Gangster Rap and Its Social Cost: Exploiting Hip Hop and Using Ra ...

music awards. Sales and awards are viewed as evidence of the music’s importance and as vindication that should silence potential critics. Given gangster rappers’ focus on commercial success, it is not surprising that gangster rap albums and artists dominate best-seller lists and music award ceremonies. This bias is that of gangster rappers, their promoters, and the multinational media corporations that back them. It is essential for them and their success that gangster rap be seen as an intrinsic part of hop hip, thus obscuring and justifying gangster rap’s controversial content. There is no such value placed on market sales and awards in hip hop; in fact, the movement bias is to suspect such commercial and industry acceptance. Even so, in the last decade, some hip hop artists have also gained increasing public attention and awards.

Fourth, studying it independently of hip hop reveals gangster rap to be the source of much of the controversy surrounding hip hop music. Critics and supporters alike acknowledge that gangster rap lyrics are characterized by misogyny, that they pander to racial stereotypes, and that they rely extensively on use of the words nigger and bitch. They promote violence, drug use, and drug dealing. Because gangster rap and its abuses are so embedded in hip hop, however, critics are at a loss to press their case. For attacking the abuses in gangster rap, a commentator is charged with attacking hip hop, black youth, black communities, and ultimately all youth culture. Thus, despite their objections, potential critics are deterred by the scale and the seeming complexity of the enterprise. Defenders who claim gangster rap and hip hop are one and the same musical entity, such as Michael Eric Dyson, specifically categorize Jay-Z (gangster) with Nas (hip hop) and Missy Elliott (gangster) with Lauryn Hill (hip hop; Dyson, 2007, p. xx). This move indirectly acknowledges the difference between gangster rap and hip hop but glosses over gangster rap’s problems by identifying it with hip hop.

Finally, sufficient evidence has accrued to support the statement that gangster rap music and videos have potentially negative effects on the psychological well-being and life course of many young listeners and that