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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Djeta Thernadier" data-source="post: 1453385" data-attributes="member: 12043">Responsible parents, both black & white (and any other color or ethnicity you can think of) do not want their kids listening to rap MAINLY because the rap that is on top 40 radio is laced with violence, sexism, drug use and the glorifying and rewarding of bad behavior.It has nothing to do with the color of the skin of the person behind the mic. (last time I check , Emeinem was a white guy, as were the guys in Limp Bizkit, whom isn't really rap but IMO, falls into the category of top 40 music that annoys me) These same parents (of all colors) have no problems with black (or white) r&b soul singers, or rap that is peaceful and not filled with vulgarity.I don't HATE all rap. I love some of it. I love r&b. It's what I grew up with. It's how I learned to sing.But the top 40 type rap (Ludacris, Jay-Z, Eminem etc.) is just ridiculous. I don't care if it has a good beat, when some guy is talking about how terrible his street life is, and glorifying the degradation of women and the joys of shooting people and smoking crack, then yeah...I have a problem with it and if I had kids I would not want them listening to it. Particularly because these guys are all making more $$ then anyone I know will ever see and it's basically, them being rewarded for this awful behavior.MTV (which by the way, is not forced on anyone...you CAN change the channel you know) only adds to this by pushing the message that's it's cool to be a gangsta. Well, IRL, it's not cool. You have no idea how many guy (& girls) I see come in here (my office) looking for work who talk & dress in a hip hop style and expect to be taken seriously. No one takes them seriously because they are acting like teens (no offense to the teens). I work with one woman (who, by the way is not black) in particular, who , at age 24 has her entire cubicle plastered with pictures of 50 Cent and uses hip hop slang often in conversations with our customers. I don't really recall any genre (aside from perhaps early rock and roll) having such an impact on the behavior of a generation. Many genres did impact, but I can't think of one that had such a frightening deep impact in a negative way.  I'd encourage my kids, if they wanted to listen to hip hop,  to listen to less graphic hip hop (there's plenty of it out there) and every other style of music. Color has nothing to do with it. I think it's an insult to the generations of truly gifted black artists who have made amazing contributions to the musical world to immediately say "rap" is THE black music and anyone who has a serious problem with the content of rap is a racist. Would you say that a black parent who didn't want her daughter listening to Lil Kim was a racist? Cause I know a black woman who doesn't let her daughter listen to any rap. And I know she is not alone.And I think it's an insult to me (and those who agree with me) that whenever we voice our concerns over the content of this "music" we are met with calls of racism and not understanding urban life. Sorry, I know this is way off topic, but this comment really irked me. :\</blockquote>

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