Hip-Hop Industry Masonic Agenda pt.1/3

This You-Tube Video is a great representation of this article. I was able to pull out quite a few quotes that relate to this controversy between hip-hop, media, and socialization in relevance to how the rich become richer while the poor stay poor because they are not heard but instead looked at as a money maker to society. At first, hip-hop helped the Black Community voice themselves in trying to pull themselves out of poverty. Somehow along the line this has changed.If you would like to see the rest of the parts of the video you can visit the site ( I would highly recommend this to you because it is so interesting) at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pCHZUd-jS4

Hip-Hop, Mass Media and 21st Century Colonization

By Jared A. Ball, Ph.D, Communications Fellow
I understand most of the author's arguments in this article. The author is trying to say how hip-hop is tied to the mass media and uses colonizations of the 21st century to keep the cycle going. For example, politics play a big role in all of this. For instance at the end of the article Jared states that " In future columns I will detail the historical shift in hip-hop, the corporate/industrial mechanism, detailing how the final product is shaped to these political needs and offer detailed strategies and current movements/ artists whos work is in assertive resistance to this neocolonial condition." I understand Jared's approach in trying to eventaully prove how hip hop is geared simply towards using mass media and depicting the certain way a culture should appear to be and in turn making a profit. In doing so we are subconcioulsy growing bias on certain colonies and how we think they should act. Also, it gives the people a false impression of how "Black Americans" make it big in this world. I get the underlying sense and I feeling from this article that says in my mind "just release a hip-hop album and you will be at the top, this is how you can succeed in this political, corporate industrical society. The government is making money off of taxes and the hip hop artists who may not have had a chance at anything out of the "ordinary" got a chance at their white picket fence, despite the passion they may or may not have for hip hop. For example he states "It is not the PEOPLE that these conditions are natural but, instead, to the CONDITION, of being colonized. Popular media and, therefore, hip-hop cannot be changedprior to a societal shift (revolution)in who holds power and how that power is being wielded." The hip-hop industry is not realistically made based on society and culture but instead upon marketing and the corporate worlds. Otherwise known as "MASS MEDIA."

This article was very straightforward and as I finished it I began to put the pieces together to give myself a complete understanding. As I began to read it the very first line confused me. However, as soon as I began to read the rest of the article it all made sense. I then went back to reading it and I actually really liked how he decided to begin with the quote "given the societal need and function of mass media and popular culture, all that is popular is fraudulent" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fraudulent.He couldn't have said it any better.

Look at how hip-hop is defined on this particualr websit and tell me how you feel about the way they define it.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:hip+hop&ei=DtmKS5agGorYtgPb9OyEAw&sa=X&oi=glossary_definition&ct=title&ved=0CAYQkAE

Your friends will be moving on with their lives, while you are still sitting in the same spot, Literally

Coming of age with the Internet... Sally J. McMillan and Margaret Morrison

These authors went ahead and collected data in the qualitative forms of autobiographies. This approach was nice in being able to see different views of young college student adults and how the coming of the Internet has been a part of each of their lives. I have always had my own hypothesis on the whole "coming of the Internet" and how it "effects society as a whole". It is there and it is wonderful. Wonderful in ways just like some students stated in the articles such as convenience. Convenience to shop,to communicate at much cheaper rates, and my favorite is the learning tools the Internet gives us. An example of this would be one person who said " the Internet has changed my life. I now almost exclusively buy organic foods. I no longer eat red meat because of information I retrieved off of the American Medical Association's website and from sites authored by various environmental organizations."I believe the access of the Internet has given me the quickest and easiest way to read and comprehend (if needed) an article. for instance, Raby, when she used lots of words I didn't understand I just looked them up. I was already on the computer so it was "convenient". Before I would just read and not get the fullest understanding because I didn't have access to a dictionary and if I did it may not have the word i am looking for. Now along with Pros come cons. In this article it states "Many respondents reported that they feel in danger of losing themselves amidst the wealth of information available on the web." Going back to discourses, people can be misled by the Internet. An article could be biased whether it be fact or not, but biased in an underlying tone and it could be misinterpreted. Not all information on the Internet is correct either. For example,many of my Professors will not except Wikipedia citations because anyone can write anything they want on Wikipedia. I used to use it in high school and wasn't aware of this until college. I may have been misguided at one point and didn't even know it. I firmly agree with some of the students beliefs on how the Internet takes us away from social environments and in my opinion I do not think that is healthy. Families these days spend less time together. Ironically I was just discussing this in my juveniles and justice class. There would be less delinquent behavior if parents and children spent more time together. It also goes over the idea that "the younger generation such as younger siblings, etc are smarter when using the Internet". This tells me that some parents may be lost. If the parents do not know how to even turn on a computer then how are they going to monitor what their children are doing. Just like everything else it has its pros and cons. The Internet in my opinion is best used properly when in moderation. Use it and don't abuse it.

I did not fully understand the concentric circles used in the model of figure 1. I understand that it "contributes to the aspects of the participants every lives". However, I don't understand why the authors couldn't just state each of these in a list rather then a circle. I don't understand the relevance of the circle.

I do not understand if the authors agree or disagree completely with whether or not talking online and making another identity is OK. They claim it helps someone who is shy, yet it helps an introvert be more introverted. I felt there were a couple points made here that contradicted each other. I understand they are both valid points along with many others but sometimes in this article its hard to see which points they favor.

Along with the relevance the article had with discourses as I mentioned above, there was relevance with youth as a culturally constructed category. I believe this goes to say that the Internet as well as teens and young adults have changed over time. We see in this article, and in life in general,that the older generation does not have as much experience with the Internet as the younger generation does.

This You Tube video explains one teenage girls image of herself. I felt it relevant to this weeks article.This girl, like most at her age, is confused

"A Tangle of Discourses: Girls Negotiating Adolescence" By: Rebecca C. Raby

The author in this piece did her own miniature study on 30 teenage girls and their grandmothers. Her goal was to help her get a better outlook on what she claims are the five discourses ( http://www.thefreedictionary.com/discourse) of adolescence. These include storm, becoming, at-risk, social problem, and pleasurable consumption. These are how teenagers may think of and speak about the world around us. Raby claims "adolescence is a clear, predicatable (but turbulent) stage that teenagers inevitably ://www.thefreedictionary.com/inevitably) undergo." In saying this she is saying we all have been there done that and had the same self conflicts resulting in these events (she calls these "key traits") . However these interviews show each teenage girl and descirbes their opinions of being a teen in their our own ways. We all have had our similar yet different experiences but not one of us will describe it in the same way.Ray does this study to show that all adolescents each in their own ways will go through these these discourses even though they each may express themselves differently along the way. Ray used the grandmothers along with the current teens for the interviews to see the effects of generation on this topic. Her method was as follows "By drawing on interviews with both grandmothers and granddaughters, I have been able to identify the diverse ways in which adolescents talked about across time, across identity positions (such as class and gender) that intersect with teenage hood , and between general references to adolescence as a category and particular referencees to individual teenagers." Her results came from very diverse groups aged from 13 to 19.

The storm and the becoming are more likely to be naturalized (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/naturalized) as inevitable, psychological and/ or biological features of adolescence. This is to say that these two dscourses are bound to happen and will commonly happen as the adolescent matures. In my Psychology class I learned about Erik Erikson (http://www.learningplaceonline.com/stages/organize/Erikson.htm). The author defines the storm as psychological and having stages like Erikson. Also, biologically teens go through hormone changes which also like the stages of development effect a teen and the way they look at life. I learned about Erikson and his stages in my Psychology class but Steinberg gives another outlook on teens and self identity that interested me "Parent;s probably project their own discomfort about adolescnce onto their children....as a way of avoiding facing the unrest they themselves feel about growing old." The Becoming interested me the most because it explains self discovery and identity formation. In doing she explains how the teen may end up confused because they are entering endependence yet they are dealt with much consequences to their actions. This is described as "Panoptic time." We expect so much from our teens yet we are educated enough to know that they are able to have an excuse because of their development. This quote interested me and it makes me feel like we ignore adolescnets sometimes "Child and teen desires, ideas and expereience may be consequently dismissed as irrational (

This You Tube video explains one teenage girls image of herself. I felt it relevant to this weeks article. This girl, like most at her age, is confused about her identity.