The Truth about Rap Music Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Truth about Rap Music - Essay Example The Home Affairs Committee of Great Britain’s Parliament debated whether or not rap music had a positive influence on Britain’s youth. Ultimately, the Home Affairs Committee agreed that rap music like any other type of music could incite criminal behavior. However, the Committee acknowledged that given rap music’s appeal to the youth, has been used productively. For instance pastors have been using some of the more exciting genre of rap to inspire Britain’s youth and to influence positive behavior. Great Britain’s Youth Offending Teams are also using rap music that could have a positive and encouraging impact on troubled youth (Great Britain Parliament 2007, p. 127). Positive rap does not draw the kind of media attention that gangsta or materialistic rap draws and this accounts for general perceptions that rap music is corrosive and inciting. Rap artists such as De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Nas, Common, Wyclef and Talib Kweli use rap lyrics tha t promote education, responsibility and pride in ethnicity. In this regard, positive rap contributes to the individual listener’s own personal value and to the good of that listener’s own humanity (Elligan 2004, p. 43).