by Othello GoodenActivist staff
If there’s anything that I abhor the most in this world, it is the entertainment of today. Many feel that the music, shows, and books we indulge in today may have a harmful effect on our youth. I am one of those ones who feel that the 21st Century has birthed nothing but disaster. My center focus is on today’s music and how it affects the dressing and grooming of youth today.
About 30 years ago, lyrics rarely contained anything dealing with blood, sex, or drugs. Any song that contained such material was frowned upon. Those artists and songs that come to my mind include Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” and “Your Royal Badness,” A.K.A. Prince, years ago with his sexually explicit lyrics.
As the 90s rolled in with the age of Hip-Hop/Rap, artists such as Tupac, Biggie, and Tone Loc emerged, polluting the airwaves with their sexually explicit and vulgar words. This doesn’t exclude those 90s entertainers such as Ludacris, Mystikal, and Usher, with the latter having songs featuring the previous. The term back then for this type of music was “Gangster Rap.” Sadly, today’s genres of R&B and Hip-Hop follow that notorious prefix.
My problem is with the FCC, who scrutinized Slim Shady and his dirty lyrics years ago, and yet seem to be lenient on monitoring the other artists who hit the market with albums containing similar material, if not worse. The explicit lyrics symbol on the front cover of a Rap/Hip-Hop album doesn’t serve a purpose if it’s available in stores and aired on music video networks like BET and MTV.
I believe these albums should be taken off the shelves and banned from all media stores and channels.
Am I saying that artists shouldn’t have a sense of individuality? Hardly! I’m a musician and songwriter myself. I’d say the content within my songs is a lot better than what is sung in most songs today. If you have to talk about killing people, explicitly explaining your love life, or what you did up in the club over the weekend, we don’t need to know! America is suffering, and a lot of it has to do with the music we listen to!
This brings me to my next point about the content of these music videos, among other shows on the air.
Provocative dressing and grooming is found in the fashions that shape our community. I’m subjected to it everytime I go to the Student Life Center. I regularly hangout in this room to shoot some pool and play ping-pong. In most cases, my fellow peers are watching BET or MTV. The artists, male and female, in the videos have little to no clothing on. This sight most often makes me lose my lunch. Fortunately, I don’t go that far, because some share my view, turning it to a more decent channel to watch.
On BET, the lyrics aren’t enough, because youngsters seemingly want to watch the artists dance, exposing areas on the person’s body that should be hidden, as they move across the stage. On MTV, you also have your over 90 percent sexually explicit “Soap Operas.” Turning my back towards these disgusting TV shows doesn’t cut it, and I tend to get ignored when trying to state my case, in forbidding them to be shown while I am in there. As a result, I’m not too far off from going elsewhere for recreation after class. The phrase “I’m only doing this for my health” applies here.
The connection I make is that youths today copy what they see on TV. It is not just the violence that I’m concerned with, but the guys and girls who dress like their favorite musician, believing it’s in style. A word of advice would be to read the magazine GQ and see if your style of clothing can be found in it. Mostly likely it won’t be. We see these styles on the streets; they need to stay there so proper authorities can deal with them accordingly.
I am skeptical about this problem being solved, because the spirit of today’s society promotes immodesty, improper speech, and sexual immorality. Call me a snitch, loser, softy or whatever. I could call you all “lovers of badness,” and we could go all day insulting one another. You would then start with your “sailor talk,” as evident in the degraded TV programming heavily influencing today’s young.
I came to school to learn and have a good time when I don’t have any classes, spend a little time in the Student Life Center. It looks like I might have to take my leisure elsewhere, like in the computer concourse.
I hope those who read this gain insight to what is going on in the world around us by comparing it to the students at RWC. Though RWC is small compared to the rest of the world, what we’re seeing on campus is only a fraction of what’s out there, and it isn’t pretty. If you ask me, I’d tell you more. Just to explain the situation in this article would go on for a couple hundred more words.