Rap v. Country Music

In the wake of the CMT Awards and Taylor Swift dominating every conceivable music sales record there is, I thought it would be a good time to bring up an interesting thought I had the other day.

Hip-hop takes a lot of heat for the content of it's lyrics.  And rightly so.  There is a lot to not like in hip-hop.  The music is often misogynistic, and focuses on things like violence and drugs.  Now, I've always said that rap is a PRODUCT of life in the streets, it does not cause it.  Music is a reflection of culture, it does not cause culture to exist.  We like to blame music for the ills of our society but more often then not, musicians tend to write about what they see around them, not what the wish they see.  Rap takes a lot of heat for "glorifying drug dealing and using".  While there is definitely some validity to that, if you're going to kill rap music for their talk of drug use, you have to kill country music as well.

Quick, write down 5 songs by 5 different country artists.  It's ok, I'll wait.  Got it?  Good.  Now, I'm willing to bet that 4 out of those 5 songs all contain some sort of reference to alcohol (1 is probably a Taylor Swift song and she's squeaky clean).  Alcohol use (and abuse) is probably mentioned in 9 out of 10 country songs, period, across the board.  Think I'm wrong?  Just listen to country radio and count how many times someone mentions "a bottle of whiskey" or "a cold beer".  Yet, parents would much rather have their children listen to country music than rap.  Country music has that family values feel to it, but it's not.  Alcoholism is a LOT more prevalent in America than crack cocaine usage by a wide margin (I don't know the exact stats and I'm way too lazy to look them up).  So if we're going to give rap hell for talking about drugs, we HAVE to give country music hell for glorifying alcoholism.  Period.  Jack Daniels is as a country as cowboy hats and belt buckles.  And in a country where alcoholism is rampant, and DUI's kill almost as many people as heart attacks (I'm guessing), that's not a good thing.

Sure, rap has other issues (the n word for example), but if you don't like a style of music because of it's subject matter, you need to be consistent and not just pick and choose what problems you want to ignore.  If you want to lash at Kanye for "We Don't Care" then you need to remember Toby Keith's "Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses".

SIDE RANT THAT IS SORT OF BUT NOT QUITE RELATED:  I'm sick of hearing that rappers aren't talented.  Rap has, without a doubt, the best collection of song writers there are.  Do you really think "Honky tonk ba-donk-a-donk" required more talent to write than "Big Pimpin'"?  Go back and listen to them both and try and tell me otherwise!

I'm not saying you should burn all your country records in protest.  I'm not saying Nicki Minaj is a better role model than Carrie Underwood.  I'm just saying "Call it both ways!"  I'll step down from my soapbox now.