Violence: Cause or Effect

As you can see from my other post, violence is prevalent in the hip-hop community. But, is hip-hop the cause of this violence, or is the violent music and effect of what is going on in the “hood.” Hip-hop was known as the ghetto CNN in the past. Hip-hop was a media platform that allowed artist to create music about things that are relevant to them, about the places they live, it gives information like CNN about things CNN would never broadcast. Now we have sites like YouTube and WorldStarHipHop (self proclaimed ghetto CNN) to give us insight about what is going on in these urban areas, because it is still not put in major media circulation. Does hip-hop still serve this purpose?

Many people blame hip-hop for causing so much violence. That is not the case, hip-hop may cause violence on rare occasions and that is still a major problem. Hip-Hop INFLUENCES LOTS of violence, and then it is not handled appropriately. Individual responsibility is taken lightly now of days. I am not saying that the violence in hip-hop is good and does not need to leave nor am I saying the it does not have a bad influence on the youth, but what I am saying is that we cannot make hip-hop the sole factor for causing violence when it is one of many factors, and in my opinion a small factor in some cases.

Tony Anderson did a study similar to this while analyzing the effect of youtube on hip-hop. And after hearing his findings we find out that most of these rappers from the hood talk about violence because its what they know, its what they seen. They rap about drugs, not to promote them, but because they actually use or sold them.

The violence in music is a reflection of everyday life. Hip-hop is still the news for the “hood.”