hungry for money, and another song, “anything” which has the positive message that he will look over his younger nephew. Where Nas once rhymed about violence and how he was a part of it, he shows he has grown and now depicts violence as a horrible thing. “saw fiends shoot up and do lines of cocaine, saw my close friend shot up flatlinin…” What this says is that rap artists are not writing songs about murder and violence for the hell of it, but are reporting about the real occurrences in the hood that everyone can relate to. As they progress it can be shown that so dose the content of their lyrics. If you want violence out of rap music you must first take it out of the streets in which these artists were raised.METHODOLOGY:In order to show that rap artists rhyme about real things to them this study uses a content analysis. Five songs from Jay-Z’s first album, “Reasonable Doubt” were compared to five of his most recent songs. The same was done for Nas, totaling the song titles used to 20. Lyrics were obtained from websites and my general knowledge of both of these artists. The five songs from the first albums of Jay-Z and Nas were analyzed for violent content by counting the appearance of words such as gun, murder, death, kill, etc. Later songs were analyzed for their absence of violent themes and more positive things. Songs that fell in this category were analyzed for content of such things as advice, money, material things and even a negative opinion on violence. Not all rap artists should be condemned for their lyrical content, the latent function of their lyrics is to depict what they know and have experienced. They act as reporters writing on the subculture that created this form of music. Before their success, all Jay-Z and Nas knew was what they saw in the hoods in which they grew up. Before Nas knew fame his outlook was this…”life ain’t *censored* but stress fake n...
