The Influence Rock and Rap Music Has on Young People
The Influence Rock and Rap Music Has on Young PeopleMany young people of this generation between the ages of ten and twenty live for music. They have become infatuated with music as if nothing else matters. After reading Allan Bloom's essay �Music�, Venise Berry's, �Redeeming the Rap Music Experience�, and Barbara Dority's �The War on Rock and Rap Music", I was opened up to new ideas which previously had not occurred to me. When people are reading and listening to lyrics or going to concerts they are exposed to sex, violence, and drugs which have a negative influence that plague the music world.
The lyrics and beat of many songs we hear again influence our children. Lyrics like "I want to fuck you like an animal" from "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails is a prime example of cause and effect. When children hear these words they have to go out and try it for themselves and along with other influences we have twelve, eleven and even ten year olds trying sex and getting pregnant. Bloom points out that "young people know that rock has the beat of sexual intercourse. That is why Ravel's Bolero is the one piece of classical music that is commonly known and liked by them" (130). Such sexual beats also come from CDs that are just bass. Everyone has experienced sitting at a stoplight when a car pulls up next to you with his or her radio is so loud your car starts shaking and you can't even think. The lyrics and beat of rock and rap may influence people to do such negative acts at such a young age.
Sex plays an enormous part in music. Look at the way music artists dress, what they say in their lyrics or the music beat, and the title of the records. Some music artists dress inappropriately and wear next to nothing, in my opinion. We see the very popular Spice Girls, a new pop band, made up of five females, who target young girls dressing, or should I say not dressing, appropriately for their young audience. The Spice Girls dress in short dresses and spaghetti strap shirts. Young girls are buying backpacks and shirts with pictures of them and are even dressing like them. We cannot have these explicitly dressed women influencing our young girls. These children are going to school like this exposing their bodies and some of them are as young as ten years old. Again the negative influence from rock and rap music may weaken young person maturation.
There have not been too many recording artists that have made a bigger sexual statement than 2 Live Crew.
Their most successful hit, which is now considered tame, was entitled, Hey, We want Some Pussy. It sold a half-million copies without the backing of a major record company. The Crew's next album took sexual rap to a new level. "Move Something" sold more than a million copies and included songs like, Head, Booty and...
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