President of Hip Hop Caucus Breaks it Down

"Unfortunately, too many times in entertainment there are degrading images to a woman, to people of color – there are degrading images of people who live in poor communities. And you are right, we want to obviously improve the images, but the one thing with the hip-hop community is that people who will come out of these communities will keep saying about what their experiences are. I don’t think it’s fair to ask somebody…there are no drugstores in their neighborhood, the police are beating up the people in their communities, there are strip joints and they take drugs – that is an experience in which a teenage girl or boy are growing up. And you cannot expect them to speak and talk about “So, how the sun is shining, and it’s so wonderful!” No, they are going to say how bad it is sometimes. And that’s changing. That’s what the Hip-Hop Caucus wants to do. We want to change the environment, and if we change the environment which now has an impact on the lyrics, don’t expect that change in the environment and expect the lyrics to be the same as well" - Lennox Yearwood Jr.