First of all, that magazine is probably only looking at one demographic. I know plenty of people who don't listen to rap and are on drugs and drink alcohol. NOT ALL RAP PROMOTES THIS. I hate that people continually judge rap because it's mainly from lower class blacks. What about country music? My friend went to a concert where the guy was singing about killing Arabs and other foreigners. Are people who listen to country more likely to kill people or commit hate crimes? What about pop? Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera promote being "slaves" and getting "dirty." Are all people who listen to pop hoes? No. I'm sick of people who don't listen to the music judging it. I love rap because of the different perspective it brings to the table. I know of nty of musicians who don't talk about drugs, sex, or gang banging. But if they do, so what. They are talking about their lives. If parents don't care enough about their kids to tell them right from wrong and watch what they do, then that's their problem. I listen to rap and I'm not a drug addict or alcoholic.

I only listen to nerdcore hiphop, such as MC Frontalot.

www.frontalot.com

You can't spell crap without rap!

That's one sad excuse to avoid blaming the real people in charge...the parents!! Music is music! It can't MAKE you do anything...A person makes those decisions on their own!!

iluvjp: I don't think you understand that mainstream rap is not all that there is to rap. There are countless underground, unsigned artists who never rap about sex, drugs, or girls. Eminem and other popular rappers are not the only ones out there, so don't decide that a whole genre of music can be defined by mainstream artists who are censored on what they write about. And even the mainstream artists don't always rap about macking on hoes and that ****. Some rap is real deep, you just might have to work harder to find it. I mean, I don't stereotype country and say that all of it is about guys singing about beer, tractors and their dogs, even though that's all I'm hearing, because I don't know much about country, and I'm not going to talk about something that I don't know. And I'm especially not going to judge a whole particular type of music because of a tiny itsy bitsy small fraction of the artists who are a part of that genre.

It's not the type of music that makes music a bad influence...It's what's said in a song or the appereance of an artist. Not all rap is bad, not all pop is bad (influence, not tasteless because all pop is tasteless and shallow. But that's besides the point) and not all any type of music is bad. Saying that rap is a bad influences is like saying that blacks or whites or any race is superior. It's stereotyping. It's like one person does not define a race, just like one artist or song does not define a specific genre of music.

Hell no! It is music, what about Bach, or Mozart?
Does that influence you to have sex? I think not! It is music, and it is expressing yourself.

Rap doesn't influence you in doing wrong things, you think that way when you listen. look, l love 2pac's songs and l don't get pugnacious cause he speaks sense.

Sure is it, just like people who listen to rock n roll are devil worshipers!

If a person is smart enough, they will know what is stupid to do and what is not. In my view, most of the popular rap out today is unintelligent crap anyways. I think you should stick with rap that has intelligence itself.

Well, I don't think people who do listen to rap are most likely to do drugs and other bad things.

I listen to rap and other kinds of music but I hope I'm not consider a person who is doing bad things because I don't do anything really. Yea, I'm boring. I don't do drugs but I also don't consider people who do drugs that they are doing something bad neither but lets not get into that.

Rap could be really inspirational to many teens and gives them strength to live another day. Those kids in the hoods could relate to the rap songs that rappers make.

However, there's these other rappers who talk about sex, money, drugs, and partying. Now I have nothing against those things but many people do. So I think that's where rap gets it's bad name from.

Also, some kids do take those songs seriously and they tend to go over board so they do one of these thing like sex too much that they tend not to know how to control themselves in the end or they do them all and that would end up being a bad thing if they don't know how to control themselves and know when to just stop

I hope this made sense and I hope you didn't take anything the wrong way.

BYe N Have a nice day

writting a complaint to the magazine is wrong, Rap started in the streets and is still listend to by more people who grew up in the streets. Lyrics are about, violence, drug use and whatever. I'm not saying it is to support, it is a view from what many people growing up in hard neighborhoods saw, and many people from tough places listen to it because they can relate. And most of those people are no angels....

why does everyone have to complain so much? I think that magazine was totally justified in saying what they said.....and I grew up in da' hood!

Most rap does support the ideas of fornication, drug use, and violence. It affects people in different ways, but it generally makes people accept that way of thinking.

I think that since your friend is smart he wont be influenced by it.