Rap Music and Society

By Dr. David L. Horne, PhD, PAPPEI

Snoop Dogg is a national icon, doing commercials with Martha Stewart and idling on the beach with a cold brew. Even though Tupac and others are dead and Suge Knight is in long-term prison, Dr. Dre is a multi-millionaire, and Ice Cube is the very wealthy, and national folk-hero owner of the Three-on-Three basketball league and other entities.

Nevertheless, for all that cake icing, violent Black gang activity is far from dead and extinguished in America. Criminal investigators and prosecutors have worked hard to remind us of that fact, and one major and effective trend for them is to use the rap lyrics popularized in songs and concerts by both established and up-and-coming artists as an effective weapon in the attempt to decapitate growing youth violence in the U.S. But there remains a major controversy in the use of such evidence.