Music's Negative Effect On Youth

I believe music does play a significant role in negatively affecting our youth  of today. There are all kinds of music that kids turn to for their escape from reality. Today's rappers rap about violence and kids today want to follow in those footsteps. They turn to gang banging, drug dealing, theft, home invasion robberies, car jackings, and the raping of women as a way of life simply because their favorite artists seem to have a good way of life doing those exact things. The lifestyle looks so great and tempting. And artists make that way of life look so easy to live as well. I'm even pretty sure that some artists dont even live that way, they only rap about it to earn a living, not realizing the consequences of our youth going out and destroying their lives. Rap and rock stars also talk about doing drugs and degrading women. Our youth today see that rapopers and rock stars are for some reason successful while they are doing drugs, so therefore they believe that they too can lead a productive life while on these drugs. Like for instance, the song called "Brown Sugar" by D'Angelo. This song is supposedly about using heroin. And then they ever-popular "Mary Jane" which is sung by our late Rick James. Now that song will never get old with anyone. But Rick James made it look cool to do certain things, so then they want to follow in their footsteps. Kids want to be cool and fit in like they "see" most of our artists being cool with the cool songs they sing. All they see in the videos is that they are having fun and nothing can harm them when on these drugs. But before they can fing out how hard life is on these drugs, they are in too deep and cannot get out. The same way with degrading women in songs as well. Kiss's Heaven's On Fire is a good example of degrading women. It only talks about what a woman should be doing to her man sexually, and they make it look glamorous, so our youth today think that they should be saying these things to our young ladies of today. And in turn our young ladies turn into prostitutes and drug dealers as well. Then the children they bring into this world are also sucked into a world of violence and hatred and drugs. Yes, I do believe that music plays a major role in the way our youth of today behaves in society. But I truly believe that for the most part of society, that parents need to be there ultimately and they need to listen to the music that their children are listening to and if something isn't right with the lyrics, parents need to make they "express" out of their mouths that certain things are just not right in society. They might even have to say it for the rest of their teenage lives until it finally sinks in. I always tell my sons that whatever they see or hear in a song or video, does not make it right to do those things in life. We have to contantly be on our toes when it comes to us shaping our children for our future without giving up.