In this article a social worker at a high school in Oakland California starts up a program called, "Beats, Rhymes and Life." This program takes kids who have witnessed or been apart of violence, and teaches them to use hip-hop as a way to release all their negative energy. The founder/social worker, Tomás Alvarez says that hip-hop is always viewed as songs about just drugs and violence and how it's really much more than that.
I think that it's amazing that an adult can understand from the viewpoint of a teenager, he's not saying hip-hop is just about drugs and violence but how it's mainly about what teens are observing around them, and how they feel. I think the purpose of this article was to show that hip-hop isn't the big bad thing it is portrayed as but more about how it can be used to help people through tough times. Its definitely more directed to the people who don't really care to listen to the lyrics and judge straight off the bat than to the people who actually do.
This is a very common misconception in America, and even in other places. I believe that you cannot really judge until you've been in someone else's shoes and can understand why they are feeling that way. I think that some songs don't really prove much of a point but, there are some that do. You can't judge a certain genre by one song, there are many different variations. Variation at which, do have meaning.
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