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

but growing systematic and experimental studies on rap music’s effects on listeners. This evidential literature has, to date, been largely ignored in the commentary on rap. I next present a citywide case study of gangster rap’s influence on African American nonlisteners in San Jose, California. People who have had no direct connection with the music have seen their lives altered because of it, demonstrating that the influence of in general and of gangster rap in particular is much greater than the music itself.

Major Premises

After seven years of listening, interviewing, and reading, I have developed several major premises that inform this work. The first is that hip hop is a social movement that has not been studied as such by academic and journalistic writers. As a result, hip hop has not been compared with past social movements whose primary focus was cultural expression. If hip hop is not considered as a social movement, there is no way to inform the controversy about rap’s development and potential longevity. As a social movement, hip hop has yet to develop a formalized philosophy. Thus, key is the question whether subsequent developments in rap, hip hop, and gangster rap are consistent with the movement. When looking specifically at hip hop, one finds that it has extraordinary potential for positive social change.

Second, hip hop and gangster rap are diametric opposites in philosophy, values, and approach. Gangster rap is a commercialization of hip hop intent on exploiting an insatiable audience appetite for music with hardened gangster themes. One reason the hip hop movement has not been taken seriously as a social and artistic movement is that it is confused with gangster rap. This was pointed out early on in the hip hop movement by its founders but, oddly, has been ignored in virtually all subsequent commentary.

Third, hip hop music can be distinguished from gangster rap and should be viewed as an independent genre. The conventional assumption that the two cannot be disentangled is nonsense. Most writing on hip hop and gangster rap privileges best-selling albums and artists who have received