I’m not qualified to say what effect it’s had on society; I can only speak from personal observation of myself - a middle aged white guy - and my family.
For the most part it’s been pretty good. Some of the songs on Eminem’s album, The Eminem Show, are among my alltime favorites. I wish I could find more stuff like that. It’s one of the areas where my kids and I can enjoy the same things. We have fun listening together in the car, reciting the lyrics together, talking about the song.
A few weeks ago my 11 year old was blindsided by a pretty cruel rejection by his “girlfriend.” He was very upset by it. So I played the song Superman, from the above album, for him, and within five minutes we were laughing together and he was in a great mood. It’s nice to have an alternative point of view to that over the top romantic drivel that the Beatles brainwashed my generation with.
“I do know one thing though
Bitches, they come, they go.”
Where was Eminem when I was a teenager to give me some balanced perspective?
On the down side, there is an awful lot of really dumb, bad rap out there.
I think it has had an incredibly negative influence on society. Rap is oriented heavily towards violence, drug abuse, gangs and total anti-social behaviour. When young, impressionable kids listen to a steady diet of this stuff, is there any wonder why they wind up in trouble, strung out on drugs, in jail or worse?
Yes, it’s a wonder. Wanna know why? It’s because most of the kids listening to it are white, upper-middle class suburban kids who never get into big trouble. Look deeper.
I don’t know if it’s had any more of a negative effect that anything else in pop music. It’s certainly had a negative effect on my parking lot and car stereos that I’m pretty sure New Wave never did.
I can’t really stand objectively about it, and neither can fans. You’ll say there are better things than gangsta rap but in the same sentence you cite Eminem who is the most vehemently angry and hate-filled person I’ve seen in popular music. That’s a terrible influence. To say that his is ‘just music’ is ridiculous. It’s pre-packaged hate, it’s meant to appeal to somebody, and it’s ludicrous.
I don’t like it, but I don’t think it’s streamlined violence. More like stupidity, ignorance, and obscenity. The record scratch has been used in place of the bleep for censoring foul language so often that it’s transcended into other genres. I’m no saint, I say fuck and shit and ass but I’ve never written a song called “Cum On Everybody.”
It’s decadent but it’s popular, and it’s come a long way from Run DMC and MC Hammer.
Not to mention the popularity of sampling, which only piles onto the fact that the people who make it lack the talent or knowhow to make their own original repetitive cliched bassline.
The difference with white and black audiences and how they respond to gangsta rap is simple: middle class white kids tend to listen to rap and imitate attitude, fashions and mores. Lots and lots and lots of poor and working class black kids listen to rap and emulate attitudes, fashions and mores. One group is pretending, one group is fending.
I agree 100%. The first question I have for the OP is “Which rap?” As Askia points out, there was a sea change in the early 1990s in the world of hip-hop. It seemed to go from Guy (totally innocent/positive) to C + C Music Factory (rather innocent/positive), to Bel-Biv-Devoe (getting much darker quickly) to outright horrific gangsta rap in the matter of a year or so.
Of course, the good has continued with the bad, but the bad has ruled for a long time now. And by “bad” I mean not talking naughty, protesting against the bad but actually supporting, celebrating the bad.
Rap used to have a positive influence–how could it not, if its message was positive? But now, overall, it must certainly have a negative influence–how could it not if it supports negativity? As to the size of that negative influence, it’s anybody’s guess.
Basically I’m getting from you some kind of awkward justification that it’s ok for black people to love rap music but not whites. The only real difference between emulate and imitate is that the latter is less positive. What I’m trying to communicate is that it’s all imitation, whether you’re a rag-wearing project denizen or a sweater-vested Princeton student. The fact that only one’s imitation is absurd to the general public is a matter of perspective. From mine, they both appear ridiculous.
I felt I vaguely grasped pretending vs. fending and wanted you to make it clearer. You’re not doing that. Would you please spell this out instead of beating around the bush? I understand you’re talking about slight distinctions and using shades of meaning, but by failing to make yourself clear you’re not furthering my understanding.
Gangster rap was around in the early to mid 1990s, but it was more underground. I remember groups like Arrested Development and Digable Planets were more mainstream. Wonder whatever happened to them.
Some rap I like but most of it I despise. This is what makes it a failure for me. it has a higher crap percentage than other music genres. In terms of its influence I can’t recall EVER hearing anyone quote a rap lyric in everday conversation. It’s just modern day pop.
Marley23. What, I can’t just be glib? Yeesh. “Fending” - making do under adverse circumstances. It’s easier to pretend to be a badass when you’re a white male well-fed middle-class suburbanite and can afford the bling. But there’s usually an earnestness missing because you simply don’t want it as much as someone who sees hip-hop ghetto-fabulousless as something to genuinely aspire to and their only shot out of poverty.
After reading everyone’s posts, I thought of one thing. Outkast is rap?? No, they are… they are… hmm… well what do ya know. I’m guessing that the majority of people here who dislike rap haven’t listened to enough different types to make a huge judgement. I think that “gangsta rap” gets the most attention, so as a result people dislike it because of that idea. Much like a lot of people dislike country even though they don’t realize that the genre covers a lot of different areas. I think that rap has given positive influences, and the more that the gansta rap is unsupported, the more postive of an influence the genre will have.
Gangsta rap currently dominates hip-hop roughly the way superheroes dominate comic books. Just because its the prevalent thing doesn’t make it the best thing, the only thing or the most characteristic example of the thing. People have short memories man, 1995 wasn’t THAT long ago.
Gangsta rap was better when it was a west coast underground and autobiographical war stories of folks like Gheto Boyz, NWA, Tupac and Ice-T. Personally, I blame Sean Combs, Biggie, Suge Knight and Jay-Z for a lot of this.