A Rappers Life

The image rappers portray are not accurate to their life style. Rappers live the life of luxury but rap about how hard life is in the hood. On top of that they use random negative remarks just to maintain the limelight. But who's to blame, the rappers or the fans that allow this non-sense to continue. In fact through their twitters pages, songs, life style, and past most of them do not deserve the credit of being a gangster and it is the followers of these rappers fault that they have become such popularity monsters and don't deserve it.

On Kanye Wests twitter I noticed how he follows no one. This shows his arrogance. He says things like "you don't know how hard this life is." In 2008 the Billboard "Music money makers list put him in 20th with $42,552,402". On his twitter he made light of his inappropriate remark toward Taylor Swift when she got an award and he interrupted her insulting her during her acceptance speech. He also did this when Brittany Spears beat him out for number one. He wrote "Yo Britney, I'm really happy for you and I'mma let you be #1, but me and Jay-Z's single is one of the best songs of all time! LOL." Is this appropriate? The next twitter page I went to was Little Wayne's or Weezys. He wrote things like "Ya'll know I didn't say that." But he continually uses it like a defiance mechanism writing things about the people who supposedly started these rumors. He talks about people saying things like happy holiday slime.

In many of rappers music, since the begging of their careers they have used women in negative way's in their music with statements like "22 percent (N = 107) of the 490 gangster rap music songs had violent and misogynist lyrics" (Armstrong 96-126) that one study showed. This means that even when rap first started they were using profanity in songs and treating women badly through word of mouth. Some people even say that "violence and criminality are linked. The Ghetto Boys (1990g) kick a female employee for not quickly complying with their commands during a robbery. Ice-T (1987) mentions another woman's positioning as the object of opposition to drug use. A homeboy broke his girlfriend's jaw "for smokin' cane." (Armstrong 96-126). Kids that think its cool to do these things in songs would also think it's cool to do these things in real life. They act like their role models and do what they say. Rappers like Little Wayne and Kanye have never lived in the ghetto in face their parents are quit wealthy. With songs like "Hustler Musik" and "Drunk and Hot Girls" the two rappers try to portray a gangster, and obviously talk negatively about women. This is just so hypocritical toward anyone from these parts of society. They also demoralize women with songs like "I Invented Sex" and "Fall For your Type". Are they good role models? It is " shown that at between 2 and 25 years of fame, both North American and European pop stars tend to experience two to three times the risk of mortality expected in an average population matched by age, sex, and in North America, ethnicity" (Bellis 896-901). It is good to idolize someone whose life style is killing them faster than the average person. This faster death rate is because a "disproportionate amount of their mortality appears to be related to alcohol and drug use." (Bellis 896-901) So why is it so great to be one of these rappers.

So something important that these ideas have brought up is if the rappers are the ones who should be blamed or the listeners who let them do what they do. First off, no one can be famous without fans. So if people continue to be fans of these rappers why should they stop. If something makes you a whole lot of money would you ever stop doing it? So are the rappers themselves to blame? The answer is no. So I call for a change in how people see these men. If we change how we view them they will change how they act in order to maintain their fame. So I beg you to not feed their ego any longer, but to rise up and demand change in their attitudes. We should destroy the monsters we created.