Music has always been impactful. Music is used to express one’s feelings, some rappers use their music to speak up about things affecting the community, and even use their music as an open space to speak on their past traumas, childhoods, and things they’ve been through.
For many years, gangs have been a part of many rappers’ lives and their music is starting to reflect that. Many songs contain explicit lyrics, they normalize drugs, gang violence, and cruelty to women and men. From 2018 to now at least 2 rappers have lost their lives due to gun violence, 2022 being the year with the most losses causing a total of 9 losses.
The music is starting to become more harmful and dangerous for the youth to listen to. A lot of kids looked up to a lot of the rappers who lost their lives like: King Von, Pop Smoke, Takeoff, Nipsey Hussle, XXXTentacion, Tupac Shakur, etc. A lot of these rappers have left a legacy even after death with their music and continue to influence the youth. After asking Jaywin Willam, a senior, how his favorite rapper influences him he said “he inspires me to be a better person for sure”.
With the years passing a lot of these rappers are starting to get more desensitized and inhumane in their lyrics or even outside of their songs. They speak on others’ deaths, threaten others who oppose them, and make living that lifestyle look “cool”. When kids look at these rappers they think they’re cool because they wear the clothes that the kids want, have money, wear expensive jewelry, live in nice houses, have new cars, and even have pretty girls by their side.
They make dances to mock people’s deaths and do “diss tracks” which gain popularity that the youth sees and also participate in. When I asked Jordan Pierre, senior how he felt about his favorite rapper he stated “he’s so great, top 1 rapper of all time, you can hear the pain and agony in his voice when he raps” when asked how he feels when he listens to him he stated, “he makes me either want to cry myself to sleep because I relate, or rob a random for no reason”.
It’s starting to feel like the rappers are bringing their past with them into this new journey which is causing the rapping industry/world to become a dangerous and harmful thing to be a part of. This Is influencing our youth into thinking this is okay and cool just because they wish they looked like them or crave their lifestyle and the attention a lot of these rappers have.
