Rap videos deemed too much for kids

Three music-video shows that air during daytime or early evening hours are heavily laced with sexual imagery, explicit language, violence and drug use, a television watchdog organization said in a study released today.

This kind of adult content should not be marketed to children, said leaders of the Enough is Enough Campaign, Industry Ears and National Congress of Black Women.

The three shows, which aired on Black Entertainment Television (BET) or MTV in December 2007 and last month, offered viewers offensive or adult content about once every minute, said the report, “The Rap on Rap,” from the Parents Television Council (PTC).

In comparison, prime-time broadcast “family hour” programming has instances of violent, profane or sexual content about once every five minutes, the PTC said.

The three shows analyzed were “Sucker Free” on MTV and “106 & Park” and “Rap City” on BET. The shows appeared during afternoon or early evening hours. “Sucker Free” music videos were rated TV-14, while most of the BET shows carried the milder TV-PG rating.

The PTC study was requested by the Enough is Enough Campaign, founded by the Rev. Delman Coates, pastor of Mount Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md.

Industry Ears is led by Paul Porter, a former video director at BET and a former New York City disc jockey who lost his job because he did not want to play offensive music. E. Faye Williams, chair of the National Congress of Black Women, has denounced “greedy corporate executives” for encouraging black youth to entertain themselves by destroying their culture.

Last September, BET aired a three-part series called “Hip Hop vs. America” that looked at hip-hop’s relationship with criminality, its treatment of black women and “the pride, embarrassment and confusion blacks often feel over hip-hop’s public airing of the community’s ’dirty laundry.’ ”

“This music is supposed to be about what we open our doors and see when we go out into the streets,” said hip-hop artist T.I. “If you don’t change what’s going on in these neighborhoods, you can’t change what’s going on in this music.”

“We can’t change our words,” Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam Recordings, told the BET series. “We can’t change our ideas. We can’t hide all your dirt. We have to make mirrors of your dirt. So if we say things that offend you, you have to suck it up and listen closely. Why are we saying it? The truth is that these words and this language is going to be a critical way to paint a picture of our society.”