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It always amuses me when people blame "black culture" or hip hop for the woes of all poor black people. Black culture is not hip hop BTW every geographical area and every city and even every family has its own culture, no matter the ethnicity. There is no set "black culture" and those who believe that there is such a thing, I pity you in your ignorance.
Also, I do not like BET, there have been plenty of people for many many years (black people) who do not like BET and have made similar comments to what is written in the OP. It is interesting that white people don't really know much at all about what goes on in black America yet they always want to comment about all the woes in "black culture" thinking that some random statistic that was in the news today is reflective of all black people. Other times white people don't see anything in black America as something relevant to them unless some random black intellect, who they have probably never heard of says or writes something that they agree with. It is all pretty funny.
American culture as a whole is very violent. This country was founded on violence, the genocide of millions of natives, the forced servitude of lower classes of Europeans, the enslavement of Africans, the abuse of latinos and asians, there has always been violence going on, more than there is now even in black communities before the advent of hip hop and this so called "black culture" that is ruining black America even though today most black people in this country are better off than they were 20 years ago, when "gangsta rap" was actually being performed.
"Gangsta rap" is really not common at all anymore, that was more of an 80s and 1990s phenomenon and most mainstream rap focuses on materialism, which is just as bad IMO and causes a whole slew of other problems. A lot of the posters on this thread must be people who haven't listened to much rap music. When I want to criticize something, I learn about all aspects of the subject and don't focus on what the media shows me. Hip hop remains popular mostly because of underground artist, not Lil Wayne or other big, commercial successes. Hip hop culture is mostly based on underground rap, not commercial rap, which is what most of your are commenting about and which is controlled largely by white owned record companies who pick and chose who and what type of music to put out, "black culture" does not have anything to do with it.
It doesn't matter if people don't know about all the lesser-known and more obscure rap artists. Every genre is defined mainly by its most popular artists, songs and albums - because that's what has by far the greatest influence.
Yes that occured to me, but I can name several communities in my state alone that went pass the 50% mark(one of them is getting to that point) and have not turned ghetto. Communities that were lower middle class or working class to begin with attract the bulk of the worst people from the inner city. The communities I'm talking about are solid middle and upper middle class. I read somewhere that many whites prefer to live in neighborhoods that are no more than 17% black or something to that affect. If I can find the article, I gladly post it on here.
I'd like to check that out. I'm sure there are cases where it is just flat out racism, but I'm also sure there are many cases where it is for other reasons. There is also the fact that even in a case where they are upper middle class, people still leave because they automatically assume the worst, due to the many other neighborhoods they hear about that do get turned into the hood.
Didn't you know... anyone they haven't heard of is "lesser known" especially when that individual or group does not fit into the evil hip hop stereotype.
That is the argument the cigarette companies used back in the 1990s when they said that they weren't targeting kids with their advertisements. Children and teens still listen to that garbage. It still gets played on TV and the radio. A lot of it is made by "men" in their late teens and early 20s, so not much older than the teens to which they're selling it.
Also, sadly, a lot of black children don't have parents that are active in their lives.
Actually, most most rappers are around 25 or older, and their music is designed for similar age groups.
And yes, it does reach youngsters, but that's not the rappers' faults. They have every right to make their living by making music for their ADULT audience.
Of course bad music is mostly a manifestation of problems that already exist, but once it's created it can turn into somewhat of a cycle.
But if that were the case, then both poverty and crime rates would not have gone down as much as they have since the middle 1980s when gangsta rap in particular became popular.
I grew up in this time, I saw drugs, gangs, tons of crime, I don't see a smidgen now what I saw as a girl (and I live in a much bigger urban area now in supposedly one of the worse neighborhoods in the city). I just feel a lot of people are so far removed from these elements that they think there is always some sort of war zone going on in all poor black neighborhoods. That is a gross generalization and is incorrect considering the decreases in poverty and crime overall in this country. If the highlighted problems turn into a cycle then those problems should be getting worse, not better.
You stated hip hop, underground is part of that. Did you know that BET showcases underground artists?
Not to mention, that the future is going more towards M.I.A. and less 50 cent.
I said gangster rap, but that wasn't even correct, what I mean is the mainstream stuff they play on BET. I'm sure they have some underground stuff on there, but the majority is mainstream. Like wayne. I can't stand that mother****er.
Like I said the underground rap is usually better. That's my point, the genre is not all bad, but it's a genre where the bad stuff tends to go mainstream whereas the good stuff doesn't.
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