Hip Hop Culture: The Similarities Between Rap And Rap

On October 7th, shortly after ‘Stanford Rapist,’ Brock Turner, was released from jail, President Obama signed the Sexual Assault Survivor Bill of Rights into a law. In this act, our first black president gave hope and assistance to rape victims. However, these milestones that America has reached are far from the examples set in the rap industry. Within the genre of rap, there is an underlying, troubling culture that has emerged and grown throughout the continuous business of rap: rape culture. This violent, controlling culture exists when the act of rape or sexual assault is moralized and victim-blaming, such as “what was she wearing?”, “was she drunk?”, and “why didn’t she report it sooner?” It is also cultivated in the need for power and

While the two are often combined for convenience within music stores, they, in themselves, are actually not equivalent. Hip hop is a culture, a widespread phenomenon that has spread across the continents with a variety of different elements - one of those elements just so happen to be rap. While one fourth is a considerable part of a culture, it is not the entirety of it. According to Flavor Flav, even the small portion of the culture that is rap music “has slowly lost” the hip hop element, becoming “a slow tempo” instead of “something that makes you wanna get out there and breakdance” (Shaw). Whether or not this opinion is agreed on, it’s understandable noticing the disconnect between a music genre about outlandish and materialistic things, and a revolution to uplift and make a name for

Edgar Tyson developed a study, the Rap Music Attitude and Perception (RAP) Scale, that measures the effect of such violent and visual lyrics presenting in rap music. This 24 item instrument is the “only tool available to access an individual’s attitude toward and perception of rap music lyrics.” Ruby Gourdine and Brianna Lemmons further evaluated this study that incorporated the constructs to measure “violent, sexist, and misogynistic images conveyed in the lyrics.” They used this survey to examine students’ perceptions and attitudes of the shown content. Using a “meta-analysis approach”, Brook Bretthauer and her colleagues found that “listening to music generates an effect on listeners consistent with the content of the music,” in a follow-up study of Dr. Tyson’s research. This result is highly dangerous given the amount of “power over, objectification of and violence against women” that is showcased in rap This 2008 study applied the term “priming” to determine “whether music serves as a mechanism to ‘prime’ someone for subsequent actions and behaviors,” and in turn, react to, incorporate or reject the media content into the listener’s life (Timmerman et. al., 2008, p.