“Does Hip Hop music make people more aggressive?” 15 year-old Ethan asked me after I had just finished a presentation at his youth group. I wondered if Ethan enjoyed hip hop but had been told by a parent or teacher that it was harmful.
This question has been debated ever since hip hop became more mainstream in the late 1980’s. The intensity of the conversation rose with Gangster Rap in the 1990’s and we are still wrestling with this question twenty years later as hip hop evolves into many sub-genres. Hip hop has become a global genre with sounds and themes expressing a wide range of emotions making this question impossible to answer.
A more helpful question would be whether songs with violent themes cause listeners to act more aggressively.
There have been many scientific studies that explore whether music shapes a listener’s thoughts, feelings and/or behaviours. For example, one experiment asked participants to listen to a song with misogynistic (hatred towards women) lyrics. Afterwards, they were asked to choose an amount of hot sauce to give to a stranger sitting in the next room. Researchers could measure the difference in hot sauce given to a stranger depending on whether a participant heard a violent/aggressive song or a neutral song. These researchers noticed that male participants who heard a misogynistic song would give a female stranger significantly more hot sauce than participants who heard a neutral song. These researchers also repeated this experiment using “man-bashing” songs to see if women would be more aggressive towards a man after hearing these ideas in a song. And they concluded that there was a significant increase in the aggression of women as well.
While there is evidence supporting the negative impacts of violent and aggressive themes in music, we must be careful not villainize hip hop music.
When we only focus on one genre, we miss hearing songs within that genre that can teach us so much about ourselves and the world around us. We also ignore the violence and aggressive themes found within other genres of music.
So my answer to Ethan was “No, but music with violent and aggressive themes can cause the listener to think and act more aggressively.” Some hip hop songs have violent and aggressive themes and we must be discerning listeners who avoid these songs. However, we must also be discerning listeners of ALL genres of music.
For example, Even classical music has been describe as violent in the past. For Example, listen to “Dies Irae” by Verdi.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDFFHaz9GsY]