comments:

Danielle! amazing job on your speech. You were way more comfortable and it showed!! good job!- Kara

 

Danielle!  Your speech was a huge improvement today.  You seemed to know your topic well and were really relaxed.  My only suggestion would be to make more eye contact next time...you read a lot.  Good job though!-Katie

 

Danielle... I thought your speak was very informative but your solution was a little unclear. I liked how you kept it interesting and relatable tho! -- Aimee

 

Danielle, I enjoyed your speech today and you were clear on your main points. I also liked the inclusion of the Will Smith lyrics at the end. I thought you could have used some more eye contact, but great job! - Alan

 

Danielle, you did such a great job as compared to last time! Your voice was easy to understand and I really liked your concluding quote, it was very to te point and was a good way to sum up your speech.  You could work a little more on your eye contact, but that's it! <3 Chelsea

 

Danielle Krueger

CAS100A- Section # 207

Hillary Jones

 

I.                   Who here likes to get pumped up before a big sporting event? For me, I always listened to a pump up mix. Every song on this pump up mix made me angry and I was always ready to give it my best shot by the time my mix was over. Every song on my mix is rap.

 

II.                I’m sure you guys went through similar experiences. But what happens when our youth isn’t getting pumped up for a game? What happens when our youth listens to this music to get pumped up for a fight? The rappers have been putting all these thoughts in our youth’s head about how to fight and what kinds of guns to buy. Today we’re going to explore the consequences of rap music on our youth.

 

III.             After listening to rap for several years, I felt the emotions that I was supposed to feel, and I became scared. I was afraid because music had such a huge affect on me that I felt I was becoming brainwashed. I loved the beats and creativity of the rhymes, however; so I started listening to more old-school rap… the things they made to before they could get away with talking about gruesome murder on the radio.

 

IV.             If we can change what the youth thinks is cool rap will turn into an all around more wholesome economy.

 

V.                (Preview of main points)

a.       First, I will convince you that the way rap music corrupts our youth is a problem

b.      Second, I will explain my plan/policy of using wholesome rap to influence our youth in a positive way

c.       Third, I will show how my plan/policy will solve the problem of corrupting our youth

d.      and lastly, I will show how the benefits of my plan outweigh the costs

 

TRANSITION: It’s almost appalling to see how much rappers can affect our youth. Rappers have become role models for children, but what kinds of things are they teaching our youth?

 

 

I.                   Main point # 1: Rap music is corrupting our youth.

A.                This is making our youth more violent

1.                  Shaun Mathis from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/67166/rap_is_killing_our_youth.html said “Day by day rap music is raising our adolescents to be gun toting, drug dealing, money hungry high school drop-outs who continue to blow their money on cars, clothing and jewelry all while still living at home and why?”  Children need to learn to separate rap music from reality and realize that rappers are only saying these things because it sells records. They are not preaching their beliefs, they are only what the media wanted them to become and until our youth realizes this, it will be a tough battle trying to bring our youth back down to reality.

2.                  Rappers constantly bragging about how many times he’s been shot are making our youth seem like it’s cool to get in fights like that. 50 Cent says in The Realest Killaz, “Tupac cut his head bald,then you want to cut yo head bald. Tupac wear a bandana,you wanna wear a banadana Tupac put a cross on his back,You wanna put crosses on yo back you aint Tupac” This shows that even 50 Cent knows how much the youth imitates rappers. If 50 Cent truly knows this statistic, why would he say some of the things he says? He is only making our youth and our future more violent.

B.                 This is making our youth more materialistic

1.                  Rappers constantly brag about the things they have. “Cribs,” for example, is a television show devoted to showing the lifestyles of the rich. Their material goods are usually completely unnecessary, but it’s these shows that our youth watches and finds what they need to do to be just like the celebrities. If a kid watches “Cribs” and finds that rappers are rich, they go and find out the kinds of things rappers do. The youth then finds that rappers enjoy partying, having sex, and killing people. These are now the aspirations of our youth.

2.                  If our youth is watching these music videos and seeing the things that rap stars say and do, the youth will eventually imitate the rappers.

 

TRANSITION: I worked at a camp in North Philly and at the beginning of the week, every kid sang a rap song and danced to it at the beginning of the day. Each day we taught these kids a new religious song and by the end of the week, the kids were dancing and singing along to wholesome, but nice music. If we can encourage all of our youth to broaden their horizons, maybe the youth will be more open to other kinds of music. If our media figures out kids are listening to more wholesome music, they will be forced to make their clients adapt to this new genre. It won’t be soon before long that the record labels would make rappers be more wholesome. Will Smith is a wholesome rapper, but still comes out with music we can dance to.       

 

II.                Main point # 2: Plan/Policy These rappers are our youths role models… while the lime light is on the rappers, they should say encouraging things

A.                We will encourage our youth to be more open to all rappers

1.                  If we can set up more camps like this in cities, our youth will not only learn of the brainwashing in rap, but will also learn of the more wholesome rap. I learned about “The Hip-Hop Project” in an article in The New York Times. “The Hip-Hop Project” is a movie that “encourage at-risk teenagers to express themselves in verse rather than violence.”

2.                  We need to play the meaningful raps on the radio too. Most rap albums have both meaningful songs and club bangers. The artists would appreciate all tracks being played on the radio so only playing the materialistic ones is unhealthy for our culture. It is possible that rappers today are not aware of the fact that they are influencing our youth so drastically. Another part of my plan is to show these rappers the way they’ve corrupted our youth in hopes that they will realize how much they are looked up. If the rappers realize the pedestal that they are put up on, maybe they will use their attention in a good way and preach wholesome things.

B.                 We will need cooperation from the radio stations and rappers

1.                  We will need the radio stations to see the problem in all of this and we need them to want to do something to change it.

2.                  We will need the rappers to see how influential they are and to want to do something to help the situation.

C.                 how plan/policy will be funded

1.                  The plan really won’t cost much money aside from the camps set up for more positive role models.

2.                  The plan however will take much will power for the rappers to change their ways and hopefully use their fame to the children’s advantage.

D.                how plan/policy will be enforced

1.                  There will not be too much enforcement because most of the change must happen willfully considering any other kind of change would make this censorship.

2.                  The radio will do most of the enforcing hopefully playing more of the meaningful music.

 

TRANSITION: Making the rappers better role models and informing the rappers about how influential they really are will cause the youth to imitate better behavior and eventually stop the problems in youth violence and materialistic behavior.

 

III.             The plan will solve the problem because now that

A.                With positive role models and with rappers sending better messages, the youth will no longer have role models telling them to be violent and thus the violence will stop.

1.                  The youth will no longer be imitating violent behavior and the problem with youth violence will decrease significantly.

2.                  Although it is still shocking to see how much rap music can affect our culture, as long as this is a fact, we might as well use it to our advantage.

B.                 Although the rappers may still be materialistic, the most important messages will teach the youth about family and integrity and probably cause the youth to be less materialistic

1.                  Songs like, “Just the two of us,” by Will Smith for example, still raps about, “building castles in the sky,” and showing that material goods are still important, but the overall message of the song teaches strong morals.

2.                  This is still a step in the right direction and as long as money exists, there will be materialistic people in the world.

 

TRANSITION: These small changes will have a huge impact on our culture and will be worth it no matter what kind of stir this initiative causes in the media.

 

IV.             Main point # 4: Cost/benefit Analysis

A.                While the persuasion for rappers to become better role models may not cost money, it will cost the rappers their street credibility.

1.                  No rapper will be willing to drop everything they’ve rapped about just to be a better influence on the youth, so we must not force them to be better, but try to influence them to have a better perception about how much their music affects the lives of the youth.

2.                  The benefit will outweigh the cost because regardless of how much some may bash this initiative, any youth corruption that it saves, makes it all worth it.

B.                 The benefits of this policy are that our youth no longer will feel the need to be “hard” and “tote a gun.”

1.                  Once our policy is in place, the youth will no longer be concerned with violence, but rather solving problems by talking them out.

2.                  We’ve all seen this initiative in work through the song, “What’s goin on?” in the 90’s to help raise awareness for AIDS in Africa. If we can apply the same concept here all the time, we will live in a much safer world both today and tomorrow.

 

TRANSITION: I hope that you guys have become more aware of the dangers in rap music and I hope that you are not molded into what the media and rappers mold you into.

I.                   With these changes to rap music, our youth will be significantly less corrupted and will no longer feel the need to be violent, demeaning, or materialist at all times.

 

II.                (Review main points)

A.    Problem – Our youth is more violent and materialistic because of rap music.

B.     Plan/policy – we show how influential rappers are and we play the more meaningful music on the radio.

C.                 Cure – the youth will now be affected by more wholesome role models and the youth will imitate more positive behavior.

D.                Cost – this may cause a major stir and cause some rappers to lose street credibility, but aside from the “hard” image of some rappers and disc jockeys, there will not be much cost for this policy to be put in place.

 

III.             As Will Smith says in his song Freak This, “All you rappers yellin' bout who you put in a hearse/ Do me a favor write one verse without a curse”