Young people need to act more like role models
She wants to be the best you ever had, to be licked like a lollipop, to blame it on the alcohol and, yet, she’s caught up in a bad romance.
She complains that there aren’t any good men out there to take her on a date. But she “ain’t a gold digger.”
On the other hand, he wants to make a “milli,” have every girl in the world, be independent and not have 99 problems.
Yet, he can’t seem to find a way to accomplish any of these things successfully and ponders over his ideal lifestyle.
Something is wrong with this picture.
The music — which some of these famous lyrics are from — that we enjoy to stuff our ears with may be appealing, but the subconscious messages that we don’t pick up seem to deteriorate our minds and demoralize our values as a youth.
Our music doesn’t really have any meaning to it. It seems as if our generation has taken our feet off the gas after it took decades just to get the black movement in motion.
We gleefully honor the legacy of our Civil Rights leaders, but we don’t make strong efforts to continue their legacy.
We also need our own chapter in history.
Our people have been lynched, raped and murdered for our freedom since we’ve been on this land and yet we think that the struggle is finally over.
The battle is far from over.
Black people are still starving, living homeless, dropping out of school, selling drugs and ending up in prison.
We still have to fix this perpetual problem. Just because we have a black president doesn’t mean he can fix all of black America’s problems.
Televisions stations such as BET, MTV and VH1 continue to portray fellow male artists as thugs and hoodlums and females as sex objects.
Rather than correcting this problem, we embrace it and emulate these lifestyles at all costs.
They can’t go to jail for influencing crimes to a beat, but you can go to jail for committing those crimes.
That’s one reason why our brothers are in prison instead of in the classrooms and our sisters are tantalizing our brothers with their flesh in search for love and affection.
This isn’t everybody, but it’s a major problem.
The artists can’t be entirely at fault.
Some want to put out good music, but the record companies don’t promote it.
The more obscene lyrics, the more records that sell.
Once we let go of the influence of the media and re-evaluate our values, then maybe some of our problems can finally be resolved.
If we are going to continue to prosper as a whole, we need strong leaders who can think for themselves.
We need to tell our peers to pick up a book and sign off Facebook.
I’m sure nobody wants to live in poor conditions their entire life, so why glorify it in what you listen to?
Remember, you have a generation after you to set a path for.
