Though music sales are down overall, rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year.
A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed a majority of youth think rap has too many violent images. In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices last year, 50 percent of respondents said hip-hop was a negative force in American society.
Nicole Duncan-Smith grew up on rap, worked in the rap industry for years and is married to a hip-hop producer. She still listens to rap, but says it no longer speaks to or for her. She wrote the children's book "I Am Hip-Hop" partly to create something positive about rap for young children, including her 4-year-old daughter.
"I'm not removed from it, but I can't really tell the difference between Young Jeezy and Yung Joc. It's the same dumb stuff to me," says Duncan-Smith, 33. "I can't listen to that nonsense ... I can't listen to another black man talk about you don't come to the 'hood anymore and ghetto revivals ... I'm from the 'hood. How can you tell me you want to revive it? How about you want to change it? Rejuvenate it?"
Hip-hop also seems to be increasingly blamed for a variety of social ills. Studies have attempted to link it to everything from teen drug use to increased sexual activity among young girls.
Even the mayhem that broke out in Las Vegas during last week's NBA All-Star Game was blamed on hip-hoppers. "(NBA Commissioner) David Stern seriously needs to consider moving the event out of the country for the next couple of years in hopes that young, hip-hop hoodlums would find another event to terrorize," columnist Jason Whitlock, who is black, wrote on AOL.
While rap has been in essence pop music for years, and most rap consumers are white, some worry that the black community is suffering from hip-hop -- from the way America perceives blacks to the attitudes and images being adopted by black youth.
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/....ap/index.html
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Two things I find very interesting in this that doesn't surprise me
1) rap music in the past year has dropped 21% and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year.
2) most rap music is bought by white kids
Amazing when I go to the malls and see a bunch of white teenagers walking around as though they are from a 'hood'. Standing in line once as these annoying wannabee's were harassing a white girl I said to the small crowd of white idiots dressed in rapper outfits, "you know your white right? and you grew up in the suburbs?" The crowd laughed their asses off as the guys sulked realizing how ridiculous they looked making a total mockery of what real rap artists were.
Face it, you can't fake a "hard life" and in doing so only makes you look ridiculous - maybe the white youth is starting to wake up to that fact.
Is Rap Really Dying?
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