Critique #2: Hip Hop Reflects Black Dysfunctional Ghetto Culture

This chapter attempts to explain why Black culture is dysfunctional today. It explains that because of slavery, Africans were robbed their culture and started over on a clean slate. This caused their development to hold subtle African and strong Western influences. Today, african americans are able to develop further than that, given freedom and equal rights. But hip hop artists try to glorify their roots - the days post slavery that still included struggles and ghetto living. Because of slavery, blacks have a violent past and tend to repeat that in their modern music. The clean slate gave blacks the opportunity to  rebuild, but instead, hip hop undermines black culture capabilities. Hip hop songs talk about crime, violence, drugs, hustling, and prison as desirable things. They mirror the bad things those living in the ghetto face as well as encourage the youth to get involved in such actions. The ideas of "pimps and hoes" are also made to satisfy the white audience, but it is simultaneously making the black hip hop artists look bad.