How Does Rap Music Cause Violent Crimes

Thousands of American citizens are victim to violent crimes every day, dozens are murdered, over a hundred are shot, and even more commit suicide. Millions have drug addictions and even more are considered alcoholics. What could be the motivation towards these vicious outcomes? Music of course, mean lyrics, and loud drums must be the cause of all these heinous crimes and tragedies. While the notion of a song causing someone to assault someone is more than foolish, music is often blamed for much of the poor behavior of the American population. Of course many other forms of entertainment such as television and video games face the same accusations. Whether they “increase aggression”, “cause violence”, or “advertise drug use”, something will always

When the idea of drugs and music coming together is stated, most will think towards rap hip-hop, and maybe some rock. Some of this is true, for rap holds the lead for most drug and alcohol references at 77% of songs containing this kind of content (). However second place is often ignored in this debate, country music with 36% of its songs containing these references (). This is followed by hip-hop at 20%, rock at 14% and pop at 9% (). Rap is still far in the lead with twice as many as country, but it brings up the idea that country should have a similar effect as rap does. It is very clear rap is most popular in cities housing lower income which is due to the history of what the genre derived from. Rap was made from mainly the black American population during times when racism was at a high. Most black people were forced into low income jobs and had great prejudice against them. When someone has very little money it is more likely for them to commit a crime such as theft (). When someone has to work three jobs just to live, they have a much higher chance of getting into drug or alcohol addictions to make them happier and help them get through the day (). This all became the life for these poor people before rap came into its own. Rap music’s lyrics that reference these substances clearly didn’t start their usage, nor does all of it promote these addictions (). To put facts into this argument, drug use has changed rapidly over the past years. Heroin usage in America has gone down drastically since 1990 when it was at an all time high (). Cocaine has gradually decreased over the years (). In the place of these addicting, deadly drugs is marijuana, one of the safest and least addictive illegal drugs (). Marijuana use has increased at about the same rate that heroin use has decreased, meaning it is a positive outcome considering cocaine use is also going down (). However there is also the topic of alcohol