The wrap on (c)rap music, part 1

Remember the old days, when the height of sexually suggestive pop music was The Beatles singing, "I want to hold your hand," Tommy James and his Shondells bragging about how his baby "does the hanky-panky," or Elvis rockin' his pelvis a bit...

It seems so funny now, doesn't it?

Parents were so worried about how their kids were going to turn out with hellions like these at the helm of popular music. And, to be fair about it, there's an argument to be made that these kinds of influences did indeed push the envelope of what was then considered the norm for kids and sex.

However, yesterday's artists seem almost comically chaste compared to what's being funneled into kids' ears nowadays. Seriously, I don't know if you've actually ever sat and listened to the lyrics of some of the most popular songs of the day - especially in the "rap" (hip-hop) and rock-rap genres - but some of the things being described are so shocking as to be downright disturbing...

In case you're not up to speed on what your kids or grandkids are listening to, I'm talking not just about garden-variety carnal knowledge, but about major criminality (car theft, armed robbery, gang warfare, rape, and murder), the most militant, anarchic social defiance, racism of the most blatant species, and the absolute rawest of sex acts - all described in the most base and artless way imaginable.

They spew this crap out on top of a computer-generated dance beat and call it "music." But all it amounts to is hate speech, misogyny, and borderline sedition. And American kids nowadays are lapping it up.

Freedom and first amendment advocates (I consider myself one of these, believe it or not) say these songs are no worse - or even much different, adjusted for the times - than what the Fab Four, the Stones, The Who, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Doors or Elvis were singing about back in the golden age of rock and roll. Or what the SexPistols and other punkers of the 70s and 80s were screaming...

I beg to differ. I know that entertainment always pushes the envelope of expression, and that it challenges boundaries, mores, and norms. That's more or less a healthy, necessary thing - and it's age-old. Shakespeare did the same thing. And I'm certainly aware that for decades now, popular music has had an increasingly suggestive drug and sexual component.

But what's on the airwaves and the Internet nowadays goes far beyond simple suggestion. Keep reading...

I don't recall any of the cutting-edge songs I've ever heard through the years advocating arbitrary violence or hatred against whole classes of citizens and authority figures (like white people or cops, for instance). I also know that whatever sexual references there were in music, up until recently, didn't smack of woman-hating, physical abuse, or sexual predation or degradation...

After all, the Stones sang in 1966 about having a psychological upper hand over a woman in "Under My Thumb." That was considered borderline misogynistic at the time...

But it's a far cry from a group called The Prodigy's 1997 song "Smack my Bitch Up." Clearly, that's a lot farther over the line, don't you think?

Similarly, Jagger and company alluded to a vague sense of social unrest and revolution in "Street Fighting Man." So did about a million other groups of the Vietnam era...

But is this the same thing as advocating the stalking and murder of police officers, like what rapper Ice-T did in 1992's "Cop Killer?" Here's a taste of it:

"Cop killer! yeah! I got my black shirt on. I got my black gloves on. I got my ski mask on. This s***'s been too long. I got my twelve gauge sawed off. I got my headlights turned off. I'm 'bout to bust some shots off. I'm 'bout to dust some cops off..."

Not all that long ago, saying this kind of thing could've gotten you locked up for a long time - for "speech to incite riot or revolt." And remember, these lyrics are from 15 YEARS AGO. What's out there now is just as bad, or worse...

Some argue that it's futile to try to regulate or stifle expression. Others naively maintain that people have an innate sense of right and wrong, and that messages they get from the media and pop culture affect them only so much. But in the next Daily Dose, I'll enter hard evidence that these messages HAVE crossed a line, and that society's now paying the price for it. Stay tuned.

Rapping - about rap's bad rep,

William Campbell Douglass II, M.D.

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