The Music to Prison Pipeline
A current humanities-related problem that involves creative thinking is the on-going destruction of the Hip-Hop genre. This is a crisis of the humanities because music is an art form and Hip-Hop is related to a specific culture. The genre of Hip-Hop, which is a widely revered genre of the Black American culture, derives from its roots in poetry. Music considered Hip-Hop was based upon uplifting, informing qualities, and feelings expressed and evoked, among other things. These feelings of emotions, passions and moods were masterfully expressed using complicated lyrical rhyme schemes such as metaphors, similes, parallels, and entendres along with other literary devices. Musicians still make music using their voice, tones and other elements that create a consonance, however it has been significantly simplified to the point of grade level skill. The overarching issue is the music industry lumps Hip-Hop and rap into one category, when in fact they are significantly different in substance, sound, and composure. This poses an issue on several fronts, but today I will focus on Rap music’s influence on crime within the Black community.
This problem has been described as an on-going issue by music journalists and its effects are obvious. The American Bar Association writes about the music industry to prison pipeline saying, “According to the Sentencing Project, the U.S. is the world’s leader in incarceration with 2.2 million people in prisons and jails, a 500 percent increase over the last 40 years.” (Dennis, 2020) If you are wondering why this quote is relevant, well let me begin by saying Hip-Hop is fifty years old. This is relevant because as stated by Dennis, the prison has seen a 500% increase over the last forty years which is significant because it was in the early 1990s that music became noticeably overtly violent and sexual in nature. Some could write this off as coincidence, however it is hard to not notice an alignment here. Dennis is on record stating “There is a particularly troubling aspect of the connection between hip hop and mass incarceration: a situation where rap music documenting mass incarceration moves to rap music facilitating mass incarceration” she then goes on to discuss how rap lyrics are used in courtrooms against the musicians.
Journalist John H. McWhorter writes that rap holds Blacks back. In this article he mentions Hip-Hop near its beginning with the first big record of the genre being Sugar Hill Gang’s 1978 “Rapper’s Delight.” She then speaks of Grand Master Flash’s “The Message” being the first big song to speak of Black culture from a state of dismal. The article's theme is that blacks are tearing apart and weakening themselves with this form of music. This theme can be noticed with McWhorter’s statement “there is something truly unsettling and tragic about the fact that blacks have become the main agents in disseminating debilitating ... images of themselves.”
The problem of Hip-Hop vs. Rap and the music to prison pipeline is an increasing issue. However, there are a few different solutions that I may pose. The first solution suggestion would be to invest in art and music education programs. By providing comprehensive music education in schools, particularly underserved communities, we can offer new perspectives to otherwise disconnected youth. Next is a personal favorite, which is to challenge negative stereotypes in the media and culture. Media representations often perpetuate harmful stereotypes about certain communities, including the association of certain music genres with criminality. By promoting diverse and accurate representations of unfamiliar cultures and communities, we can challenge these stereotypes and mitigate their impact on perceptions of music and crime. Lastly, the recognition of Hip-Hop as its own genre separate from Rap at the industry level would impact the arts’ overall global perception.
Works Cited
Dennis, A. L. (2020, December 1). The music of mass incarceration. American Bar Association. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/intellectual_property_law/publications/landslide/2020-21/november-december/music-mass-incarceration/
McWhorter, J. H. (2023, March 23). How hip-hop holds blacks back. City Journal. https://www.city-journal.org/article/how-hip-hop-holds-blacks-back
