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Comment by GLGirty | Hacker News Reader

Please let's not point fingers at hip hop as if there are not lots of examples of violence in rock, pop, and country. If you suggested "Janie's Got A Gun", "Pumped Up Kicks", and "Goodbye Earl" were making kids more violent, you would be laughed out of the room, Karen.

Music is a reflection of culture, and when there is violence in culture, artists make art out of it to cope. If black music seems more violent to you than white music, please meditate on how much more violence black people experience than white people, and why someone would presume one genre is reactive and another genre is causative.

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Or the countless songs in the Punk genera about burning down buildings and causing general havoc (like giving someone the wrong time). The set of people who actually commit domestic terrorism (or say no to tea) is much smaller than the set of people who listen to the Sex Pistols for instance. If anything, there's no compelling reason to think they it's the music causing the violence, rather than people who are into that lifestyle selecting an art form that reflects what they already believe.

Punk didn't have nearly the distribution, but yes punk rock is the closest I can think of to an analogue for exporting violence to non-Black youth. The other being Italian mafioso movies, creating a stereotype for some to "look up to". If you grew up around Bay Ridge in Brooklyn around those times, you'd see the effect. It isn't a race thing, it's a culture thing where the worst elements are being purposely amplified and distributed to everyone by a movie/music industry.

Why has Blaxploitation became not ok but gangsta rap is still considered “just art” with misogynistic and violent lyrics portraying Blacks self describing themselves as materialistic thugs, they were role models “poppin bottles”? Are women not 50% of the population, why is it OK? Why is it OK to have lyrics about mistreatinf Black women etc. as “just art” and Ice Cube who uses B’s and H words about women in his music comes on to Bill Maher’s show to lecture him about how using the N word even about yourself in a joking way is “not cool”? Yet it is cool to be a non-woman and using slurs against women? I think both are uncool.

You make a good point that hiphop has a misogyny problem, (it also suffers from misogyny's sibling disease, homophobia,) but why keep that issue focused on black music when all music has a misogyny problem[1]. Is Kanye worse than Robin Thicke or The Nails?

[1]https://www.flavorwire.com/489278/25-of-musics-most-obnoxiou...

Edit: Thanks for your Soundcloud link. I like your flow. You make fair points, but I see no evidence that any of the issues you raise are worse in hiphop than any other genre. (Or that hiphop's issues are internally generated, and not amplified by an exploitative industry that makes bank off stereotypes.)

Yes but the violence was only in select pockets of inner city culture. The gangsta culture was exported to kids living in perfectly fine neighborhoods. Their parents were away working for corporations (more corporatism) while the kids who were raised by public schools and the street were most susceptible.

If you want to hear the arguments against gangsta rap and the exploitative music industry (exploiting externalities just like any capitalist industry)

Listen to me do it in rap form, from 2015 … and please comment

https://m.soundcloud.com/gregory-magarshak/gangsta-rap

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