Peer Pressure Out… Radio friendly pressure in? Nah… right?
Apparently people are paying far too much for their tuition for the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. I cannot even begin to stress the ignorance of the idea that people are influenced in their actions by the music they choose to listen to. In an in depth study this year, The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine announced that through several pages of charts, graphs, diagrams, big words, and all other sorts of voodoo hoodoo they’ve found a sure link between “rap music” and substance abuse.
“The average adolescent is exposed to approximately 84 references to explicit substance use per day and 591 references per week, or 30,732 references per year. The average adolescent listening only to pop would be exposed to 5 references per day, whereas the average adolescent who listens just to rap would be exposed to 251 references per day.” – New York Times.
Spitting statistics right and left for a moment I felt for a moment like I may be a victim even! Suddenly i wondered if i should take a class action lawsuit to Cypress Hill because they passed me a bong at one of their shows? Or how about demanding severance pay from Dre because the Chronic “warped my fragile little mind?” Should I protest Puffy for all the Biggie songs I used to religiously smoke L’s to? Or I should take it to Cam’Ron & Dipset and see how they react when they find that they were responsible for all the coke cooked & sold and sniffed in Harlem for the last half a decade!
Or maybe everyones so full of shit to see that the bowl needs to be flushed. This Tipper Gore syndrome that seems to weeblewobble but never fall down is painful & I really don’t see how money could be spent on such fuckery.
Look at it this way. A song at the top of the Billboard charts is heard by an unfathomable amount of so called “impressionable” persons. But what these scientists don’t seem to understand is that generalization doesn’t work! No two people are the same! They may have similar tastes in music or clothes or whathaveyou but they will not perceive lyrics the same way!
A fifteen year old is smarter than you may think! Sure, some are a little thicker than others, but for the most part a fifteen year old knows who he wants to fuck, as well as knowing what he wants to smoke or drink on a friday night. & for the most part I believe that their newfound acquired tastes are, more than likely, frighteningly close to that of their parents! DUN DUN DUN!
Are people really so desperate not to take the blame for anything in this world that they’ll weasel their ways in and out of statistics just to prove a halfassed point? And with that said, so what if it is true? So what if music leaves a mark on ‘impressionable” teenagers? Censorship doesn’t work, the same way the questionable legality of Marijuana doesn’t seem to affect the hundreds of thousands of Americans (both the youth and the ever aging baby boomers) that smoke on a daily basis. I foresee another coming saga of censorship and as an artist, writer, composer & lover of music I fear for the coming generations.
I’m no victim. I’m not a product of anything I’ve ever purchased, listened to or consumed. Every generation fears the worst for their children and believe-you-me I understand that much. But how could a country chest deep in war, debt and disease be so concerned with what a high school freshman listens to on his Ipod?
Word Premier 