Gangster Rap

I am really interested in the rap/ hip-hop genre of music. My favorite rapper is Tupac and even though he is dead and gone I feel his music still helps to change lives and help get people through rough times in their life. The album feature many relevant rap artists that also had a lot to say about the times. He is still one of the most talked about rappers of all time and has been named the *6th greatest artist of all time by Rolling Stone Magazine. The album was produced by Death Row records which was owned by Suge Knight. It was his best selling album, with many singles making it to the Billboard Hot 100. It sold 566,00 copies in the first week that it was released. It also won the 1997 Soul Train Rap album of the year. It was 5x platinum just after two months and was later certified as 9x platinum in the United States. It was one of the most talked about albums mentioned by many credible music magazines such as: Rolling Stone, Spin, Entertainment Weekly, Q Magazine, Musician, Rap Pages, and NME. Also many of the songs from this album were put on Tupac’s greatest hits album after he passed away. Other gangster rap albums of the time were OG: Original Gangster by Ice-T, The Chronic by Dr. Dre, Pretator by Ice Cube and other albums by his friend turned enemy Biggie Smalls. My basic claim would be Tupac’s All Eyez On Me is a good gangster rap album. A more developed thesis for my paper could possibly be Through his raw and truthful lyrics about the so called “thug lifestyle” the songs on All Eyes On Me successfully engage social and political dilemmas to reach out to through the use of gangster rap. 

Writing Assignment 2

Writing assignment 2 was a lot easier than writing assignment 1. Not because of content but because we were actually allowed to write about something that interested us rather than write about something that we do not care about at all. It also was a learning experience for me. I knew that I wanted to know more about drugs and how they play a role in professional sports but I probably never would have took the time to actually look more into the topic. This paper required a lot of research but it was all helpful. At first I was a little confused on why we wrote our thesis before we had any part of our paper due but then when it came time to write my paper it made it a lot easier. Because the thesis basically lays out what you are going to discuss in the paper I knew exactly what to say and when to say it. In your future classes I would continue to use the format you did because not only did it help with the layout but it also helped with he sources we had to put in our paper. Hopefully, my paper was as interesting to read as it was to write. I was informed of many things I did not know before hand, like the influential people that supported cocaine before its effects were known. I like how you left the topic pretty much open for our choosing. Out of all the research papers I have completed in school I think I got the most out of this one because I was finally polished enough to wear I could put the information I found together in the appropriate way and I was able to argue without attacking the opposing side. Overall, this was a good assignment to have.  

Counter Argument Paragraph

In my opinion testing for cocaine use in high-intensity sports should be increased and required in order to prevent growing rates of use amongst college athletes, establish a “performance enhancer” free league, and increase the health/well being of athletes at all levels, but there are some people that would disagree. Authors such as Goodwin, Morris, and Murray have completed a significant amount of research on cocaine use in sports. They do agree that cocaine is a problem, but their opinion on testing is quite opposite. Goodwin takes a more bold stance stating that "cocaine is not the problem, it is behavior." By focusing on behavior Goodwin overlooks the deeper problem of the effects cocaine have on a persons behavior. As for the others, they know cocaine is bad but they would rather not waste money on testing when they say cocaine will still be around. I'm of two minds about the subject. On one hand, I agree that it will take awhile before we even see any progress being made. On the other hand, I'm not sure if not testing would be a solution.