Crooke, A., & Jr., R. T. (2019, May 18). The healing power of hip hop. Retrieved April 7, 2020, from http://theconversation.com/the-healing-power-of-hip-hop-81556

The article explains how hip hop and rap music culture has been negatively scrutinized by the public due to the lyrical content that includes profanity, misogyny, and violence. The public believes hip hop music is negatively affecting kids along with influencing them to commit crimes. The public can not look past the lyrical part of the music and understanding the message that hip hop is conveying. That hip hop was built on core values of social justice, self-worth, and community. In addition, these values can be used to help physicians treat and connect with their younger patients dealing with mental health problems in a form of musical therapy. This source gives another perspective on how hip hop and rap music culture can have a positive effect on children. 

Council on Communications. (2009, November 1). Impact of Music, Music Lyrics, and Music Videos on Children and Youth. Retrieved March 27, 2020, from https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/5/1488 

This article presents the importance of how music lyrics and music videos affect an adolescence’ emotions as well as behavior. In addition, the article explains how music is part of everyday society and how the adolescences are using music to reflect on how they feel to take control of their emotional status. The author explains how certain genders listen to certain music such as girls are more likely than guys to listen to music to reflect their emotional state of feeling loneliness while guys listen to music to boost their energy. Unfortunately, popular music is now depicting and referencing drugs, sex, and violence that parents should be aware of due to the fact it’s negatively affecting their child’s behavior and views This is an informative source for parents to keep their child safe from negative influences that come from popular music.  

My thoughts on non-black cultures using rap music to express themselves. Is that I’m fine with different ethnicities making rap music as long as they don’t cross the line of disrespecting black culture. I find it okay for someone to express their story in the form of rap cause everyone has a different upcoming. What I do not like is people using the n-word when they have no right to say it in their rap music. They say it is okay due to the fact that their buddies who are black say they gave them permission. The thing is there is no such thing as permission to use the n-word cause they are not meant to say it cause they are not black. In today’s society, many song lyrics in rap music use the n-word according to Priester ( 2018), “ black people and black rappers can throw it around all they want, because “it’s acknowledging our mutual struggle,” or “reclaiming” the power of the word”(p.1). I believe this is the reason they use it in their lyrics to reclaim the word, but when non-black people use the word it is just disrespectful and ignorant to say it even if it is in a rap song and when non-white people rap about it is even worse. Furthermore, rap music should be used to express yourself not to give non-blacks a right to say the n-word.

In our survey, “Rap Music”, we focused on asking questions about different demographics and connections to misogyny in rap. The survey was filled out by a total of 120 participants, but the web site only allows 60 responses. Out of 60 who filled out our survey 33 were female and  27 of them male. The first pattern was that the majority of the participants started to listen to rap music between the ages of 7-17. Since rap music is considered R rated due to the profanity and violence in rappers lyrics, 7-17 seemed a bit young to be listening. Another pattern is that many people listen to rap when they are alone, rather than in large social groups. Furthermore, the question about, “How do you feel when rap music talks about women?”, brought many mixed answers. Female participants stated rappers talk about women in a negative light and that it’s offensive, while male participants said that rappers speak badly about women because that’s how rap music is, as well as they don’t care what they rap about as long as the music is good to listen to. This relates to the question “What do you like about rap music?” with 70.69%  of them enjoying the sounds and beats rather than the actual rap lyrics. This suggests that many people prefer the sounds and background music over the actual meanings of the lyrics cause they don’t take time to fully understand. Overall both genders enjoy listening to rap cause it makes them feel good.

 In many ways music has always had a huge influence in society it’s a language we can all understand and it connects us emotionally while also bringing us together as a society. It also has the power to inspire and motivate us to do great things with our lives and lastly, music is just a necessity in life meant to bring us relief.

Music has a way of telling stories through melodies and lyrics that everyone can somehow relate too. Multiple songs cause certain feelings to appear like happiness or sadness causing you to either dance out of joy or cry from heartbreak. Music can connect a society in many ways. Concerts are when an artist gathers all of their followers in a certain location to just experience the music together. This typically leads to the listeners forming a strong bond with the artist. On the other hand, just sitting with a group of people blasting the radio is also a way music unites us, allowing us to make memories with those around us it’s the background music to our lives. Secondly, many people listen to music to put themselves in a certain mood such as playing upbeat music while working out to get their heart racing or listening to a song about moving on after a breakup to get them in a cheery mood. Music just has a way to make a person feel good leading to productive behavior and improvement. In addition, music is also very therapeutic the way the instrumentals and sounds harmonize together to create beautiful expressions of emotions sounds so pleasant to the ear allowing the mind to heal.

Overall music always finds a way to connect people with common emotions and help them get through different situations using beautiful vocals or instrumentals to create a harmony of soothing sounds to inspire them to do greater things. 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus you own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.