Individual teens are subjected to different types of content, and many listen to hip hop. This genre of music has the crown for both the most streams--making up about 30%-- and 25.1% of music consumption. About 63% of teens listen to hip hop/R&B, and most of today’s top idolized content creators are seeming to normalize homophobia and throwing around discriminatory remarks to an innocent community. This can lead impressionable teenagers into thinking this behavior okay and “cool”.

Artists seem to be refusing to see the damage they are unintentionally inflicting, not only to themselves, but others. People shouldn’t be worrying about who other people love, especially on content that is so easily accessible to youth. Exposing them to the derogatory terms in the media--directed towards homosexuals--only leads to more hate. Creators need to be more aware of the hate messages they’re sending, how it affects people who come in contact with that kind of media, and whether it’s causing people to hate others or themselves.

In 2018, Jennifer Boylan, national chair-woman of GLAAD (a national LGBT advocate group), released her yearly survey that asks americans about their comfortability around people who don’t identify as cishet (Somebody who identifies themselves as their assigned gender at birth and are heterosexual). She reports: “having an L.G.B.T. person at my place of worship’ makes 24 percent of Americans ‘very’ or ‘somewhat’ uncomfortable; seeing a same-sex couple holding hands, 31 percent are uncomfortable; and ‘learning my child has an L.G.B.T. teacher at school’, 37 percent are uncomfortable.” (The New York Times)  

Since 2014, the rise in vulgar media has also had a sharp increase, and we have reason to believe they correlate in some ways.

I have nothing against the hip-hop/rap music genre, but this specific genre is the most infamous for being extremely homophobic. While people use the excuse that “it’s just that genre’s nature”, that still doesn’t make it right. Hip-hop/rap is very popular in today’s society, and many many many people listen to it.

When a hip-hop artist comes out as gay, it’s instantly targeted as “problematic” in the community. In contrast, when rappers such as XXXTentacion or R.Kelly are exposed as abusive, nobody seems to make it a big deal, and in fact, they usually get heightened fame. Abuse is such a worse topic than two men or two women simply being in love.

Hip-hop also creates a stigma around toxic masculinity, something closely tied in with homophobia. The genre has quite a lot of hypermasculinity, portraying men as tough, aggressive, and insensitive beings. The people who listen to this genre are continuously exposed to these ideologies and soon will start to agree.

Eminem, one of the industries biggest artists, says in his song “Criminal”: “My words are like a dagger with a jagged edge, that’ll stab you in the head whether you’re a ***(a word starting with f and has three letters) or lez.” He has more homophobic lines in this song, but are very vulgar and inappropriate to share.

He is openly admitting his homophobia and promoting toxic masculinity in his content and the people who are trying to hold him accountable for his actions are being bombarded by his fans. They use the excuses: “it’s free speech”, “it’s just the nature of hip-hop”, and of course, “he isn’t wrong”.

This only proves that content like this is only depleting the acceptance of the LGBT community. The LGBT community deserves respect. They’re only expressing who they are and loving who they love. Creators should be more aware of the affects their words have on these people.

Normalizing homophobia in hip hop/R&B is wrong, and it needs to be stopped.