How much has "bling" cost us?

In recent years, rap and hip-hop have taken over the music industry in America.

While I have been listening to both genres for years, I am convinced that they are hurting the world of music.

Let me explain.

Rap and hip-hop in themselves, as genres of music, are excellent. It's energetic, uplifting and, most of the time, deeply intellectual.

It appeals to the inner poet in all of us, the one who writes with his pen but listens with his ears. When verse meets rhythm, this captivating genre is created.

So why do I think they are hurting the music world?

Despite its greatness of form, rap and hip-hop are becoming more than they are. They are contaminating other genres of music to such an extent that diversity is becoming extinct.

In this way, hip-hop is like a disease.

Watch as the guitar becomes a ghost. Listen to chords fade before beats.

Listen as melody becomes chant, a rhythmic beat of men pounding the stretched skins of their drums as they huddle in a corner vocalizing the words of their environment.

But the words are engaging aren't they?

The way they fall in sync with the beat gets the legs moving. This is the addiction.

It's probably why hip-hop is taking over the music industry to begin with. It may be appealing, but so is a heroin high.

Is the addiction worth the costs?

I enjoy a variety of sub-styles within these genres. For west coast MCs, I very much enjoyed the flow Snoop Dogg had in the early nineties, as well as the comedic lyrics of Eazy E. From the east coast, I listen to Redman and the Wu-Tang Clan.

Rappers like Cassidy and Juelz Santana have legitimized a new age of creative, hyper-complex style, and rappers like Papoose have taken it to its limits. But the cost of this addiction is staggering.

The cost is all other music.

Of course, there are genres mostly unaffected by hip-hop, like country-western or polka, but these are much smaller slices of the music industry.

Mainstream music, in theory, should be the best music.

It certainly is the most listened to and the most privileged by endorsement and promotion. As such, it's unfortunate that this type of music, which is the most accessible, is thoroughly contaminated.

What ever happened to bands like the Beatles?

Why can't mainstream, popular music of today match up to true musical innovators, like the Grateful Dead?

Does anyone even listen to the blues anymore?

I've never been a fan of pop music to begin with, but how shocking is it to see Gwen Stefani making hip-hop!

Hipping the hop is a hype for her and others, like Justin Timberlake, a great example of the iconic pop star.

At the very least, I can say he was a real singer with a great voice.

Now he appears on the screen in jumpsuits and the latest urban fashion, masquerading as a hip-hop artist.

Timberlake, just like Stefani, and all musicians in the mainstream music industry, have become hip-hop addicts, or else they have been forced to pretend they are for the sake of "what sells."

What's worse than being forced into a style in a form of art that's supposed to allow for personal self-expression?

Today I walk down the streets of Keene and realize just how pervasive hip-hop culture is, even outside the music industry.

I see chains, sparkling earrings, tilted caps and jerseys.

I see the unmistakable resemblance of urban, hip-hop fashion. I see it in rural towns as much as in metropolitan Boston. What a joke!

I hear it in slang.

Day in and day out I see the dramatic influence hip-hop has on our language and youth.

What's worse, in many ways the ideals of rap and hip-hop are skewed. It doesn't take an intelligent person to notice that vanity is the central theme of this genre.

The artist flashes his money, his material wealth, his accomplishments.

He lists off his skills, brags about himself and the connections he has.

This has quickly become a genre of narcissism, and if we don't watch out, the world will be inhabited by a race of narcissists by the time our youth matures.

Lance Ashoury is a senior majoring in English. His opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Equinox.