The rap music genre (also known as hip-hop) is suffering a decline in sales as well as criticism from inside the hip-hop world about its messages and their negative influence on society.

Rap music sales fell 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and a rap album was not among the top 10 sellers of the year. In a recent study by the Black Youth Project, a majority of young people saw rap as too violent. And in an Associated Press and AOL-Black Voices poll of black Americans last year, 50 percent called hip-hop a negative force in American society.

C. Dolores Tucker is a black activist criticized in the past by young fans of rap for crusading against the degradation of women in the lyrics of rap music. She is now being joined by women who were formerly rap fans but are now older and understand the negative cultural implications of degrading language (Nekesa Mumbi Moody, 'A Bad Rap: Genre Seems to Be Losing Luster," Associated Press, March 5, 2007).

Monitoring what music we listen to by noting the lyrics and choosing songs with messages in line with God's way of life allows us to fill our minds with the positive and forgo negative influences.