What would you do if I Rhymed out of Tune? One of the main channels where Americans speak out about race, violence and culture, is Hip-Hop music. This is a place where the music is dominated by black artists, yet most of its sales/profits are to whites in America. Is it because white people just like the beat and lyrics of the music, or are they trying to identify with a society they have never known? in spite of its popularity among white listeners, you don’t see the murder rate among young white males increasing because they identify with it. Some might argue that music could never inspire an individual to act in a certain way or someone to kill. However, some could also debate, if music can make you feel happiness or tranquil, then it might also motivate one to violence or invoke aspirations to kill. Byron Hurt, the Filmmaker of “Hip-Hop, Beyond beats and Rhymes,” talks about a “Box” that Hip-Hop puts men in with its lyrics and by the gangsters the music videos embody showing what a real man should desire to be, in his film. “In order to be in that box, men have to be strong, tough, have a lot of girls and money. Men have to be a player or pimp, they have to be in control and dominate other people, because if men are not those things, then they are called soft, weak, a pussy, chump or faggot, and nobody wants to be any of those things so they stay inside the box.” (Byron Hurt)
Hip-Hop’s impractical ideas of manhood have become a box resembling a prison, the same way Plato’s cave was a prison to its own inhabitants in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. In the Allegory of the Cave, prisoners are chained in a cave, unable to turn their heads. is The wall of the cave all is they can see. Behind them is a fire. There is a wall between the fire and the prisoners, where the shadow-makers can walk. The shadow-makers are behind the prisoners, and hold up