Inside rap on the rising generation

In all forms of art the best work is often provocative, cutting edge and subversive. Popular music is no exception.

Whether it was the Beatles’ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds, the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK, or Madonna’s Erotica, some of the most interesting music has developed from worldviews that are decidedly non-Christian.

This year over half of the songs in the national top 10 have regularly been hip-hop and rap.

In the early 90s the gruesomely violent and sexually explicit lyrics of NWA, Ice-T and Ice Cube gave rap music a notoriously bad reputation. But rap was still a subculture ‘out there’.

Now that hip-hop and rap is consistently topping the charts, music promoting violent, hedonistic lifestyles is more prevalent than ever. In the rap world, life’s goal is to obtain as many girls, cars, drugs and dollars as possible.

One man at the forefront of the ‘pop’ trend in hip-hop is 50 Cent. Known for being shot nine times, 50 Cent is a protégé of Eminem – arguably the most important recording artist of the new millennium. One can’t deny the talent of these artists. They are making extremely catchy music loved by radio and teenagers alike.

But can we really separate musical brilliance from the distasteful lyrics?

The new 50 Cent album, The Massacre is the follow up to his massively successful 2003 release Get Rich or Die Tryin’. That album spawned the party anthem In Da Club, with the lyrics ‘You can find me in the club…I got the ecs if you into taking drugs, I’m into having sex, I ain’t into making love’.

Not much has changed on 50’s new album. The Massacre is produced by Eminem and Dr Dre which gives the album the infectious urban sound we have come to expect from the pairing. The keyboard driven, bass-heavy tracks with contagious hooks will appeal to hip-hop aficionados everywhere. The album’s latest single, Disco Inferno, is a club friendly track, which teenagers driving around will be sure to pump out of speakers five times as expensive as their cars.

However, the song’s lyrics confirm the rap stereotype. They objectify women, with the video clip featuring bikini-clad women being drenched in alcohol by 50 Cent and his friends.

At the other end of the rap spectrum is Nitty’s Player’s Paradise. Nitty is best known for his recent number one single Nasty Girl, an update of The Archies’ 1969 song Sugar Sugar. Nitty is being marketed as a supposedly more family-friendly rap singer who believes encouraging women to ‘get nasty’ is helping them express themselves.

Nitty’s videos still feature scantily-clad women – he is just less explicit than 50 Cent.

Although Nitty is slightly safer lyrically, his sound is derivative of the mass of hip-hop artists who populate the charts. In contrast, while 50 Cent’s lyrics encapsulate everything bad about humanity – one can’t deny the musical talent.

Parents concerned with monitoring their children’s music intake will want to find a balance between over-protectiveness and over-permissiveness.

The Rev Matthew Pickering, chaplain to the Sydney Church of England Grammar School (SHORE), urges teenagers to think critically about worldviews put forward by musicians in their lyrics. “Youth today are being marketed to. They need to be informed and think about the worldviews of these artists and then work out what is appropriate for themselves,” he says. 

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