Stop Listening to Degenerate Music

Popular music has become more degenerate than ever. In 2014, a guy called YG released a song called “Meet The Flockers”. The first few lines go like this:

“(First) You find a house and scope it out
Find a Chinese neighborhood
'Cause they don't believe in bank accounts
(Second) You find a crew and a driver
Someone to ring the doorbell
And someone that ain't scared to do what it do
(Third) You pull up at the spot, park, watch
Ring the doorbell and knock
(Four) Make sure nobody's home
They gone—okay, it's on
"Don't be scared, n****, you in now
If the police come, you gon' find out who your friends now"
That ain't me talking, that's your mind playing tricks on you
You conscious 'cause you know you got nines with two clips on you
But f*** that, motherfuck that plasma
And f*** that laptop, go and get that jewelry box
You tryna get paid? Go take that jewelry box to the Slauson
They'll give you cash back in the same day”

What the flip. There’s a few things that immediately stand out. First, he is rapping about robbing people. Not only is he rapping about robbing people, he’s rapping specifically about robbing Chinese homes. Maybe it had racist intent, or maybe it didn’t and he was just sharing the optimal method for robbery. Maybe Asian households are just better to rob. But more importantly, it was kind of stupid. Imagine if a white guy wrote a song about the best way to commit crimes against black people. The song would get played basically nowhere, and the general public along with most media companies would likely label it as racist, and hateful; and rightfully so. Meet The Flockers received little to no backlash, for for the general topic of the song, or the extra-irresponsible part about Asian people. This brings me to my next point.

People are so used to these horrible messages in music. I wasn’t even really surprised by the robbing part, more so the Asian targeted part. It’s sad to be frank (I’m frank), that so much of the youth are growing up listening to negative songs about drugs, money, sex, or crime. It’s sad that this is what people are accustomed to, and it’s sad that those messages are supported by big media companies. And sure, most kids who listen to these kinds of songs never turn out to be criminals. Deep down, most kids know that the things they’re hearing are wrong. But there is no doubt that some kids are heavily influenced. People who say, “Oh, I just listen for the song, not the lyrics” are delusional. How could you be a fluent English speaker, listening to the same songs with bad lyrics over and over again, without absorbing any of it? Try and block out the messages, the words, the meaning, and it won’t work. Eventually, the words of the songs are in your head, along with their degenerate meanings, desensitizing you to the vulgarity of those songs. I’ve personally removed all the songs from my Spotify playlist that have bad lyrics, lyrics that promote evildoing. Now, I realize that listening to the songs I used to listen to were inspiring degenerate thoughts in me. To me, it doesn’t make sense to allow those kinds of lyrics into my brain on a regular basis.

But of course, I don’t mean any song with a swear word is instantly evil, disgusting, and should be tossed away forever. After all, how could you expect a grown adult sharing their grief, story or lament using strictly G-Rated language? But there is a big difference between listening to a song that tries hard to tell a story, about somebody’s struggles in life, and a song blatantly disrespectful and evil. I think a good example of a song that isn’t exactly child friendly but is still a great listen is Runaway by Kanye West. I don’t have time to write too deeply about the song, but if you go searching on the internet for reviews or just the lyrics, you’ll notice that there’s a deeper meaning to the song than most others, at least I think. He doesn’t just spend the whole song talking about how the crimes he commits or how much money he has for no good reason, but rather attempts to tell a meaningful story through the song.

On this topic, it makes sense to also clarify that I don’t mind listening to artists who have messed up in the past. We all have. John Lennon used to beat his wife relentlessly. Saul hunted down hundreds of innocent people before becoming the apostle Paul. Malcom X used to be in and out of jail for robbery and assault before he became what he’s now known for.

To conclude this very consice and thought-provoking blog post: There is really no need for any kind of influence from evil songs. Even if you like listening to them, I think you shold stop listening to them, or atleast on a regular basis. It sucks for a while, but it’s worth it.

Greeting, you’ve just read one of the “serious” posts of the week. It’s pretty late at the current moment of writing this, so I apologize once more for any grammatical errors or poorly structured sentences you’ve spotted in this post.