Social Conscious Rappers example essay topic

The media's coverage of rap emphasizes rap as the epitome of violence. Society claims that rap is one of the main influences on adolescents who commit heinous crimes such as murder, narcotic distribution, and grand theft auto. When the influence of rap is mentioned the adolescent male comes into thought, but they are not the only sex affected by these lyrics. Studies have shown that females that reside in lower socioeconomic-status neighborhoods who listen to rap for more than 14 hours a week are more violently active than females that do not listen to rap as much. However rappers like any other artists express themselves in different ways. Some of these ways in which rappers express themselves have positive affects on the society.

This introduces the idea of social conscious rap, which brings society uplifting lyrics. Social conscious rappers keep a clean image, refer to women as Queens, and do not emphasize the Importance of money; and in contrast rap music carries a prolific gangsta image, is degrading to women, and speaks of a million and one ways of how to use money. The treatment of women is an important component in both styles of rap. Lyrics such as " he love makin' trash outta another niggas treasure cause bitches for dude dog, come a dime a dozen, fu one let one suck on his d k then find another", (Devin the Dude) are a prime example of how gangsta rappers degrade the women in society. These lyrics are felt by women everywhere and are taken to heart most of the time. Social conscious rappers take the respect of women very serious and they do not treat them like inanimate things.

Many social conscious rappers literately bow down to females in respects to what they have to go through to keep our population growing by the capabilities to create life. The images that are displayed in these two rap styles are also contrastable. Gangsta rap's image is based on the "thug". The thug is the type of person that does not care about life even if it is his own. The thug is all about guns, drugs, sex, and violence. Somewhere along that line these rappers do have a conscious, but a conscious that is not strong enough to take into perspective the affects that their music has on the adolescent audiences.

When one rapper was asked why do they rap such society depleting lyrics? He said", I'm just telling my life story". (50 cent) Many other rappers say that they are just trying to "eat" or survive. The spoken word artist Quad ir Habib informed me that rappers use the importance of survival as a crutch for their distribution of negative content. The social conscious rapper is a much more relaxed rapper in terms of a violence to lyric ratio. They are not into the drugs, materialism, sex, and violence.

They see those things as detrimental to the society and they don't care if those topics sell to society they wont bring themselves to make that type of music. These rappers want to make a difference in the violent world of today. Lyrics such as: "Black people unite, come on and do it right" from Mos Def talks about making a difference in the society by uniting as one. Social conscious rappers are anti-violence leaders, while the gangsta rapper is all for a chaotic society. The power of money is measured differently between these styles of rap. The rapper, 50 cent's latest album titled "Get Rich or Die Tryin' and the southern rapper Brad Johnson aka Scarface entitled one of his songs Money and Power illustrates how important money is to rappers.

Many of these rappers do whatever it takes for the "almighty" dollar, even if it involves selling drugs and taking lives. The social conscious artist knows that money is not everything, but they do need it just like everyone else. Their lyrics are in no way centered around money and what they are going to use it on. They are very humble people when it comes to materials. Social conscious rap has a stronger positive side than gangsta rap, which makes it realistically better than gangsta rap. Many people don't see this do to the fact of conformity; they want to confirm with society in all ways possible.

Conformity is not the way to go in many circumstances. A person just has to ask him / herself what is the better the way to go. The better way is always the one that will not tell you to do wrong things. In conclusion, people just have to ask themselves, what is the better rap?