Editor's Note: The following has been adapted with the author's permission from its original publication on Carolina Culture Warrior. To be fully transparent, the author also owns shares in ABC (as previously disclosed).
WARNING: This post features lyrics with strong language.
As previously pointed out here, March 24's Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon saw a disastrously pitiful rating that was among the lowest ever. This drop was thanks to, in part, due to many of those nominated in music, movies, and TV show categories not being appropriate for children and overt endorsements of the anti-gun March for Our Lives protests.
Herein lies the entertainment industry’s problem. Most forms of modern entertainment promulgate a liberal agenda featuring gratuitous violence, inappropriate language, and sex scenes. While this space has touched on the video game industry’s contributions to the corrosive culture, the worst form of entertainment thus far is modern pop music.
The modern music scene makes a lot of money doling out filthy songs parents should find inappropriate for children. To give some examples, here are some lyrics from three popular songs – the first of which was actually performed at last month’s Kids’ Choice ceremony (albeit with most of the profanities being removed).
First, there’s Lemon by N.E.R.D. feat. Rihanna:
The truth will set you free
But first, it’ll piss you off
Hate! Bad bitches wanna be my bae
Hate! Hunt me down like the CIA
Hate! Side of my car, tryna see my face
Hate! Want me to beat it like the T.I. case
Oh (hate!) and if it’s heated I’ma feed my face
Hate! And best believe, it’s gon’ be outrageous
Hate! Hatin’ niggas can’t believe my race
Hate! N****s hit you with the Eli face, oh
(....)
I get it how I live it.
I live it how I get it.
Count the mothafuckin’ digits
I pull up with a lemon
Not ’cause she ain’t livin’
It’s just your eyes get acidic
And this here ain’t a scrimmage
Mothafucka, we ain’t finished
I told you we won’t stop
A n***a ’bouta business
Now here’s a song by Kendrick Lamar called King’s Dead (from the Marvel’s The Black Panther soundtrack album):
La di da di da, slob on me knob
Pass me some syrup, fuck me in the car
La di da di da, mothafuck the law
Chitty chitty bang, murder everything
Bitch, I’m on a roll, and I put that on the gang
And now let’s look at select lyrics from Ed Sheeran’s The Shape of You:
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Oh—I—oh—I—oh—I—oh—I
I’m in love with your body
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with the shape of you
If you can’t see that unsupervised children might repeat some of these lines, you’re quite simply wrong. In order to help children of all colors and creeds succeed in this country, American society – parents included – should proactively work to enstill in their children how the subject matter of such lyrics (destructive behavior like drug and alcohol abuse and underage sex) are not things to emulate.
I pointed this out not only here but at The American Spectator two years ago. At that time, I also pointed out that apologists of hip hop, pop, and rap continue to show themselves. One of those apologists is former MTV News writer Doreen St. Félix, who’s a contributor for The New Yorker:
Rap is art. It’s real and not real, a dramatization of some parts of a life to create entertainment — just as white art forms have done for millennia with impunity. The black men and women who have carved this thing out of despair, oppression, and ancestral style are not unthinking, violent brutes. They are not “thugs,” to use his brutal language. They’re not gun-happy automatons who simply transpose violence onto beats. Rappers are artists. Is that so hard to comprehend?
That’s ridiculous, real artists don’t spew out the n-word every few seconds in their songs, let alone talk about sex or drugs.
The truth is that the subject matter of modern music has corroded our culture. But, you will never get liberal Hollywood and an equally liberal press to admit that. The latter puts out nothing but praise for this garbage, while the former simply wants to make money. And anyone who points out how destructive this kind of music is ends up being attacked by both the press and the industry as St. Félix’s comments prove.
Of course, there is some great content that comes out of the entertainment industry. But unless it stops endorsing songs, movies, and TV shows with gratuitous scenes and/or lyrics and having little to no alternatives, its credibility will continue to sink with the American people.
