[southpark]

I think the biggest influence on kids is the friends they have.

If their friends are bad your kid is likely to turn out bad.

I've listened to hard rock, and I've listened to rap. In my opinion, I have never heard the disgusting hateful things I've heard on rap albums on hard rock albums.

Tim, I have danced on stage for a paying audience twice. I am not kidding.

If your daughter needs to listen to rap music to dance to it, you may need to break it to her that she is not a very good dancer. Seriously.

Why not offer to pay for dance class -- ballet, modern, or jazz?

Moreover, even if she wants to just dance informally, the poor beats in rap are are easily bested by other styles of music. You pretty much have to be poorly coordinated with poor rhythm to enjoy dancing to rap music unless you want the song to match bending the girl over, or beding over if you're a girl, while the guy thrusts his pelvis into the girls bottom and does arse slapping motions with his hand.

House, hip house, drum and base, trance, trip hop, etc., all offer great music for young people to dance to (this is all current, cutting edge stuff by the way. If you bring it up with your daughter and your daughter doesn't know about it you won't look goofy, point out that she is the one who is uninformed (again, look at her friends) and that maybe she needs to visit iTunes (obviously going to raves and nightclubs would give first hand knowledge but then she could be exposed to illegal drugs, underage drinking, and sex with strangers (tough being a dad huh?) and try to hear more styles of music.

THERE IS NO REASON YOUR KID NEEDS TO LISTEN TO RAP BECAUSE THEY NEED IT TO DANCE. There are comparable alternatives musically, WITHOUT the terrible lyrics.

Would you let your son listen to recordings of Hitler's speeches with a pleasurable smile on his face just because he's studying the German language?

Of course, even in my forties I still get a kick from some lines in some songs, but they are clearly for adults only.

NWA (****** with attitude) and Easy E were always very funny. Here's a line about a neighbourhood ho, presumably nappy headed:

"You know she's good, nobody is better, but she's got more crabs than a seafood platter."

That's some funny stuff right there.

Good luck!

 

[southpark]

So sshooterz, we should let kids listen to this music so they can learn to be just like people from poor, crime-ridden neighbourhoods?

Um, I'm going to have to say no thanks to that one.

 

[southpark]

Yeah, go ahead and explain it a little more clearly for me.

If what we read and listen to didn't influence people then we wouldn't talk to our kids or send them to school.

The biggest problem I have with rap music is that kids emulate the way they speak.

To form ideas in our heads, or at least to express them so that others understand and appreciate it, we all use words. If most of the words you know are similar to bitch, ho, gat, blow, various articulations of hatred etc., you are going to be limited in the kinds of thoughts you are able to come up with. If you don't think that is true you haven't been paying attention to real life.

If you think kids, I assume that includes you, or close to it, need to hear the story of degradation and violence in the ghetto, why hear it from a guy who sings as if he were dealing out the degradation and violence rather than being a victim of it? All that does is glamourize dishing out degradation and violence to those weaker than one's self.

Moreover, if these "stories" are worth being told, they should be told in a book, or documentary or, if rap is the only way the author can express these important "stories" than play them for kids once like a trip to a museum or reading a book.

But playing it over and over as a form of enjoyment?

Think about jews being led to the gas chamber, shot in ditches, and emaciated behind barbed wire. Think about blacks being hosed down or lynched on a back woods tree.

Those are all important stories that need to be told right?

Now what would someone think if their kid watched those images over and over and over, every single day for hours on end.

I hope they would think there was something wrong with their kid.

But you go ahead and educate me SShooterZ, I'm always willing to learn more.

 

[southpark]

I think I got that the first time SShooterZ.

Think of this:
Heroin hurts kids.
Parent let's kid shoot up heroin.
Kid never shoots up heroin.
Has kid been harmed by heroin?

Or this:

Parent lets kid shoot up heroin.
Kid shoots heroin.
Kid dies from heroin overdose.
News says "the good news in this tragedy, is that heroin did not hurt the dead child."
Does this make sense?

I agree with you in that parents are part of the problem, but where we may differ is that I think rap actually hurts kids.

 

[southpark]

BMC, Run DMC released their first single in 1983.

Sugarhill Gang released the first commercially successful rap song in 1979.

Kurtis Blow had a Gold record rap single in 1980.

Even Blondie had a number one (on Billboard 100) rap song in 1981.

These artist started it all. However, Run DMC certainly remain greats for the genre.

Importantly, much earlier rap music actually did tell a story that was worth telling. For example, Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" (from 1982, also predating Run DMC). The lyrics of the day may have spoken of depravation, but did not, to my memory, glorify degredation of women and the weak.

 

[southpark]

No.

But my qualifications are as follows:

I was a child.

I often remain childish.

Every single one of my friends and associates were children.

Many of them listen to rap music and many of them do not.

Many of their kids listen to rap music and many of them do not.

I have personally heard the lyrics to many rap songs, both current, and from yesteryear.

Moreover, I have spent a lifetime actively studying what behaviour patterns and choices lead to success in life, and which lead to failure. Rap is usually, though not always, associated with failure for all but those who make money from its production.

I will concede that some people may listen to rap with ill effect. Similarly, I've known many people who have done hard drugs and it does not seem to have hurt their lives too much; though it may be a matter of degrees.

You pays your money and takes your chances. If you think the payoff is worth the risk vs. the available alternatives, good luck to you and your family beating the odds.

If you claim that I know nothing about growing up because I've only seen myself and those around me growing up rather than people I biologically created growing up, well then I'm going to have to call balderdash on that one.

 

[southpark]

Yeah BMC, I guess we're old school.

You probably are right about that too -- Run DMC really brought it to suburbia in a big way. Growing up in an area where white folks were a minority -- help, I'm oppressed! -- exposed me to that stuff from the beginning.

I should probably have mentioned that I'm talking about kids here. If someone is looking at their 18 year old and worrying about what they are listening to, it may not matter anymore.

We were at some friends the other night and were told how their daughters were singing some inappropriate line, the kids clearly didn't understand the meaning of, from a hip hop song and the parents thought it was cute. Ages four and six. We will think it cute when our six year old is quoting Shakespeare. Your mileage may vary.

 

[southpark]

40. Which happens to be the size of my 8-Ball. LOL!

 

[southpark]

Okay Tim, thanks for letting me know.

I've long suspected women teachers can't tell male students anything because they've never been guys. Similarly I've always thought criminals should run the prisons because what the heck would the warden know about people commit crime? I will also print this out and give it to the press the next time a civilian wants to direct the military, or a military guy wants to run politics -- they obviously don't know a thing.

Moreover, Tim, if your daughter really is familiar with all the different hip hop styles of music that provide the dance beat of rap, without the lyrics, and she still chooses to listen to rap, I truly wish the best for your daughter. Personally, I would worry what it says about her that she still likes listening to those lyrics even though she has similar musical alternatives.

If you look at my post above, you will see that I anticipated this sort of thing and clarified I've been talking about kids, not adults, which your daughter is, or is nearly.

She has a lot of living left to do. I truly hopes she grows up to fulfil all your expectations. Of course only time will tell.

I remain convinced however, that I would be no more impressed by anyone dancing to rap music than I would be impressed with African tribespeople dancing on a NatGeo special.

Furthermore, Eric Clapton glorified Cocain in a rather famous song, and was so negligent as a parent his child fell out his window to his death. Again, not a role model I would choose. If it works for you and 25 years from now your daughter is healthy, happy, and wise, and never made foolish decisions she regrets, I'll formally apologize and may consider becoming an advocate of rap music.

For now, even though I have no children of my own, if you think letting your kids (while they are children, not near-adults) listen to music that glorifies drug use, violence, and abuse of women, I think you are a damn fool and asking for trouble.

Regarding the trapshooting, yeah, she probably is a better shot then me.

 

[southpark]

SShooterZ, thank you for pointing it out. It is, in fact, about racial bias.

There is a bias in this country by white people to embrace the worst aspects of a growing, and disgusting, culture that violates the essence of what makes America great, for fear of being called a racist.

Pathetic.

Do you think that kids should be allowed to watch R rated movies?

Did you let your kid watch them?

What about television and cable? Do you belive in, and have you always practiced, a policy of letting your child watch any show on cable?

If not, why not? Don't you believe that if they see or hear something it won't make them like that? So you don't believe in any censorship for kids right?

With the "logic" I've seen here I guess you're going to tell me next that it is okay to let folks look at child porn because it won't influence them to be sexual deviants.

By the way, however talented I believe he was, I bet a lot of Johnny Cash fans have had problems with suicide and depression.

Finally, I should have pointed out above that Tim's "reasoning" about me not having children is just intellectually offensive. Do you challenge your kid's teachers and tell the school they're not qualified to teach kids if they themselves haven't made any? Gimme a break.

 

[southpark]

Luvinbearhugs and Rico, yes, I agree not all rap music is bad. BMC and I even talked about some of those and I specifically mentioned how some of it, mostly older, doesn't have what me and OhioBob would call "objectionable" lyrics.

No one here should be so confused to think I would object to so-called rap music with lyrics like "I luv da creek, da sun makes it shine, fishin in summer, and havin a good time."

This is about rap or, if anyone is confused, "gangsta rap." As I believe Rico can attest to, if his music collection is that large, there are plenty of recordings that sound I-freaking-dentical to rap music, just minus the "offensive" lyrics.

Nobody has to let their kids hear that trash just to dance. If they insist on hearing those words it is because they like them. They think they're cool, makes them feel grown up and rebellious, or whatever it is, but they can get that same beat elsewhere from other hip-hop artists.

And just so everyone knows, I am not a prude or a dork. I was a notorious club hound and womanizer and was very grateful that so many parents are very understanding and licentious with their daughters. Good girls were my favourites. Does anyone even watch the freaking news, read the paper, or pay attention to other folks' kids these days? How many parents start out with "I always knew Jenny was trouble and was going to wind up pregnant and drop out of college..." Horsepucky, they always start out sobbing "Jenny was always such a good kid, we had a great relationship, I don't know how this could have happened..."

Buying, listening to, and downright enjoying lyrics that denigrate women, treat them like sex objects, etc., is really not going to have an effect? Please, or, if we are going to be rappers: NP!

If you don't think people come to accept things when they hear them popularized and repeated over and over again as though they were normal, then you have just disproved the theories of propaganda, advertising, the logical fallacy of appeal to authority and, I'm sure, many others. Wow, shouldn't you win a Noble Prize or something?

I'm suddenly in a magical world where no one remembers dehumanizing the enemy in WWII through propaganda. People accept ideas when they are repeatedly told they are normal. I just heard Al Sharpton say rap music should be accepted because it is a normal part of black culture. I don't know who I feel worse for, black people who are kept down by this farce, or white people who help keep them down because they are too cowardly and lack the conviction to tell them that it is killing blacks and keeping them down and should be rejected.

As I tried to get at with some examples up above, if your boy or girl, not young adult, is listening to things that extol the virtues of beating down people who look the wrong way at you, and gang-banging a girl, then dude, you need to have a sit down with your kid and have a good long talk about what is wrong in their head.

If you saw your kid kicking a puppy would you just smile and say "awe, Billy's such a rascal"??? No freaking way, right? Then why the heck wouldn't you figure out what's wrong with them when they spend YOUR money to enjoy hearing people laugh and sing about doing that sort of thing to innocent people!!!!????

And Tim says I have no clue about this because I don't have kids? Well that's just INSANE.

In recent years there has been this fantasy pushed by so-called liberals that kids are born little angels. WRONG. We are born amoral animals and will remain so unless children are inculcated with standards of proper behaviour.

Didn't anyone read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." It used to be required reading. Now we've got half the country ready to get a prayer rug and convert to Islam because "they really must be nice people who will certainly stop vowing under G_d to kill or convert us all -- if only they knew how much we love them."

I'm really having an Orwellian "Ministry of Truth" moment and it is truly a relief that at least some of you are still sane.

By the way, wifey and I are both educated up the ying yang, make about 1/2M a year, have no abortions, failed marriages, or illegitimate kids (I fully realize half of this country no longer sees these things as vices) and were brought up as I advocate so I'm sticking with a proven strategy. Those who are interested can experiment with "growing with the times" to your heart's content.

With that, I'm going to do my best to resist the urge to reopen this thread. As they always have, and always will, people will do what they will, and I certainly wish everyone the best and, honestly, hope that I am wrong.