My sister has asked me for some help and I have hit a roadblock.

My 11 year-old nephew wants to have some rap music for his i-pod. My sister won't let him buy any because she does not want him to be entertained by lyrics that glorify misogyny, drug abuse and violence. (She isn't really concerned with the swearing.) So she makes him show her the lyrics of anything that he wants to buy. So far there hasn't been very much.

She uses websites to get a sense of what movies she wants her kids to see and avoid but there doesn't seem to be a similar website for lyrics. She laughs and says she has "googled and she can't google no more."

So, does anyone know of a site or resource that can give parents guidance about lyric content?

Thanks.

Interesting...it seems to me that there is (well make that was) a Parent's Music Resource Center (in fact, that's exactly what they called themselves), but in doing a brief search, it would appear that they don't even seem to have a website anymore. Here's one blurb I did find concerning the present-day status of the P.M.R.C.:

"Today, April 1998, the potency of the PMRC has dramatically declined. The impetus generated by Ronald Reagan's moral struggle has begun to recede, and rap and heavy-metal music have gradually entered mainstream American tastes, making their repression harder. The PMRC is still kicking but no longer with the same conviction. Despite recent agreements with the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Parent/Teacher Association, law enforcement agencies as well as numerous churches and schools nationwide, and an aborted attempt in January 1998 at changing its name from the Parents' to the Partners with the Music Resource Center (to tone down the emphasis on the family, I assume), its days are gone. As explained in a recent personal letter, 'due to limited funding and staff', it can no longer afford to publish its Newsletter. It has accordingly altered its goals, claiming today to serve as a resource center to 'educate and promote public awareness of the positive (my emphasis) long term effects of music on health, analytical and creative thinking and self-esteem'. ( http://www.philagora.eu/decouverte/inde ... nsorship15 )"

Back to the original question: I can't seem to find any such website, although there are plenty of sites that offer uncensored transcriptions of (seemingly) every rap song ever recorded. Probably part of the problem might stem from the fact that there wouldn't seem to be much of a market out there for G-rated rap songs. I'd like to be able to give rap and hip-hop the benefit of the doubt as far as it being an art form, but so much of what I hear of it is objectionable on a multitude of levels.

There is a blistering essay about mysogyny in rap and hip-hop lyrics in the current (March 2007) issue of "Ebony" magazine. Highly reccommended.

Thanks for looking and for your thoughts.

My first idea was to look for the PMRC and I found the same thing.




That's exactly the problem. She wound up having to google every song and couldn't find much that was acceptable. It isn't worth the effort to do this.




Just to be clear. She doesn't want G-rated. She's looking for something that doesn't patently contradict every value she is trying to teach her sons.

The only group I can think of that comes close is The Roots. I have looked through my lyric sheet to Game Theory and that seems to avoid glamorizing the thug life. But it does depict it so it's a close call.

The search goes on.

I'm not a Hip Hop fan at all, but I THINK I've read that Black Eyes Peas tend to have positive lyrics. I COULD BE WRONG THOUGH.

If the kids want to listen to music with offensive lyrics so much, rather than try to steer them around it, I would call them on it and say hey, let me hear that song and you tell
me what it says to you, is this what you like, is this really how you think and feel?
If they are "good" kids, the attraction of rap may not be so much what is being said,
but the dynamics (rythem) of the music, also the rebelious nature of it. That was (is)
what rock and roll offers to many kids. Having said this though does not excuse bad
language and bad values that seems to come along with this "music". Good Luck.

Here is a somewhat related article I stumbled upon in the paper yesterday:

Sales of rap music are declining as more are critical of its message
BY NEKESA MUMBI MOODY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS



NEW YORK -- Maybe it was the umpteenth coke-dealing anthem or soft-porn music video. Perhaps it was the preening antics that some call reminiscent of Stepin Fetchit.

The turning point is hard to pinpoint. But after 30 years of growing popularity, rap music is now struggling with an alarming sales decline and growing criticism from within about the culture's negative effect on society.

Rap insider Chuck Creekmur, who runs the leading Web site Allhiphop.com, says he got a message from a friend recently "asking me to hook her up with some Red Hot Chili Peppers because she said she's through with rap. A lot of people are sick of rap ... the negativity is just over the top now."

The rapper Nas, considered one of the greats, challenged the condition of the art form when he titled his latest album "Hip-Hop is Dead."

It's at least ailing, according to recent statistics: Though music sales are down overall, rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year.

A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed a majority of youth think rap has too many violent images.

In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices last year, 50 percent of respondents said hip-hop was a negative force in American society.

Nicole Duncan-Smith grew up on rap, worked in the rap industry for years and is married to a hip-hop producer. She still listens to rap, but says it no longer speaks to or for her.

She wrote the children's book "I Am Hip-Hop" partly to create something positive about rap for young children, including her 4-year-old daughter.

"I'm not removed from it, but I can't really tell the difference between Young Jeezy and Yung Joc. It's the same dumb stuff to me," says Duncan-Smith, 33. "I can't listen to that nonsense ... I can't listen to another black man talk about you don't come to the 'hood anymore and ghetto revivals ... I'm from the 'hood. How can you tell me you want to revive it? How about you want to change it? Rejuvenate it?"

Hip-hop seems to be increasingly blamed for a variety of social ills. Studies have attempted to link it to everything from teen drug use to increased sexual activity among young girls.

Even the mayhem that broke out in Las Vegas during last week's NBA All-Star Game was blamed on hip-hoppers.

"(NBA Commissioner) David Stern seriously needs to consider moving the event out of the country for the next couple of years in hopes that young, hip-hop hoodlums would find another event to terrorize," columnist Jason Whitlock, who is black, wrote on AOL.

While rap has been in essence pop music for years, and most rap consumers are white, some worry that the black community is suffering from hip-hop -- from the way America perceives blacks to the attitudes and images being adopted by black youth.

But the rapper David Banner derides the growing criticism as blacks joining America's attack on young black men who are only reflecting the crushing problems within their communities. Besides, he says, that's the kind of music America wants to hear.

"Look at the music that gets us popular -- 'Like a Pimp,' 'Dope Boy Fresh,'" he says, naming two of his hits.

"What makes it so difficult is to know that we need to be doing other things. But the truth is at least us talking about what we're talking about, we can bring certain things to the light," he says. "They want (black artists) to shuck and jive, but they don't want us to tell the real story because they're connected to it."

Criticism of hip-hop is certainly nothing new -- it's as much a part of the culture as the beats and rhymes.

Among the early accusations were that rap wasn't true music, its lyrics were too raw, its street message too polarizing. But they rarely came from the youthful audience itself.

"As people within the hip-hop generation get older, I think the criticism is increasing," says author Bakari Kitwana, who is currently part of a lecture tour titled "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?"

"There was more of a tendency when we were younger to be more defensive of it," he adds.

During her '90s crusade criticizing rap for degrading women, the late black activist C. Dolores Tucker certainly had few allies within the hip-hop community, or even among young black women.

Backed by folks like conservative Republican William Bennett, Tucker was vilified within rap circles.

In retrospect, "many of us weren't listening," says Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting, a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of the new book "Pimps Up, Ho's Down: Hip-Hop's Hold On Young Black Women."

"She was onto something, but most of us said, 'They're not calling me a 'bitch,' they're not talking about me, they're talking about THOSE women.' But then it became clear that, you know what? Those women can be any women."

One rap fan, Bryan Hunt, made the searing documentary "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes," which debuted on PBS this month. Hunt addresses the biggest criticisms of rap, from treatment of women to glorification of the gangsta lifestyle.

"I love hip-hop," Hunt, 36, says in the documentary. "I sometimes feel bad for criticizing hip-hop, but I want to get us men to take a look at ourselves."

Even dances that may seem innocuous are not above the fray.

Last summer, as the "Chicken Noodle Soup" song and accompanying dance became a sensation, Baltimore Sun pop critic Rashod D. Ollison mused that the dance -- demonstrated in the video by young people stomping wildly from side to side -- was part of the growing minstrelization of rap music.

"The music, dances and images in the video are clearly reminiscent of the era when pop culture reduced blacks to caricatures," he wrote.

Meanwhile, Creekmur says music labels have overfed the public on gangsta rap, obscuring artists who represent more positive and varied aspects of black life, like Talib Kweli, Common and Lupe Fiasco.

"It boils down to a complete lack of balance, and whenever there's a complete lack of balance, people are going to reject it, whether it's positive or negative," Creekmur says.

Yet Banner says there's a reason why acts like KRS-One and Public Enemy don't sell anymore. He recalled that even his own fans rebuffed positive songs he made -- like "Cadillac on 22s," about staying away from street life -- in favor of songs like "Like a Pimp."

"The American public had an opportunity to pick what they wanted from David Banner," he says. "I wish America would just be honest. America is sick. ... America loves violence and sex."


Last modified: March 01. 2007 12:00AM

Interesting article, and one that gives me a bit more hope for the future.

I think Mr. Banner made a slight misstatement in his "America is sick" declaration, though. Rather than saying, "America loves violence and sex," he should have said, "America loves violence and sexism." There's a big difference. Sex isn't a bad thing in and of itself; what's deplorable is the portrayal of one gender or another as inferior, or using sex as a vehicle for violence or hate.

Good point. While it's become a cliche, I still strongly agree that sex is good & violence is bad.