify, hip hop is now the
most listened to and popular genre in the entire world. Naturally this is going to lead to the
culture of hip hop being integrated into todays society among the youth, and the influences from
the genre to be prevalent in society today. But do the overwhelming references to substances use
hinder the adolescents of today, and does it influence their lives in a negative way? In a study
done by Denise Herd in 2008 illustrating the amount of drug references and uses in hip hop
between 1979-1997. The statistics in the rise of references having to do with drug use in hip hop
have been quite staggering. Between the years of 1979-1984 Heard recorded 11% of all hit
record songs in hip hop contained references to some type of substance. In 1985-1989, that
number rose steadily up to 19% of hit record hip hop songs, contained some reference in a way
or another to an illegal substance. By 1990-1993 that 19% had jumped to a substantial 45% of hit
record songs that had contained a reference to substance abuse. Between the years of 1993-1997
that number jumped to 69% of all hit record hip hop songs contained at least one type of
reference to substance abuse. So, in that 18-year span that Heard focused her study on, saw a
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68% rise in some type of drug reference in hip hop music. Not only has hip hop been on the rise
when it comes to drug references in its lyrics, it is also by far the genre in music that talks about
and references it the most. In a study done by the Office of National Drug Control Policy in
1999, it displayed that hip hop talked about drug use, more than any other genre by a wide
margin. In the study sample that they took, 63% of all the hip-hop songs that they listened to
contained a drug reference somewhere in the song. The top three genres after that were the Top
100 which contained 11% of drug references, Alternative which contained 11%, and Heavy
Metal which contained 9% of drug references in its songs. Now a regular person would think
since the most popular music genre in the world has such a heavy undertone of drug references
in its music, then it would be an easy influence in the adolescents of todays day and age. Well as
already stated, that is incorrect and the usage rate of drug use among adolescents has remained
steady and not spiked, even with the spike in drug references in their most popular music genre.
With organizations like the AAP so worried about the potential effects of what todays
adolescents are listening to, one would assume there has been a study done, that shows a possible
correlation between music/media and adolescent behavior. Well I will save the time for you to go
and try to find one because there is not a single study out there that proves there is any
correlation whatsoever between what adolescents are watching and listening to and how they
behave in their own personal lives. The AAP specifically states themselves that there has ever
done a study done, that has proven there is any relationship between the two things, but they feel
that more research needs to be done to make sure. In a study done by the Office of National Drug
Control policy in 1999, there was not enough evidence shown in the study that was done to prove
that anything in song lyrics had any certain influences on the adolescences in the study. They did
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conclude the certain things in music videos or in TV might have in influence but there was still
Work Cited
Denise Herd, "Changes in drug use prevalence in rap music songs, 19791997",
Addiction Research and Theory, Vol. 16, Issue 2, Pg. 167-180, April 2008.
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=1&sid=d2712b
6d-c1ab-4524-904b-a190b407ac35%40sessionmgr103
Donald F. Roberts, Lisa Henriksen, and Peter G. Christenson, "Substance Use in Popular
Movies and Music", Office of National Drug Control Policy, Washington, D.C. : The Office
1999. http://uncc.worldcat.org/title/substance-use-in-popular-movies-and-
music/oclc/41674919&referer=brief_results
John Market, Sing a Song of Drug Use-Abuse: Four Decades of Drug Lyrics in Popular
Music-From the Sixties through the Nineties, Sociological Inquiry, Vol. 72, Issue 2, Pg. 194-
drug-lyrics-in-popular-music-from-the-sixties-through-the-
nineties/oclc/5156734121&referer=brief_results
Stewart, Pearl, Whos Playin Whom?, Black Issues in High Education, Vol. 21, Issue
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/ehost/detail/detail?vid=0&sid=0857a019-cb42-
448d-8749
f3f445d0dd7a%40sessionmgr102&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db
=ehh&AN=13087628
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and Negative Effects of Country Music on Implicit Attitudes, Explicit Attitudes, and Brand
Choice., Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Vol. 39, Issue 11, Pages 2689-2705, November
2009. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1559-
1816.2009.00544.x/epdf
Children and Youth, Australian Federation for the Family, Pediatrics, Vol. 98, Issue 6, Pg.
of-music-lyrics-and-music-videos-on-children-and-youth.html
Sarah Yang, "New study finds glamorization of drugs in rap music jumped dramatically
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2008/04/01_rapmusic.shtml
https://genius.com/a/drugs-in-hip-hop-a-30-year-analysis