Censorship of Rap Music
... for murder. On August twenty- fifth Snoop was driving his late model Jeep in Palms, California. He met up with Philip Woldemar iam, who according to Snoop's attorney, had a long history of threatening Snoop. Snoop's bodyguard shot Woldermariam twice in the back, killing him. On December eighth, Snoop was arraigned for murder, but later found innocent. Many of the lyrics in Snoop's songs degrade women, encourage the use of marijuana and glorify violence against authority. Another publicized case involves rapper Tupac Shakur. Many know him for his starring role in the movie "Poetic Justice" with Janet Jackson. Tupac Shakur's song "Keep Ya Head Up" contains such lyrics as "I wonder why we take from our women Why we rape our women Do we hate our women? I think it's time we care for our women Time to heal our women." Despite the lyrics encouraging men to respect women, Shakur was recently arrested for sexually abusing a woman in a midtown hotel. This arrest came two weeks after Shakur was arrested for allegedly shooting two off duty police officers after a traffic dispute in Atlanta. Proponents of rap feel that all rappers are protected under the first amendment. They also feel that rap is a cultural art form, reflecting ghetto life and that criticism of rap is another form of racism. One of the men who has been influential in speaking out against "gangsta rap", its explicit lyrics and unworthy role models is the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Jackson states," Anyone, white or black, who makes money calling our women bitches and our people niggers will have to face the wrath of our indignation." The Reverend Calvin Butts, the minister of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, has also mounted a crusade against explicit music. Last summer he held a rally at which he ran over offending tapes and CDs with a steamrolle r. The vice- president of the United States wife, Tipper Gore, has launched her own crusade. In her book, Raising PG Kids in an X- rated Society , she takes the music industry to task for glamorizing sex and violence in material targeted to kids. She has encouraged record companies to label all albums and tapes that have sexually explicit lyrics. Also, radio stations such a KACE-FM in Los Angeles are adopting policies to ban all songs that degrade women or promote drugs and violence. To determine the views of students here on the need for censorship of the recor...