The Representation of Men and Women in Rap

The rap genre is becoming more and more popular as the years go on, and it seems to be gradually taking over the charts. Rap consists of both male and female artists, however there is a strong dominance of the male sex. This influences the target audience, therefore creating a fan base of mainly males, but this isn't to say that females can't enjoy rap music. There is still a huge number of young females who enjoy this genre just as much as the young males. In the rap industry majority of rap artists are male, for example there is Kendrick Lamar, Tyga, 2 Chainz, Tinie Tempah, Lil Wayne - the list is endless. On the female side of things we have artists like Nicki Minaj, Lil Kim and Rihanna can come under this category, but the amount of female rap artists is very limited. However, this is acceptable in a genre like rap because a lot of the time between 2-5 rappers join up to create a collaboration of their music and taste in one song, which shows to be very popular with the target audience.

The rap genre can be very controversial with audiences who don't like it. This is because rap music is quite sexualised, it's not for very young people as it's not appropriate and this creates an argument about the right/appropriate age to be listening to this type of music. Another argument is that some people think that the lyrics in the songs don't have meaning to them as they just talk about sex and crime. This may be the case for some but certainly not for all, a lot of rappers like to talk about their life experiences in their songs that could hopefully be influential and inspiring to others. Although, another argument is that it doesn't matter what the rappers talk about in their music, it's there to be enjoyed by whoever enjoys it, and I am one of those people.

I think at the moment the rap industry is on it's way up, a lot more songs are already becoming featured in the charts and becoming more and more popular with the audiences who enjoy pop music as now, the two genres are beginning to overlap. Nowadays you will most likely hear a song that has a stereotypical pop chorus and rap verses, and this is how the rap industry have gained a wider audience and therefore are becoming one of the top genres.

The negatives with the rap industry is the fact that the explicit music is available to young children on YouTube and other websites, even radios play this music and although the swear words and inappropriate language is blanked out, the remains of the sentence isn't and it is so easy to tell what the sentence means and before long, young children will be singing it out loud and in my opinion, that is inappropriate and something I think people should work harder on to avoid.