Eric Clapton had a song called cocaine, and had a bad cocaine habit, but I never heard anyone criticize his music and say that it encourages drug use. Jimi Hendrix died of an overdose of drugs, but still he is considered one the best guitar players ever. It's kind of obvious that the music of the past generations contained the same lyrical content, but it never was blamed for the same things that are placed on the hip hop industry. Censorship on the hip on industry is getting stricter and for the wrong reasons.
Every artist in this world has special qualities and styles, which make them different, and makes up their integrity. When an artist writes a song, he or she is writing the lyrics to mean something and to show beliefs, experiences, and things of that nature. For someone to come in and make that person change the song content or change the video content ruins the integrity of the artist. The integrity of the artist is in the songs, his or her image, and the content of the videos. In the hip hop industry these qualities are not accepted, but instead criticized. No longer can someone write a song to say what he or she wants to say or show who he or she is, but instead the artist has to make the song so someone else will allow it to be played. This whole ideal of censorship takes away from the unique styles and background of the artists in the hip-hop industry. The image of the people involved in the hip-hop industry and the people listening to hip-hop music is being destroyed because of accusations and stereotypes placed on this music and its fans. .
Censorship does not allow the hip-hop artists to express themselves because of the limits that are set for the music. Why should someone else have the authority to say what is expectable for someone else to say? The president of Stanford Donald Kennedy once said, " Once you start telling people what they can't say, you will end up telling them what they can't think".