Many claim hip-hop and rap culture, otherwise known as Gangsta Rap, to be influencing violence and gang activity. People are continually pointing fingers at lyrics that demean women, promote drugs and violence, and encourage negative relationships with authority as fueling the fire of gang-culture and violent activity. Is the music really to blame here? Or is there a bigger picture?
Dan Frosch of the New York Times, writes, Colorado Police Link Rise in Violence to Music about outbreaks in Colorado City in 2007, which were attributed to Gangsta Rap music and hip-hop culture.
Colorado Springs, known for its military installations and White Evangelical groups, was not happy when hip-hop culture took root.
Many claimed that a rise in shootings and murders in the city was due to the rise in hip-hop culture and the night club’s playing of rap music. Members of the city blamed the music and the night clubs for the rise in violence, but as James Baldrick, local hip-hop community promoter, states, “If we were talking about a rock bar or a country bar here, none of this would be happening.” A great point in my opinion, because if the same issue, say for instance, a shooting, had taken place at a saloon, with country music glamorizing binge drinking and partying, no one would say a word about it. But because “hip-hop culture” is formed by a minority, marginalized group of people, the blame is being placed on the music.
In my opinion, believing that hip-hop music alone can influence an entire community of people to become more violent is ignorant. The circumstances around it, looking at the history of ethnic relationships in this particular community, says all that it needs to. Gangsta Rap is not synonymous with criminal activity- instead, the bigger picture is the formation of cultural “resistance” identities as a result of being marginalized.
Resistance identities are a trend in the institutionalization of gangs, or more so, in the retreat of the state and other resources in marginalized areas with a minority group. Resistance identities are identities formed in opposition to the dominant culture, which in the case of Colorado Springs would be opposition to a culture surrounded by white conservative evangelical groups, and the uncertainty of an “unstable modernity.” Ultimately, resistance identities form as a way to resist homogenizing influences of westernization, a way to preserve one’s culture in a society that is constantly trying to undermine it, a way to stick together and stay true to themselves in times of oppression.
Gangsta Rap is just one way that these resistance identities are heard. Rap is more than music, it’s culture. It gives people a voice, a reinvention of traditional culture.
Sure, no one is denying the provocative language of rap music, but then again, where is all the outrage against country lyrics promoting drinking and partying, or rock and roll music promoting sex and glamorizing drugs- after all, the term was named sex, drugs, and ROCK AND ROLL, not sex, drugs, and “hip-hop.”
However, the reason these genres don’t get the same negativity as hip hop is due to one unfortunate factor- the fact that country and rock are associated with the ethnic majority: the White, the middle-upper class, the un-marginalized. What does NWA, Wu Tang, Tupac, and Biggie do? They give the state a place to point fingers, to take the focus off of themselves and their own inability to effectively address the issue of the marginalized ethnic groups of the nation. Blaming Gangsta Rap music for violence takes away the responsibility of those who are actually responsible for such social disorganization and places it in the hands of the already disadvantaged.
Between the Lines 