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By Zaidaan
Since always, a certain type of music has represented a given time period. It’s almost as if music defined time. In English music, Bryan Adams and the Beatles represented the 60s, Michael Jackson shaped the 70s and 80s and Greenday was perhaps the 90s. The 2000s saw music from Eminem to Jay Z, Spears to Beyoncé and Shakira. In the later years, music saw the rise of boy bands. My favourite music is from Migos and 21 Savage. So many new groups, singers and sounds have now ventured into hip hop!
Observing this, we see that not only did we move from one band to another or one singer to the next but also, we moved through genres. And as we did so, the meaning that most songs portrayed also changed. Whenever I listen to older songs, most of them seem to be love songs.
Moving closer to today, we’ve got some more philosophical ones, for example, by Linkin Park, Aviccii and One Republic and so on. Although these kinds of songs are still very much out there, most of them are associated with certain singers or certain boy bands and hip hop is picking up as well as embedded in significant controversy.
Being a rap enthusiast, I was very surprised when around two years ago, a barista at a coffee shop on Duke University campus was fired because a high-powered administrator took offense to the hip hop song she was playing off Spotify. Aaah! What a memorable day. That’s when the censors came for rap music. In my opinion, listeners have been repeatedly unjust towards rap and rap artists because of firstly, picking on stereotypes – rappers do drugs, they disrespect women and all their songs are about both these things. That’s not true. One of my favourite songs is Nothing New by 21 Savage and it is a brilliant song that addresses racial inequality in a very different way. The video begins with clips of Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James and Obama, addressing times when the world failed to treat every individual with the same decency. The frame switches to footage of Black Lives Matter protests and then to 21 at a funeral, rapping about the issues that the black community faces. Juice Wrld sang anti-drugs in his famous song Lean with Me. Secondly; audiences find it convenient to group all rappers together – some are probably offensive, some aren’t – don’t blame the music for that.
On the same note, it becomes important to choose our music wisely as in no way do any of us want to encourage lyrics that demean and disrespect anyone in society. In a way, music is like every other thing the world offers, there is good and bad and we make the choice.
