Music is a significant part of the lives of most people all over the world. In the United States, people listen to more than 25 hours each week [1]. Hip-hop makes up a large percentage of adolescent music genre preference. It goes without saying that this overwhelming presence of music will have a psychological effect on American culture and our way of life. But how exactly is Hip Hop affecting us psychologically and culturally?
The effects of music videos on adolescences have been the subject of controversy for decades. The common reason for the concern has been appropriately summed by Arnett (a Research Professor of Psychology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts), who explained, women are used as props for the illusive life the music video is portraying the artist to have. The concern that hip-hop culture, as seen in music videos, has become heavily influential on young people’s views of sexuality. The concern about mainstream hip-hop music and music videos sexualizing women, in particular, is so omnipresent, many can even be referenced as “rape culture” by embedding sexual violence in the lyrics being disguised as pleasurable elements of hip-hop. The Kaiser Family Foundation in the year 2001 reported that teenagers rank entertainment media as the main source for information about sexuality and sexual health [3]. Descriptive language and sexual imagery in music videos directly affect adolescent’s sexual behaviors, gender attitudes, acceptance of female objectification, and the acceptance of rape culture. Social cognitive theory and parasocial interaction are both viable theoretical frameworks for the culture we are seeing today.
Today vicarious learning is everywhere: adolescents not only reenact what they are seeing on television but are following their peers, adolescents look to media for fashion trends, new dance moves, and popular ideas, and it is not a farfetched idea that teenagers are also using the media to create their own sexual ideas and identities. This is particularly pertinent to those who consume a large amount of media regularly. On the contrary, it could be that these individuals already harbor certain dispositions, and seek out media that reinforces their behaviors. But I am unconvinced that anyone is born with a disposition to be disrespectful to women and love violence. Hip-hop/gangster/hardcore rap has identified itself as the genre that glorifies the images and values of gangs and street violence in the United State. The link between rap music and deviant behaviors in adolescences is supported by a number of studies.
Hip hop also affects people who do not listen to or do not like the genre. The essay “Droppin’ Knowledge on Race: Hip-Hop, White Adolescents, and Anti-Racism Education” points out that Hip Hop may, in fact, hinder racial progress as many whites use stereotypical representations of black Americans in Hip Hop to legitimize discrimination against black people. On the other hand, Hip Hop, Color-Blindness, and Racial Stereotyping provided Kiwanis (the author of “Droppin’ Knowledge on Race: Hip-Hop, White Adolescents, and Anti-Racism Education) with an argument about Hip Hop as a “vehicle to educate” about race and transform America. Hip-hop, Kitwana argues, there “can be the solution. The global hip-hop industry offers a powerful infrastructure that can be turned towards transformative, liberating purposes. A generational agenda can be pursued in a “unified front” merging culture and politics.”
Jason Rodriguez (Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Liberal Arts) shares similar ideas of Hip Hop in his “Color-Blind Ideology and the Cultural Appropriation of Hip-Hop.” The majority of participants in his study displayed colorblind beliefs on race and Hip Hop. Rodriguez conducted participant observation research at twenty Hip-Hop concerts, in Northampton, Massachusetts, to observe how white Hip Hop fans understand their involvement in an “unmistakably African American art form”. Rodriguez found that most participants interviewed stated race is a silent feature. For example, the white adolescents who attended concerts where race was a focus of the artist’s performance remained oblivious of the connection to white privilege and structural racism. Rodriguez suggests “they use color-blindness to justify their presence in the scene by asserting the irrelevance of race in their lives and ignoring the privileges of their white identities. In as within the critical media education movement, scholarship has emerged to examine how Hip Hop can be mobilized in schools to empower youth and facilitate students”. Hip Hop “invokes counterhegemonic voices from the margins”.