“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken, is sung”

Music has been around since the beginning of time, and has changed and evolved along the way. Rap originally started as talking with a beat, with no instruments involved. Somewhere in the late 80’s or early 90’s, some groups started singing about things like demoralizing women, being racist, killing, robbing, doing drugs, etc. People began to believe that this nonsense was “music”. Other music artists, such as "50 Cent" or “Tupac", realized that they could become popular by “singing” this gibberish and then repeating it over and over again to make what they call a "song".

Once upon a time, not too long ago, music actually used to mean something, or at least made sense and was easy to understand. Now all you have to do is talk about demoralizing women, being racist, killing, robbing, doing drugs, etc. very fast, add a beat and BAM you have a song. Men and women of all ages around the world believe that these music artists have talent, yet they are 125% wrong. If you gave me a microphone and a background beat, I could make at least 100 of these “songs”. “So easy, a caveman could do it”.

The sad thing about this is that majority of the listeners, who are minors, can easily be influenced. They think its okay to commit felonies, since their role models are singing about it. This is yet another reason of why music today is horrible. Not only does it pollute our minds, but also hurts our eardrums. It has been proved by many psychologists that listening to "gangsta rap" can be bad for your education and it can influence people to do things such as smoking or murder.

Another thing that I find completely unnecessary in this music is the excessive amount of explicit language. In almost all of the songs, the artists (for no particular reason) use words such as the “n” word, the “f” word, the “b” word and many more. I don’t think it is necessary to use all of this language in music. The song could be just as good, if not better, without these words. This goes back to the effect this music has on minors. Since all of these artists swear in their music, kids all over begin to use this language as well. It’s bad enough that people swear excessively without this music, but now it just makes the big problem bigger.

Although Rap is the major type of music that focuses on negative aspects, there are still many more. One perfect example is metal. The lyrics are completely meaningless and the only sounds you can really get are the electric guitar and the drums being played as loud as they can with little attention to notes or beats. The vocalist, whose singing is incomprehensible, usually screams and makes evil gestures at the audience. The bands’ appearances are very humorous in my opinion. They usually have extremely long hair which covers half of their face; wear all black clothing with sharp metal tips all over, and black eyeliner on their faces.

The lyrics in this genre are similar but not exactly the same as Rap. This genre swears excessively as well, but the lyrics usually vary and make no sense at all. An example of random metal music is the band Cannibal Corpse. To begin with, the name itself conjures up an image of dead eating dead people! In addition the name gives you no indication of what to kind of music to expect. One of their songs is titled “Hammer Smashed Face” which talks about killing you because there is a being inside of the vocalist. If the lyrics weren’t popping up with the video it would be next to impossible to actually understand a single word.

The music industry does not regulate any of these bands/artists because they are all concerned with the bottom line. Money. As long as there is an audience willing to subject themselves to this vocal brutality, and is willing to pay their hard earned dollars to purchase it, the music industry will continue to promote these bands/artists. While we all enjoy the freedom of speech and the choice to listen to whatever music we like, it is unfair and inappropriate to expose minors especially to lyrics that only glorify violence and crime.