Visible Mic, figurative pacifier

Have you noticed lately that rap/pop music is becoming increasingly child-like? For instance, the unfortunately popular "Do yo' chain hang low" is set to the same tune as "Do your ears hang low"--a child's nursery rhyme.

Not only are the lyrics and tone juvenile, but the messages aren't very cerebral. "I'm horny, I'm angry, I'm the best, I'm rich, I'm miserable, I'm entitled, I'm accomplished." These are sentiments even animals express. A male koloa howls at the top of a tree after he successfully mates with a female. This act, it could be argued, encompasses all the aforementioned sentiments in rap music.

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But rap artists aren't just child-like: they embrace all the depravities and hostilities of which only an adult mind could conceive. But why are they this way?

Let me offer a little conjecture. Many rap star men come from underprivileged, inner-city homes with no resident father. Eminem, for instance, grew up with no father and a drug-addict mother. With adult male role models absent, youth often turn to older youth, often to teenagers. In a sense, the blind are now leading the blind. As scientific research points out, the part of the brain that judges risk taking is not yet fully developed in a teen. Although many teens are done growing, they may still be immature mentally, and thus have less scruples and be somewhat mentally neanderthalic.

Nonetheless such openness to risk does not absolve a teen from blame because the teen is still very conscious. Moreover, such risk-taking can actually be a good thing in a teen. However, it would help if teen-would-be rap stars had decent father figures to tell them which risks to take. It would also help if teens had responsible working men to emulate in addition to their carefree, impulsive peers. Finally, sometimes the commanding presence of a man can calm the stirrings of a teenagers better than the sometimes hysterical reactions of a mother.

How do these rap stars grow up? By embracing all the perversions learned from their daring peers, not by learning integrity or a code of honor from their fathers. Hence rap music.