That path is not one that anyone can predict. I think that it’s a personal one and you best leave people alone when they are on it.
The prodigal son approach is another option.
well, In my opinion, the prodigal son version is still debatable. I see far too many “prodigal-sons” that never return, if you catch my drift…
This is not a methodology I recomend to anyone in the first place. Finding a bad-path-that-leads-to-good does happen, but not too often. People do not have to discover good by this approach. They still have the ability to choose.
Just my humble ramblings, anyway… 
I don’t really care about the lyrics- musically I think rap is a fraud. I much prefer “real” music ie art music and good pop.
Maybe I’m just too old, too white and too midwestern.
You are.
points to his previous post on the thread
It’s just that shitty rap is popular right now. If shitty rock and roll kept black people in their ‘ghettos’ it would be popular too… but it doesn’t.
Shitty is the only kind of rap. 
Ahh… there we go, it felt wrong for a mundane thread to not have at least one blanket statement
Think of mainstream rap like this - it’s the generic equivalent of Glam Rock in that it isn’t remotely serious, is entirely about the pop industry building icons, is sanitised rebellion for idiotic teenagers and is yet another example of ‘Black’ being taken to mean ‘cool’. How many non-black rap artists are there (excluding Eminem)?
Indeed popular ‘rap’ culture is full of the most remarkable contradictions. The black dude riding along in his bright pink Caddillac, wearing all his bling, with his hos in da bak seet, talking about how closely he feels for all of ‘his people’ who have been ‘oppressed’, and middle class white kids worshipping these cunts as though they aren’t the epitome of shameless hypocrisy…
50 cent is a tool, little more than a mechanically constructed factory for churning out ordinary music and easily adopted identities.
Out of interest: how many other countries have developed happy slapping? By which I mean any form of assault (ranging from the classic slap to the full-blown violent sexual assault) that is filmed on a cameraphone. In recent weeks I’ve started to see the first convictions for such offences in this country (in some cases due to the slapper(s) posting the videos on the internet, dipshits) and I’m wondering whether or not it is a British phenomenon or a global mobile phone phenomenon. According to Wikipedia it originated in the UK (they say London, I say Oldham) but I’m wondering
a) how old it is if you do have it in your country
b) How frequently you hear about it
happy slapping?
that shit wouldn’t fly here…
concealed carry laws at work
-Imp
Firstly, I don’t mind rap as an art form. There have been some witty and amusing raps that made me impressed by the creativity. What I’m talking about is the content of the rap music and that content has to do with living a fantasy criminal life-style.
While working in prison the subject of rap music would come up frequently. The mostly black prison population would bring up the Heavy Metal craze of the 80s and 90s and say that you guys (white people) are into worshiping the devil , while we are into money! I would respond that the devil isn’t real, so you can spend all day worshiping him and nothing is going to happen, however, you can get a gun, some drugs, and fulfill the whole rap plan. So, who’s really evil, I would ask.
The rap lifestyle is something that is really happening in the US. On Market Street in Philadelphia you can buy all of the oversized platinum diamond studded jewelry and whatnot that you see people wearing. There’s guys on the corner wearing alligator shoes and on and on. Many of these guys, if my accounts from prison are correct, believe that like Tupac they will die soon and so they need to seize all of the stuff that they can while on Earth. However, in the end they usually seize a bullet or a very long prison sentence.
It’s true that there’s a lot of corporate manipulation of music and idols but that doesn’t story the realism of the message. Even the rappers themselves, that may have come from hard backgrounds can’t be telling the whole truth. How much time must they have spent on writing and developing their music? There’s doers and then there’s talkers, but that doesn’t matter to someone with poor critical thinking skills.
You can argue that there exists certain non-mainstream rap that is okay. That is fine.
But it is the dirty, mainstream rap that has all the relavent impact and influence on our culture. People are not influenced as greatly by the “good” rap music. It is the mainstream rap that has all of the power to influence. And in today’s world, mainstream rap is the pinnicle of a morally depraved society – a point to which humanity (thank goodness) as a whole has not reached yet.
The problem with it is that it’s a music about doing things that can be done.
theres good rap, and theres bad rap. theres good people, and theirs bad people. theirs more bad people making rap then good people. there is good people making rap. heres one, to listen to b. .m. w. motha fucka. :::::::buck 65 !
adler in fashion, there is no basis for sanity. there click and walks, are as sane as your trousers. however there is a overall aesthatic, so if it hurts your eyes, i guess you can be offended. i would first like to say, i dont listen to rap, except for bulls eye 73, hes dope. rap usually seems forced. it doesnt have to be. shakespere would me an m.c. mc rhyme, if he was around. you have to understand the all mainstream culture is fake, not just the rap trend. you guys probobly think skateboarders hang out in mcdonalds, with backpacks over one shoulder. saying “skate or die” . its all fake , everything in stores. adler tell these fools to get up off my grammer .
Rap is like blowing your nose in public. You expel your ideologic protestatary ooze as noisy as possible in front of so many people, who actually couldn’t care less.
Exactly
Lets look at average self image of the rapper,
average subject of the rap,
general mind-set and situations applied.
mucias—is that all poetry is ?. when rap reaches a certain level it is nothing more then poetry over beats, or , truth over beats. you can rearange all your fake thoughts, into aesthetic compositions, making your fake thoughts become; your real art. when your thoughts are your art, you are yourself.
DAN–lets look at the INDIVIDUAL ! , you are an individual sterio typer. so are you b. m. w.
which leads to a better question: why arent t.v.s round?
…and you are someone whose posts I’d more effectively understand if proper punctuation was used. 
No offense, of course…
Again, I will quote myself:
I’m stereotyping people, you say? Perhaps to some degree this may be true. I’d like to think that humanity is made of of patterns and forms of consistency in our values. I’m very much against racism in all ways, but it would be unfair for me to say I have no idea of how racism for began.
This is how racism began. Racism is an invalid, injust way of stereotyping people. Classifying a type of music as “primarily bad” is not.