El hip-hop suele ser culpado por sus letras controvertidas. Pero, ¿y si existiera una forma de medir realmente su impacto en la vida de las personas? Analizando 40 años de datos de emisoras de radio y letras de raperos como Tupac, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z y Kendrick Lamar, el economista Roland Fryer somete a juicio uno de los debates más notorios de la cultura, y los resultados no son lo que cabría esperar.

En defensa del hip-hop

Hip-hop's influence stretches from music to language, clothing, and even social media, captivating generations worldwide. Analyzing 40 years of radio data and hundreds of thousands of songs, researchers found hip-hop lyrics grew more explicit but showed no negative impact on social outcomes like crime or teen pregnancy. Even the most controversial songs failed to correlate with higher violence or social decline. In fact, the data suggests inequality fuels the rawness in hip-hop, not the other way around.

Hip-Hop’s Lyrics Don’t Harm Society, Inequality Does

Despite decades of criticism toward hip-hop’s controversial lyrics, rigorous analysis of forty years of radio data reveals no evidence that exposure to hip-hop causes negative social outcomes. Even as the genre’s language became five times more profane and violent, homicide, income, and teen pregnancy rates showed no harmful correlation. In fact, places with more hip-hop sometimes fared slightly better. The real story is that social conditions shape the music, not the other way around.