Hidden Politics - Tricia Rose, pg 396-405

Recap: Rap music seems to have gotten a bad rap. No pun intended. Tricia Rose goes to several rap concerts and discovers the attitudes that are directed towards the black attendees. She gets to experience the body searching and the loss of identity or the gaining of a general identity of being black from the white security guards. This sort of profiling takes place all over even tough most people thin they don’t do it. Also with the media representation of Rap music being a more violent and angry type of music tends to push the profiling even more. She talks about the concerns over the potential damage to concert venues and the like. Also how insurance agencies increase the cost of coverage for “black” concerts. Over all it seems that the combination of the whites servicing the blacks for the concert develop more issues against the blacks and then they take the actions of the blacks and turn it again and the cycle begins again until at some point there turns out be violence. It is a vicious circle and either side can be blamed, but the rap music itself is not helping.

Comment: Personally rap music doesn’t do anything for me. Her article is somewhat informative for me but my feelings about rap music don’t lend much credit to this article. I can see how the music has caused some of its problems. To me the music doesn’t seem to be much more than violent lyrics directed towards whites or who ever happens to be the one pushing the artist.