Hyper Masculinity in Music

For the longest time, I have been aware of artists (mostly rap/hip-hop artists) and what their lyrics are. When I was younger, lets say in middle school, my favorite kind of music was hip-hop. And me being one of the whitest kids ever at the time, I did not notice that listening to this movie was not the norm. I loved the music and would memorize every single song that was a hit. This music was an escape for me because I really didn't like any other kind of music. Some of my favorite artists were 50 cent, Lil' John, the Ying Yang twins, and even P. Diddy. I had no yet discovered the amazing-ness of earlier hip-hip and thought these guys could compare to the greats such as Tupac, Biggie, and Public Enemy. 

As I got older, I began to actually listen to the words of these songs that I loved and realized something that would change my world forever. Once the words began to sink in, so did my maturity level. My getting older made me see that the lyrics of these songs were all really raunchy and kind of messed up. These artists were talking about slapping women and viewing them as objects and having big rims on their cars. All they were talking about was really how to be "masculine". There are plenty of examples if you go to google and type in artists such as Fat Joe or 50 cent.

These artists were all about being masculine and I was not yet old enough to see what they were talking about, the songs just sounded cool to me at the time. Hyper Masculinity, at its finest, was in full blast in these songs and I had not yet heard it yet. I think being young and hearing these songs before one actually comes into their own makes it hard to recognize the theory of Hyper Masculinity. Young kids do not often get the real message that is displayed in popular rap/hip hop music nowadays. This is unfortunate because the wrong messages are being conveyed in the music and once the songs are learned and the kids go around singing them to their friends and parents, the music will be exposed for being as bad as it sounds. Hyper Masculinity is okay to an extent, but when popular music is one of the main sources, there should be some serious thought to what people should listen to.