Tailgates & Tunes
Hip-Hop and It’s Affect on Football Tailgating
As early as seven in the morning, fans get in their trucks and vans trying to find an open blade of grass to set up their tents for that noon kickoff time. The generators are being powered on. The grills are starting to heat up. The nails are being hammered in the ground to hold their tent up.
However, none of those tasks compare to the speakers being plugged up to set the mood. There are many fans who love to blast their favorite hip-hop songs at these tailgates. However, there are many fans who do not want hip-hop songs played at these venues.
The art of hip-hop tends to have either a positive or negative connotation depending on who you ask. Some argue that hip-hop music promotes violence, drug use and gang membership.
A lot of people who listen to hip-hop currently are typically of a young age and many parents try to censor what they can and cannot listen to. According to Statista, 48% of kids between the ages of 16–19 say that Hip-Hop is their favorite genre of music. There are parents out there that prefer their children to not listen to music that is deemed inappropriate by the general population.
Around 48% of all Apple Music users listen to Hip-Hop. Apple Music has around 88 million users. 38% of YouTube users listen to Hip-Hop. YouTube has 88 million subscribers to their music section of their app/website.
Hip-Hop is rapidly growing in popularity. According to CBS News, Hip-Hop sales were ranked third in sales by genre. Hip-Hop sales have doubled in the past 10 years.
There are other people such as Santa Clara University scholar, Natalie Wilson, who argue that hip-hop serves as an outlet for artists and their audience to have an inside track to what life is for them.
In a lot of cases for hip-hop artists, they grew up and lived within the struggles of inner city life and what they did to escape their environment.
The Kennedy Center put out a writing piece talking about how Hip-Hop embraces all types of artistic styles and elements and blends them to “become a means for celebrating, experiencing, understanding, confronting, and commenting on their life and the world”.
Is it wrong for hip-hop artists to write music about things that they experience even though it could be deemed inappropriate for some viewers? If it is their life and their experiences that they want to share, why should that be censored?
According to Daily Universe, Hip-Hop has inspired people to express themselves in a more positive way. Hip-Hop has advocated for social justice, respect, self-worth, peace, and also to just have fun.
Entrepreneur Ross Simmons wrote an article called “Six Reasons You Should Let Your Kids Listen to Rap”. In the article he talks about how he knows that rap gets a bad wrap in society and the language that is used is not always the most appropriate thing, however he lists all the reasons he believes kids need to listen to it.
The first one is that it is important to understand and embrace someone else’s struggle and/or your own. Rappers tend to talk about their childhood, the inner fight with their mind, and all the other things that come with life. The ability to be transparent and about your struggles and weaknesses to the world is a powerful thing.
The other point that I want to dive into is that kids need to develop the ability to identify what is right and wrong for them. If that means not listening to rap music for whatever the case is, then let them do that.
No matter which side you are on, it is a fact that the hip-hop industry is growing rapidly and so are the demographics that listen to this genre of music. There was a time where hip-hop music would never be played inside a football stadium at a PWI (Primarily White Institution).
“For as long as I can remember, Rap was never played”, said Ryan Hart who is four decades-long season ticket holder for the University of Auburn which is a Division I PWI in Alabama.
“I know some people in my (graduating) class who hate when hip-hop music is played at the games,” he said. I asked him when hip-hip started being played in Jordan-Hare Stadium (Auburn’s home field). “Around the time Cam Newton was our QB (quarterback) so 2010”, he replied.
Hip-hop has been around for 50 years now. Football has been around for longer than that. Hip-hop is an essential part of Black culture and these football teams are made up by the majority of Black people.
On top of that, according to studies done by University of Georgia scholars, it shows that 70 percent of hip-hop listeners are white.
While it is proven that people of different races enjoy hip-hop music, it still is frowned upon in these racial groups including inside the black community. Hip-hop has become more and more acceptable as the time goes by and only time will tell if it becomes fully accepted in this country.
Originally published at https://medium.com on December 6, 2023.
