The Thug Trend

Trends & Culture: Topic Proposal

Please respond to the questions below and copy/paste the text into a blog entry.
Do NOT upload this document.

1. What is your topic and how does it relate to the overall theme of trends and culture?
My topic is the trend of the reemergence of the "Thug" Image within hip-hop music. The reemergence of this trend could mean big profit and big problems for the music industry.

2. What is the main controversy? Who are the participants in the debate?
Should the glorification of violence, sex, and drugs be accepted just because it is a marketable trend? Rap stars and the Hip-Hop Community are the centers of this debate.

3. Please list all the causes/effects you intend to explore in your essay. Obviously, you might come up with other causes/effects based on your research, but it is useful to know what you have to start with.
Some of the effects are the increase in "thug" clothing, more fatal incidents concerning rappers, FCC regulation of Hip-Hop Lyrics, More violence within the hip-hop community, other genres of music losing market share, an increase in marketing geared toward middle-class teens, Cable Channels having more Rap based shows

4. What approach will you be using? Please explain if you plan to combine approaches.
I will be looking to the future to predict the toll this trend will take on society.

5. What information will you be looking for as you start researching the topic?

I will be looking for statistics concerning the general increase of violence among the hip-hop community, researching to find out an estimate of how many fatal incidents have occurred concerning rappers in relation to incidents in other genres. And finally I will be analyzing Nielsen ratings to see how have ratings increased in relation to the increase in the marketing of this image.