I mention this in passing, only because of the casual shot you took at parents like me who "allow" their children to listen to hip-hop. No doubt I have bigger problems, but I can only assume you do not have teenage children.

Unfortunately money talks and people buy the stuff.

More specifically--suburban white teenage males buy the stuff.

What often goes unmentioned in discussions of rap and hip hop is the fact that whites are most numerous consumers. The AP did a poll of Black Americans two months ago that found over half of the respondents thought that Rap is a negative force in the black community.

Isn't that a bit like Scrooge McDuck campaigning against money?

Hip-hop has 30+ year history in this country and most of it historically hasn't carried any of those words until recently. Unfortunately in its current state, it is a bunch of money-grubbing young men egged on by record companies, throwing around curse words and talking about the basest of instincts, but it hasn't always been that way. I understand why many who don't have an understanding of the genre can't see the difference, but there is one.

I liken it to movies in the late 80's where at glance it appeared that movies were only produced to show Rambo or Conan killing someone as creatively as possible. Just because of the sudden jump in violence and lack of creativity in the industry, we weren't so quick to dismiss movies as pure violent fare. There are others who haven't succumbed in the hip-hop industry to the misogynistic and violent themes that are so at its core. I'm personally hoping that some sanity is brought to an industry which was, whether people like it or not, nothing more than an evolution of rock-n-roll in its portrait of life for a part of the population that didn't have much of a voice. Unfortunately it transformed itself into something much worse, but I'm hoping that most extreme themes can again be pushed to the sidelines.