Rap and hip hop music is one of the main trends in music today. However, many parents disapprove of rap / hip hop music, while children, teens, and young adults have an unwavering love for it. Why?

Most parents want the best for their children, so they spend their days trying to acquire a better life for themselves and their loved ones. Parents were also young once, but later found that it is more beneficial to live a positive lifestyle compared to a negative one. They have come to understand that the path to constructive experiences begins with feeding the mind with constructive ideas, learning good lessons, and following sensible directions.

Therefore, most parents do not want their loved ones to have negative experiences, such as constantly seeing cruel images, repeated feelings of unnecessary pain, or repeatedly hearing destructive words that are heard in some hip hop and rap songs. For this reason, parents do not like many rap and hip hop songs due to harmful lyrical content. Furthermore, they do not appreciate the idea of ​​such harmful words entering the minds of their children, adolescents or young adults.

On the other hand, kids, teens, and young adults love rap and hip hop because of the powerful nature of the beat, while the flow of the lyrics throws out catchy jokes and witty metaphors. For the young at heart, hip hop and rap are more than music, it is a lifestyle. It’s a wonderful combination of rhythm, rhetoric, and hope. Children, teens, and young adults around the world emotionally shake their heads to the rhythmic sounds of hip hop. They marvel, inspired by the rhetorical flow of rap, and hope to one day capture the financial success of the artists they see in the videos.

Although some of the lyrics in rap and hip hop music are derogatory in nature, not all of them are derogatory. Various hip hop and rap artists openly demean people, places and things, while some rhyme about how they overcame gruesome living conditions, hateful companions, poverty and crime. Others reinforce their financial success as an affirmation that they have come out of a horrible life. And artists can use familiar language, a curse or two to express such experiences.

So I ask parents, a child, teens, and young adults, is there a balance?

Well, everyone knows that the mind is like a sponge, absorbing information like water from the moment of human conception. In fact, the mind vividly registers what is observed through sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell, and imagination. As a result, what is engraved on our mind has an effect on our behavior. Yes, music shapes our thinking too!

Music is considered an art and a science for a very good reason! Experts in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, biology, physiology, physics, and education have worked alongside musicians to unravel the mysteries of music. This research aims to understand the basic structure of music; its biological, emotional and psychological effect on humans and the brain; it is potential healing and alteration; and its role in the evolutionary process. Music helps scientists understand complex brain functions and opens treatments for patients recovering from stroke or suffering from Parkinson’s. Research even suggests that music can alter the structure of the brain.

What’s more, words have power, real energy. This is demonstrated by the fact that music can excite us, sadden us, or inspire us. We feel goose bumps as we listen to a favorite tune, and we revert to old memories when we hear the first few bars of an old school song. Throughout history, songs have been created with the intention of inspiring feelings of happiness, joy, praise, relaxation, anger, pain, destruction, etc. Wow! Can music do all this?

The good news is that there is a balance. For parents, it is recommended that you do not discredit all rap and hip hop music. There are good, healthy compositions that your little ones can enjoy, and you can feel confident that they are feeding their minds with sensible ideas.

And for children, teenagers and young adults, it is suggested that they be more aware of the type of rap and hip hop music they are listening to, as they have an impact on their thinking.