Critique #2 Hip Hop Wars

I decided to write on the first chapter because it is really important to understand. I think the author of the book was smart in putting the first chapter a chapter about how people construed violence and hip hop together. The fact that critiques associate lyrics with reality is unfair. One thing I learned from this chapter is rap is lyrics, and lyrics come from emotion and what people feel at the time. If I write lyrics about how I killed someone and left them to die, does that mean I actually did it? No. However, one thing this chapter touched upon which is very important is how the entertainment world is obsessed with violence. We revolve our attention around it. It is the center of our media. Violence is rated very highly amongst people, and hip hop can in a way biography and record history and what happened through music, which is very beautiful. If discussing what happened is encouraging violence, when all it is doing is revealing the truth, then all of history should be condemned as bad because that is all history reveals, is violence from the past. Violence is relevant everywhere, and it happens everywhere. People who talk about violence through rap are just trying to inform people. The author writes, "On Behalf of the kids, not the ones who listen vicariously from afar, we should be concerned about how and how often street crime and the drug trade are depicted- not because they  represent infusion of violence in American culture but because they sound an alarm about the levels of violence and social decay created by policies, public opinion, and neglect." I liked this because it shows that listening to rap music doesn't create violence, it opens minds up to it and most likely people who are listening to it can either involved or not, because they are either in it or not.