Youth OPINION

Rap ‘Doesn’t Run Our Lives’

NICOLE BERLIN

Senior, 17, student body president, El Camino High School, Woodland Hills.

Rap is just another form of entertainment. You cannot generalize about rap. Just because Ice-T had a particular song called “Cop Killer” doesn’t mean that every other rap artist feels the same way. Rap music is very popular among youth because it’s an outlet for frustration and problems, and it’s really the only way that many kids feel they can explain a situation or a predicament and their problems. And I feel that it’s a positive outlet. Although sometimes it does get negative coverage and sometimes bad publicity, generally rap music is very positive.

I’m not necessarily speaking of major artists of today but of individual rappers at school. I’m friends with a lot of them who write their own lyrics and perform for the student body and those are all very positive messages.

Rap is this generation’s form of protest music. Generally, this country I hope is learning that you’ve got to start integrating and working together, and I know at El Camino, it’s no longer a black-white issue. If you have a black artist who’s rapping and the beat is good and the message is good, then you’re going to get a lot of support whether you’re Korean, Asian, white.

FRANK FUENTES

Senior, 17, Notre Dame High School, Sherman Oaks.

I like rap. I think of it as rhythm and poetry. I respect everyone’s opinion, but I consider it another freedom of expression. Everyone has their own freedoms and you can listen to what you want. You can change the station or not listen to something if you don’t like it. There’s already an age limit for buying records (with explicit lyrics). (Editors’ note: this is not a law, but some stores do refuse to sell music with explicit lyrics to minors.) Yes, I think rap goes too far sometimes, but you don’t have to listen to it. I’m sure it divides people, but almost everything divides people. Anything that is controversial divides people: books, TV shows. In some schools, books are banned because of certain elements in them.

Grown-ups think it’s a bad influence on us and makes us do bad things. But I’m sure that when adults were younger, they had the same problem with their parents, like with rock and roll. Young people aren’t as easily influenced as older people might think. We’re not going to listen to everything a rap musician is going to say. We have our own opinions. We just like the music. We dance to it. It doesn’t run our lives. We relax to it and have fun.

Some rap promotes violence, like “gangsta” rap. But sometimes they talk about the negative to bring out the positive. Like they talk about the ghettos, saying that you should stay in school or (bad) stuff will happen to you. There was one record that was about assassinating (President) Bush. Stuff like that is just to get a record out and have people buy it. I don’t think too much of that. What we need is peace and most rappers talk about that.

FRANK YOUNG

Senior, 17, Jefferson High School, Los Angeles.

People (who give rap negative coverage) are being really ignorant as to what’s actually being explained in rap music. I think if people actually take the time to listen to some of the lyrics they might actually come out with different points of view about it. I’ve seen people constantly criticize, for instance, 2 Live Crew in the newspaper for their sexual lyrics in their songs. But these same reporters should report that they have held concerts where they passed out condoms, they are all for safe sex, they’ve had benefit concerts. It’s the same with rapper Ice Cube. He’s done a lot of charity and donates a lot of money to organizations in South-Central Los Angeles. People aren’t really aware of that. NWA said they use profanity in their records to get their words across. They said people tend to pay less attention if a song is clean. Take for example, a song by a rap group called De La Soul called “Say No and Go.” It’s an anti-drug song. And NWA brought out a song called “Dope Man,” and it’s basically an anti-drug song, too. There are statements in it that say “if you smoke ‘caine, you’re a stupid m-----------.” That’s an anti-drug song. The only difference is “Dope Man” uses a lot of profanity. “Say No and Go” doesn’t. Today’s teen-agers tend to pay more attention to “Dope Man” because it has more profanity in it than “Say No and Go.” That’s how it is.

I don’t think rap music necessarily accurately reflects life in the inner cities. Ice Cube’s portrayal of life in South-Central Los Angeles in some of his songs, I find, is somewhat exaggerated and somewhat stereotypical. I lived in South-Central for 10 years and I’ve never seen some of the things he’s said he’s seen in his songs. But then again we all have different lifestyles. He wrote a song called “How to Survive in South-Central” for the movie “Boyz N the Hood.” And that I found stereotypical. He made it sound like it was a war zone.

Rap is helping to get messages out about what is going on around here. Some of it (promotes sexist and racist) ideas, but all of it doesn’t. I think the basic stereotype behind that is that people believe that all of it does. That’s the problem. Groups like NWA--one of their lead singers, Dr. Dre--you heard how he beat Denise Barnes up, right? There was the television show called “Pump It Up” on Fox and the host was Denise Barnes. About a month later, Dr. Dre went into this club and beat her up, reportedly because the show featured a segment about a rival rap group that made a statement toward NWA. So to me, it made all that stuff he says about beating women, slapping women--it kind of made it sound like he really does it to women.

I used to listen to a lot of heavy metal before rap really came around. I started to listen to rap in 1989 and I found there were more messages for me. Rap is supposedly based on African culture, a form of music that African-Americans did. They presented more anti-gang messages, anti-drug messages, more get-back-to-your-roots messages. I couldn’t find any of that in heavy metal. Rap is not just fun. And there are Latino rappers, African-American rappers, Anglo rappers, and each ethnicity of rapper presents messages for their own ethnicity.

I don’t think there will ever be such a thing as going “too far.” Ice-T’s “Cop Killer” was to present a message that L.A.’s police are not living up to their responsibilities of protecting people. Anyone who’d go and take that song literally, that’s totally crazy. If somebody wants to go out and kill cops, they’re going to do it, whether they heard the song or not.

GEORGE LY

Junior, 16, Mark Keppel High School, Alhambra.

Saying rap is the CNN of urban America would be a good way to put it. Let’s say some teen-agers don’t really watch news. And they listen to a certain rap group, or a rapper, who is saying that it’s hard to live in South-Central or wherever, and teen-agers just start getting used to it and believing what they hear.

Rap is having a big influence on the way young people are thinking. Teen-ager attitudes, or the way teen-agers dress, is being affected. I think it is making some people more angry.

I’m Chinese-American. Personally, the (anti-Asian) words in some rap songs don’t really bother me. I guess you’d call my attitude Asian pride, or something. You’re proud of who you are no matter what anyone else says. I think listening to that type of stuff really influences blacks on how they feel about Koreans or Asians. It’s not very healthy, but it’s free speech, and they can say whatever they want.

Yeah, I think rap can go too far. The song “Cop Killer” comes out and makes people hate cops, and makes them want to buy a gun and shoot a cop, and makes them think it’s all right to shoot a cop. And it’s not. There are some cases where rap goes too far, and that’s one of them.

Compiled for The Times by Rip Rense.