We get it. Rap music is full of explicit lyrics. If you listen to any modern rap song on the radio, chances are the song has been heavily censored. Nowadays, much of rap is consistently misogynistic, glorifies criminal activity or encourages drug use. What has happened to the poetry in the real-life stories?
A prime example of what is wrong with rap is Miami-based Rick Ross. Reebok recently booted him from an advertising campaign for lyrics he wrote in “U.O.E.N.O.” The lyrics are too explicit to republish, but essentially he rapped about slipping a drug into a woman’s drink, taking her home and, well, you can infer the rest.
Lyrics like these are abominable. Rappers are constantly scrutinized for their explicit lyrics, so it is expected that they push back by writing more incendiary lyrics. Then we hear songs about sexual assault or Lil’ Wayne’s decision to mock the death of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy who was murdered during the Civil Rights Movement for allegedly flirting with a Caucasian woman. That line, which is purely provocative for the sake of defiance, like Ross’, holds no artistic value nor does it set any sort of example for their listeners. Rap used to be about finding the roses between the cracks in the sidewalk. Rap is now about how ostentatiously they spend their money and how many women they objectify. It needs to stop.
Rick Ross is exactly what is wrong with modern rap music. Rap was extremely engrained with social issues and criminal activity because people like Tupac and Biggy rapped about their experiences growing up in neighborhoods where crime, sexual assault and general deviance happened daily. Now rap does not have that same effect because the most popular artists such as Drake and Rick Ross attempt to be as thug as possible, meanwhile they grew up middle-class or were never in a gang.
A lack of education and culture is becoming apparent in today’s music. While the art and poetry that was rap begins to fade behind declarations, “my swag,” artists like Ludacris invent stories of their lives in the hood, simply mimicking the giants of the 1990s. What actual hardships are these people actually talking about anymore? They do not have any stories as dramatic as their predecessors so they feel the need to invent personas to live up to a badass image they can never truly embody.
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