[Klaustrophobia]

but if people didn't listen to it and idolize it, record companies wouldn't push it.

If there's only bread available, you eat bread. If a form of music involving guns and '*****es' is the only easily available form of music that represents your culture, you start to believe that is the choice of the culture, not the white collar execs of the Record companies. It's a question of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, they aren't singing about how they live, they are trying to live what they heard sung about.

i don't buy it.  at all.  i've been 100% surrounded by this culture from pretty much the sixth grade till college, and never bought into it.  i listen to a lot of hard rock, but i'm not covered in tatoos with my earlobes gauged out wearing all black and a spiked collar.  nor do i drive an 86' red pickup truck down to the crick to go fishun and watch nascar listening to country music because i'm a white guy from the south.  music only has a culture behind it because the listeners make it so.

[General Battuta]

but if people didn't listen to it and idolize it, record companies wouldn't push it.

If there's only bread available, you eat bread. If a form of music involving guns and '*****es' is the only easily available form of music that represents your culture, you start to believe that is the choice of the culture, not the white collar execs of the Record companies. It's a question of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, they aren't singing about how they live, they are trying to live what they heard sung about.

i don't buy it.  at all.  i've been 100% surrounded by this culture from pretty much the sixth grade till college, and never bought into it.  i listen to a lot of hard rock, but i'm not covered in tatoos with my earlobes gauged out wearing all black and a spiked collar.  nor do i drive an 86' red pickup truck down to the crick to go fishun and watch nascar listening to country music because i'm a white guy from the south.  music only has a culture behind it because the listeners make it so.

I don't think your culture is as strongly identified with a particular brand of music as being African-American (not generically black, but African-American) is with rap. Rap consistently turns up pretty high on IAT tests for stereotypic associations, in much the same way something like 'rice' does with Asians.

[chief1983]

I will say, I've grown to like quite a bit more hip hop and rap than I ever would have expected to, but it took a while to give it a shot because all I was ever exposed to was the **** 12 year olds think is cool.  Took a while to find stuff like Slick Rick, Sugarhill Gang, Digital Underground, Tech N9ne or even Eminem (like him or not, he definitely comes from an honest angle in his later stuff).  And let's not forget Monzy.

As far as culture goes, that's become a vicious cycle where the media is raising more kids than their parents, because the parents were raised by the media that portrays them in such a manner, etc.  No one is raising the kids because no one raised the people who had the kids.  Who's going to point out the drug war's correlation to the re-collapse of much of urban society (or the drugs themselves, whichever one you feel like arguing)?  There is a lot of drug use in the city, and heroine junkies don't raise their kids.

And yeah, there's nothing like the shocking realization that the suburban girls learned how to behave from Brittney Spears and TI music videos.  Good job team, way to go.

[Flipside]

but if people didn't listen to it and idolize it, record companies wouldn't push it.

If there's only bread available, you eat bread. If a form of music involving guns and '*****es' is the only easily available form of music that represents your culture, you start to believe that is the choice of the culture, not the white collar execs of the Record companies. It's a question of a self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, they aren't singing about how they live, they are trying to live what they heard sung about.

i don't buy it.  at all.  i've been 100% surrounded by this culture from pretty much the sixth grade till college, and never bought into it.  i listen to a lot of hard rock, but i'm not covered in tatoos with my earlobes gauged out wearing all black and a spiked collar.  nor do i drive an 86' red pickup truck down to the crick to go fishun and watch nascar listening to country music because i'm a white guy from the south.  music only has a culture behind it because the listeners make it so.

Oh, I agree, there are always exceptions to the rule, and it's not just a question of throwing a rope, it's also a question of choosing to climb it, but the fact is, when I was into heavy rock music, I did grow my hair long and act all moody etc, though that was possibly more about being a teenager, whilst I didn't try to act out the words of the songs I listened to, I certainly tried to act out the 'ethos' of that music to a certain degree. It's like listening to sad songs when you are feeling down, it magnifies the effect, that's not a bad thing as such, we've used music to enhance experience for years, that's why there is such a market in Movie and Game music, but the thing I've learned about many teenagers is that they will pick something that their parents don't like and roll with it 110%, the more excluded they feel, the more strong the reaction.

The thing about music companies is that it is self powering, they project an image of 'listen to rap music, it identifies with your culture!', when it doesn't, a large majority of rap isn't about African culture in the slightest, but more with what America, in particular, has come to identify as Black Culture, often with the focus on what would be considered the 'worst' aspects of it. I'm not making an all-encompassing statement though, like the fact that many white teenagers are happy to also listen to the same regurgitated crap over and over again as well.

As a friend of mine said in jest when we were talking about our teenage years (Yes, I'm catching up on 40, it's starting to show)...

"I'll be an individual if you are too...."

[Woolie Wool]

Never understood the problems with US citizens and their treatment towards black fellows, seriously speaking US people seem to be more sensitive about this than people from other parts of the world.

Might be related to some of the country's historical events, but I'm too lazy to dig on that.

Yeah, it might be...

[Rodo]

That happened everywhere slave trade was legal, which I would dare to say was the entire American continent. Still we (well at least me) don't feel discrimination as such an offensive behaviour, there are other things that make me worry a lot more.
Don't get me wrong, of course it's not ok, but we don't take it to that level of importance, that made me wonder why are you so sensitive about this subject.

(note that I don't know for sure if this is actually a sensitive subject to US people, but the fact that this kind of discussions arise from time to time in these forums and from watching the world news... well, that's the feeling I get).

[Flipside]

I think part of the problem was the way desegregation was dealt with in America, whole new sections of town were built or used to house non-white communities, the original 'ghettos' as it were. Even in a more mixed environment like the UK, there is still a natural tendency for people of similar cultures to 'clump together', in an environment that was also suffering pre and post depression that effect became more pronounced.

A friend of mine has a brother who lives in Detroit, he is of hispanic origin, and he went to visit a few weeks ago. Most of the US isn't really all that terrible, like with rap music, media loves to blow up the worst, most sensationalistic aspects of it, but there are cities with areas that are effectively off-limits to certain colours after a certain time, not through laws, but through inter-racial tension, where entire swathes of a city are populated almost entirely by a single culture.

But, that said, there are areas of London that I wouldn't recommend you visited after a certain time, regardless of skin colour, though that would have an impact.

[mxlm]

pic

[Nemesis6]

But, that said, there are areas of London that I wouldn't recommend you visited after a certain time, regardless of skin colour, though that would have an impact.

I visited London long ago. Me and a group of people were on a guided tour, retracing the steps of Jack the Ripper. We came across what I think was Brick Lane, though looking at the google image photos, it looks much prettier there. In any case, if that was it, it was run down, with these eerie small shops, some closed, and so on. It just looked run down and sad. Also, the street had stores like "Islamic X" all the way down. X of course being being "book shop", "study center", etc. I think this was a predominantly Bangladeshi neighborhood. After the fact, I found out that our tour guide had also been threatened by youth gangs in the area. Not a very nice area at all. Living in an area that's in a state like that, I don't really understand why they'd want to live there, even if there are many fellow countrymen settled there.

[Mars]

I understand parts of Liverpool are really bad.

[Nuke]

i dont like rap much at all. i dont like how much its idolized. i dont like its content. but it is a massive red light telling us how bad the music industry is. they will destroy any genre that they touch to make a buck.