Criminally Irresponsible Music Industry
I originally posted this on Vibe Magazine's message board in August of last year.
A lot of money is being made at the expense of our children. The television industry, music industry, and publications like Vibe are lying to our children. It's criminal how they are targeting our little ones and manipulating their thought lives with negativity. Behind all the videos and beats, the heart of a song is its expression of an idea.
When I turn on the radio or watch videos it saddens me to see the hateful messages being sent out. Our music is promoting selfishness, materialism, self-degradation, violence, drunkenness, lawlessness, adultery, and all other kinds of immorality and irresponsibility. Combine these social influences with peer pressure and cyclical family dysfunctions and you get this:
· 13% of the population but 46% of those in prison/jail
· 50% high school dropout rates is some of our areas
· Black people are 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites
I could go on with the stats but there’s no need. Many Hip Hop entertainers throw gas on the fire and call it art, and we envy and celebrate these death merchants while they aid in the destruction of our people. Content matters! Ideas are more deadly than bullets. When is the last time you saw a gun fire itself? It takes a thought to squeeze that trigger. If you plant enough negative thoughts into impressionable minds, what do you think happens?
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. Mt 12:35
A lot of money is being made at the expense of our children. The television industry, music industry, and publications like Vibe are lying to our children. It's criminal how they are targeting our little ones and manipulating their thought lives with negativity. Behind all the videos and beats, the heart of a song is its expression of an idea.
When I turn on the radio or watch videos it saddens me to see the hateful messages being sent out. Our music is promoting selfishness, materialism, self-degradation, violence, drunkenness, lawlessness, adultery, and all other kinds of immorality and irresponsibility. Combine these social influences with peer pressure and cyclical family dysfunctions and you get this:
· 13% of the population but 46% of those in prison/jail
· 50% high school dropout rates is some of our areas
· Black people are 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites
I could go on with the stats but there’s no need. Many Hip Hop entertainers throw gas on the fire and call it art, and we envy and celebrate these death merchants while they aid in the destruction of our people. Content matters! Ideas are more deadly than bullets. When is the last time you saw a gun fire itself? It takes a thought to squeeze that trigger. If you plant enough negative thoughts into impressionable minds, what do you think happens?
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. Mt 12:35
posted by T.H. @ 1:01 PM
5 Comments:
At 3:44 PM,
Waddie G. said…
I really love this post, man...(fake) gangstas, living "the street life" and ebonics is being taught to young Black America over propserity and education.
At 5:34 PM,
T.H. said…
Songs and videos are commercials for ideas.
Thank you for commenting.
At 11:02 AM,
Sonya Triggs-Wharton said…
You are so right about the message that modern music is sending out. When I listen to the radio, I am bombarded with verbiage about shaking your booty, one-night stands, disrespect to both men and women, players and the 'game' and a whole host of lyrics on the supremacy of material things over values. I try to tell myself that young adults don't take it seriously and can separate music from real life, but then I sadly realize how much music influences our perception of real life.
Great post! Keep up the good work.
At 3:12 AM,
ms mimi the mocha soulchild said…
I was talking with a friend of mine about this recently. As a child of the hip-hop generation I think the biggest thing I have seen change in the past 20 years is the commercialization of hip hop, the rise of the music video, and the decline of the radio.
Sadly, we're not selling the music anymore, we're selling an "urban image" which is culturally handicapped by glitzy marketable urban mythology like "ghettofabulous" lifestyles.
As an artist myself, I don't think hip hip is bad, but I think that like any art, the artists, producers, and distributors cannot just back and profit on a culture of death in the name of art and duck the consequences.
You don't have to be a role model to be an artist, but we are crazy to say that the artist has no responsibility to the product they are pushing...
great post!
www.worthwatering.blogspot.com
At 10:10 AM,
T.H. said…
Sonya, Mimi,
Thanks for your comments. I plan to revisit this topic after I finish my finals this week. I picked a funny time to want to start blogging because I'm right in the middle of finals.
Anyway, thanks for commenting I will give a full response to your comments in the form of another post sometime next week.
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