I listen to music every day, all day and I love hip-hop and rap. I have had several run-ins with my mother about my taste in music. Is what I put in to my ears on a daily basis affecting how I live my life? Am I straying away from the path to the kingdom as I listen to music that is of the empire and certainly not of the Lord? I decided to randomly shuffle the music on my iPod and do a little test. The three songs that randomly came up were. “Love on Top” by Beyoncé, “Drop the World” By Lil Wayne, and “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay. At any point during my workout, car rides, or leisure listening these songs could some on and I would sing along. I used to tell my mom that I listened to hardcore rap just for the beat and that I was able to filter out all the crap about sex, drugs, and violence. It has recently dawned on me that this is not possible. I googled the lyrics to these three random songs and to my astonishment the f-word was repeated 26 times in one of them. In these songs there were references to unhealthy idols (men), violence, sexual promiscuity, and a great supply of offensive derogatory terms. One of these songs however, was fine. No swear words, decent message, and nothing offensive about it. Yet 2 out of 3…not so good? The two bad songs gave in to empire life and gave the listeners no hope for life in the kingdom. Based on these artifacts I honestly could not tell you how Christians should act in the world because there was absolutely no mention or resemblance of Christian behavior in any of them. These artifacts also don’t encourage us to desire, hope for, or believe in anything but evil or worldly behaviors.
Is it acceptable to listen to such music, as long as I filter out and am able to recognize the bad in these songs?
How to I know if I am properly filtering what I hear and not letting it affect my actions?
The music we listen to certainly forms us in many ways. We need to be careful, though, not to judge music and other art on purely moral grounds (language, sexuality, violence). A better rubric might be truth-telling. Does this song tell the truth?
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, Lil Wayne's "Drop the World" features some remarkably lazy songwriting (change the f-word out for any other word to see how silly it sounds).
At it's best, though, hip-hop can tell the truth about urban life better than just about anything else. Chuck D from Public Enemy famously said, "Rap is CNN for black people." And that kind of truth-telling is desperately needed in a culture filled with lies.