Hip-hop

Music sales are down overall, but rap sales slid a whopping 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, and for the first time in 12 years no rap album was among the top 10 sellers of the year. A recent study by the Black Youth Project showed that a majority of youth think that rap has too many violent images. In a poll of black Americans by The Associated Press and AOL-Boices last year, 50 percent of respondents said that hip-hop was a negative force in American society.