How Are Hip Hop and Rap Music Affecting

the Youth?
By Monica Acharya

Hip hop has been completely modified into a genre of music that no longer serves its original
purpose: voicing the political, social, and cultural struggles of the black people. In her book,
From Black Power to Hip-Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, Patricia Collins conveys,
“Mass media created a seemingly authentic Black American culture that glamorized drugs,
violence, and hypersexuality.” She also remarks that hip hop has been converted into a multi-
billion industry that has been turned to “generate cold, hard cash.” This statement is true because
nowadays, hip hop artists focus more on making money and glamorizing drugs, money, and
naked girls. There are many ways hip hop can affect a person, but, for this post, I will be
focusing on two major things: sex and drugs.

Sex

In her post, The Problem in Today’s Hip Hop and Rap, Addie Wagner detects a crucial thing
regarding hip hop. She states:

“ Because sex appears all throughout the media: television, music, advertisements, the public
has, for the most part, become numb to it. The television used to show married couples’
bedrooms with two separate beds and now, they almost show full sex scenes.”

These days, most of the sexual scenes are usually seen in hip hop music videos. So, why does
this matter, and how is this affecting the youth? I will explain these questions in details. Hip hop
and rap music have a negative impact on the sexual decisions of the youth because when young
people watch these videos, they might think that it is okay to become intimate with whoever they
desire, regardless of the number of people. This highly increases the risk of pregnancy and
sexually transmitted diseases.
Figure 1. Comparison between the black and white youth who listen to rap music and watch rap
music programs. Data is collected from the Black Youth Project.

Then, what is the connection between hip hop/rap and their negative effects on the youth? The
Black Youth Project (Figure 1) revealed that 58% black youth and 23% white youth listen to rap
music everyday, and 25% black youth and 5% white youth watch rap music programs daily. In
another research study, the Journal of Adolescent Research published a survey which reveals that
there is a close relationship between music preferences, and youth attitude and behaviors. The
research surveyed the youth (ages 17–21) who disclosed that their favorite type of music was hip
hop or rap, and 72% of them agreed that the music they listen to, in fact, influences them in some
way. Furthermore, the research also discovered that young people who listen to hip hop or rap
were more likely to exhibit risk-taking behaviors such as unsafe sex and drug use.
Figure 2. Comparison of different sexual activities between the black and white youth. Data is
collected from the Black Youth Project.

According to the Black Youth Project (Figure 2), 68 % black students and 43% white students
reported having sex at least once during their high school years. 28% black students and 11%
white students had sex with 4 or more partners. 17% black students and 4% white students
initiated sex before the age of 13. No data was shown for other races. In addition, out of the total
youth population, black youth had the highest percentage of sexually transmitted diseases. Black
youth comprised 55% of youth who had HIV and 61% with AIDS (Cohen et al. 5). Because the
black youth listened to rap music more (as seen from Figure 1), overall, the black youth had
early initiations for sex, higher numbers of sexual partners, and higher rates of HIV/AIDS.

Drugs

It’s no surprise that drug use, other than sex, is also commonly heard in hip hop music than in
any other genre of music. According to Dr. Brian Primack from The University of Pittsburgh, a
person comes across 251 references of drugs per day in rap music compared to 5 references per
day in pop music. An infographic from dailymail provides the names of the drugs that are
repeatedly mentioned in rap music. The most frequently mentioned drugs are Weed and Cocaine,
followed by Codeine, MDMA, and pharmaceutical drugs.

Gavin Clements, a fellow classmate, points out the relationship between hip hop and drug use in
his post Is Hip Hop Promoting the Drug Game? Clements expresses:
“I believe Hip Hop artists underestimate the influence they have on their audience, especially the
listeners that are from a younger generation. Drug use is bad enough but when it comes to drug
dealing it puts listeners at an even greater risk if they decide to pick up these same habits.”

The Pacific Institute of Research and Evaluation researched 1,200 California community-college
students (ages 15–25). The participants answered survey questions about their music-listening
habits, use of alcohol and drugs, and aggressive behaviors like fighting. Clements concern
regarding hip hop and drug use seems to be true because the study discovered that 70% of the
students who listened to hip hop or rap music had connections with their substance use and
aggressive behaviors.

Hip hop is one of the many ways, definitely not the only one, that can affect the youth. I am
writing this post not to condemn hip hop or rap music, but to make an awareness about several
ways it can affect us, the youth, negatively. By watching hip hop music videos that glamorize
drugs and sex, an individual may be tempted to try drugs or to have multiple partners just
because they are “curious.” Indeed, it appears that the more hip hop/rap music a person listens to,
the more negatively the individual will be affected.