Jesse Jaramillo-Camacho Essays - Music, African-American Culture

Jesse Jaramillo-Camacho PB #2 The Fox News commentary on Kendrick Lamar's 2015 BET performance and the analytical essay, "The Social Significance of Rap Hip-Hop Culture" by Becky Blanchard, are both on the topic of the effects of rap and Hip-Hop on the youth. They differ in genre, message, style, and content. The analytical essay takes a more positive stance on rap and Hip-Hop, whereas the Fox News commentary takes a much more negative stance. The purpose of the Fox News commentary is to demonize and blame rap and Hip-Hop for delinquency in youth. They do this by making vague statements and limiting context. In the beginning of the segment , they show a clip of the performance with Kendrick Lamar rapping on a vandalized cop car and highlight the lyrics "We hate po po , wanna kill us dead in the street for sure..." and "My gun might blow" There are lyrics around those words but they highlight ed those to portray the rapper as anti-cop and pro crime . Geraldo Rivera's comment, "This is why I say that Hip-Hop has done more damage to young African-Americans than racism in recent years." serves to diminish the racism that the Africa n-American community faces and paint Hip-Hop as detrimental . The Fox News commentary's purpose is to accuse rap and Hip-Hop of being detrimental to youth, disrespectful to law, and causing damage in the African-American community. The purpose of the analytical essay is to provide analysis and context around the argument of rap and Hip-Hop. With analysis and evidence, the overall message of the essay is positive, unlike the Fox News commentary. We can see the purpose in the closing statements, "despite the blame placed on rap for the prominence of violence in American society, hip-hop music is a symptom of cultural violence, not the cause. [] it is necessary to look at it as the product of a set of historical, political, and economic circumstances and to study the role it has served as voice for those subjugated by systematic political and economic oppression . " The author tells us to dig-deeper and analyze before we criticize r ap and Hip-Hop. The purpose of the text is to provide analysis and historical background to the arguments surrounding rap and Hip-Hop. Fox News knows their audience. Usually the people that watch Fox News are older white conservatives. This demographic does not listen to Hip-Hop. Most of these people believe Hip-Hop and rap are corrupting forces that turn African-Americans into thugs. The Fox News commentary plays to their audience. They feed them more evidence and reason to demonize the music and say that it's actually rap and Hip-Hop that stunts the African-American community instead of the true factors. As a company, Fox News needs to make money, they do this be creating loyal viewers. They create loyal viewers by giving them a platform for similar views and opinions. The audience of the analytical essay is college students. We can guess this because the article was on the site Stanfor.edu. College students are usually young liberal intellectuals that need evidence and a good argument before believing anything. College students are the listeners of rap Hip-Hop, and the article plays to that. The mostly positive message is an argument that college students can support. The use of massive historical context and thorough analysis is a solid argument that will satisfy any college student who was undecided on the topic. In the analytical essay, Becky Blanchard structures the text into many paragraphs that discuss different pieces of evidence. She mainly uses historical context to make her argument. The historical context is extremely effective in proving her point. Not only does she use rap and Hip-Hop history as evidence, she also uses the culture of African-Americans from slavery to modern America to show the effects that they had on the music. The choice to use this type of evidence allows the reader to picture the broad scape and broad influence African-American culture has had on rap and Hip-Hop. In the Fox News report, the commentators make their arguments in a somewhat structured manner. They each take turns speaking their opinion. The first line of the