The wrap on (c)rap music, part 2

In the last Daily Dose, I tried to bring you up to speed on just what kind of messages our nation’s kids are getting in the music they’re listening to nowadays. If you’re like me, you were more or less clueless about it – blissfully so, since most of this stuff’s so decadent and disturbing it’s hard to even rap, er, wrap your head around.

I ended up that essay by promising to add some hard evidence to my contention that – unlike in the days of Elvis and the Beatles (when music was merely stimulating) – pop music of today REALLY IS damaging our society. So, without further ado

According to the UK’s Daily Mail, a 3-year American study concluded that popular music – specifically rap (also called hip-hop) and rap-rock – have a fairly profound affect on kids’ attitudes about sex. The study of nearly 1,500 teenaged kids from across the U.S. was conducted by leading health-care research organization The RAND Corporation, and was published in a recent issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The study’s general conclusion is that rap music and its hybrids that contain “sexually degrading lyrics” (all of it, basically) promote earlier sexual activity, a greater incidence of STDs, and an increased frequency of teenage pregnancy – abortions, too, no doubt.

Here are some of the study’s key findings and suppositions: Rap music of an overtly sexual nature reinforces the image among kids that proper male behavior is that of sexual conqueror – and that proper female behavior is that of a submissive, permissive sexual object

Randy rapping may contribute to both sexes becoming oversexed by promoting unrealistic images of “normal” sexual frequency – and also portraying sexual intercourse as inconsequential, like scratching an itch
Teens who listened to similar amounts of sexually explicit rap music showed similar degrees of heightened or premature sexuality – regardless of their race or gender
By an overwhelming degree, only rap and rap-rock music were judged by the study’s authors as “degrading” – country, rock, and softer pop music contained virtually no such content, though all had sex or romance components

Bottom line: I wonder how many of this nation’s 750,000 teen pregnancies, 4 million cases of STDs, and God knows how many abortions could have been prevented by simply shutting off the radio or video channels on TV. Keep reading [ADS/BLURBS] According to the Daily Mail article, the average youngster listens to 1.5 – 2.5 hours of “music” per day – not including what they take in watching music videos on TV

Which could be another hour or two at least, if statistics about childhood television viewing trends are correct.

That means, given the booming popularity of rap music in the U.S., it wouldn’t be unrealistic to think that the typical American kid could be absorbing at least 2 hours per day of dangerous, perception-skewing, virtue-destroying “entertainment,” courtesy of the uneducated, gang-banging ghetto thugs that are predominantly spitting out these venomous verses for mind-boggling paydays

And who can blame them? I don’t. They’ve found a huge market for their bile, and they’re exploiting it. They’re living the American dream, and reaping the benefits of the glorious capitalism that made our nation great.

You have to remember that it’s PARENTS who are either buying these songs for their kids, giving them the money to buy or download them, or allowing them to listen and be influenced by them on TV and the radio.

As with everything else, the answer is not a ban on explicit expression – but the more explicit expression of parental responsibility to guide and educate kids.