How Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way

For this weeks blog i decided to read the article how hip-hop has lost its way and betrayed its fans. At the beginning of the article the author says "African American teenagers are beset on all sides by dangerous myths about race". So i believe the author is hoping for a young African American age group to be reading this article. The author starts of the article by saying how rap music started out with a large variety of themes but has led its way to a medium of worshiping misognyn, materialism, and murder, which if you listen to hip-hop today it seems to be true with some of the lyrics.

The author uses a great example of how the narrowing of hip-hop culture started with the story of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. These two were using lyrics, and music videos to insult and threaten each other, or their rivals. Which led to the death of both of the famous rappers. During the article The author says "The events that led up to the shooting show how recording labels now exploit violence to make and sell records". Know a days rising rappers will use violent and threatning lyrics to be notice and create buzz for their new projects. The author also says how living in the inner city and being around this music can cause a chain reaction of violence and crime in young listeners, or other young rappers to use that in their lyrics.

I believe this author did a good job of using examples of how, and why the rap industry has changed so much. I also believe he has good ethos because the author is African American himself. To me this article shows how sticks and stones may break your bones but words will sometimes hurt you. If rappers keep using vulgar lyrics in their music, hip-hop will quite possibly be dead.