Since its birth, one of the most common criticisms of hip-hop is that rising crime rates are directly correlated with the music.
It turns out this is true, but not in the way critics think it is.
Yesterday, a writer at TheWire named Philip Bump did a study analyzing hip-hop’s relation to crime. The writer did the informal study in response to Chris McDaniel, a Mississippi Senate candidate, who once declared:
“The reason Canada is breaking out in brand-new gun violence has nothing to do with the United States and guns. It has everything to do with a culture that is morally bankrupt. It’s called hip-hop.”
Bump discredits this theory by looking at FBI data of violent crime that shows that as rap became more popular, crime actually went down.
If you have 10 minutes give the article a good read. It’s pretty interesting and there’s cool charts and shit.
SOURCE: TheWire
