What is it with the hip-hop music industry?

[scaeagles]

Is it simply part of the "culture" of the music that is unavoidable?

The notorius B.I.G. is shot and killed in Vegas. Tupac Shakur (please forgive any of my spellings - I am not a hip-hop music kind of guy) is shot and killed. Some female rapper - Li'l Kim? - is off to jail for lying under oath about a (shock) shooting she witnessed. Just yesterday or a couple days ago, Suge Night (?) was shot at a party the night before some sort of hip-hop music awards show, but fortunately, the music world pulled together to go on with the awards show despite the tragedy. I'm sure I'm missing some other martyr of the industry.

I don't get it. What am I missing?

[mousepod]

General arguments about "culture" of the music remind me of the paper that won the 2004 Medical Ignobel Prize - "The Effect of Country Music on Suicide", which was originally published in 1992. The abstract begins:

This article assesses the link between country music and metropolitan suicide rates. Country music is hypothesized to nurture a suicidal mood through its concerns with problems common in the suicidal population, such as marital discord, alcohol abuse, and alienation from work. The results of a multiple regression analysis of 49 metropolitan areas show that the greater the airtime devoted to country music, the greater the white suicide rate. The effect is independent of divorce, southernness, poverty, and gun availability. The existence of a country music subculture is thought to reinforce the link between country music and suicide. Our model explains 51% of the variance in urban white suicide rates.

[Kevy Baby]

LOL Mousepod - I like that.