Landyn Shanks

After our class discussion about the article “Cop Out?� by Christopher Sieving I tried to come to a conclusion about my opinion of the song and of the article. After class, I went home and decided to download and listen to some rap songs, mostly ones I had never heard before. As I was listening to them, I was astounded by the amount of hostility and violent language I heard. Parts of songs about murder, drugs, sex, rape, violence and every other explicit topic one could imagine. This discovery is what put my opinion into perspective. I realized that although the song “Cop Killer� was intended and aimed at a particular event in history, that a lot of rap music could be considered somewhat violent. An explanation for this is simply that times have changed. Listening to rap music about murder, guns, violence, drugs, rape, robbery, etc. is overlooked and almost unnoticed in today’s society. Back in the early 90’s, rap music and all it entitles was not common to society. Rap was not a huge part of American culture, or at least not at a level it is today. Today, rap is a huge part of our culture, and a large percentage of American’s listen to it on an everyday basis. Due to the fact that it is such an engraved part of society today, often times what is beneath the music is overlooked. I personally could pick out numerous songs that have lines that could be offensive to me, not to mention a number of others. I can only imagine that if I can see myself being offended by these lyrics, so many others probably could too. But the fact is, I do not look into the lyrics of rap music, and with the rap music that I do listen to, the lyrics mean nothing to me, and I do not actually think about them rationally. Back in the 1990’s, when “Cop Killer� was recorded and then Ice-T was socially forced to withdraw the song from distribution, I am sure rap music, more specifically, rap lyrics, meant a lot more to the public. Each word and phrase, keeping in mind that this song had an uncommonly extreme level of explicitness, could have been blown out of the songwriter’s intended context. I truly believe that Ice-T wrote this song by means of personal expression. I think he had a very strong opinion about the situation his culture was in, and thought the only way to express his emotions was through song. I do not think Ice-T intended for the lyrics to be taken literally. I don’t think he was saying he was going to actually go out and kill police officers, and I don’t think he was implying that anyone else should either. I cannot imagine what crazy things and extremes people would go to in today’s time if they took rap lyrics literally.