Is Rap Music Stage Red? - Sociological Analysis

[AtmanIsBrahman]

I've been rewatching the Stage Red episode, trying to understand how the stage works and how it fits into spiral dynamics overall.

One thing I was surprised Leo didn't mention (forgive me if I missed it) is how stage red relates to rap music. Pretty much every aspect of stage red blatantly aligns with the vibe of rap music, and I think rap provides a powerful lens for looking at the intricacies of spiral dynamics. 

Rap music is all about power, conquest, egocentrism, brazenness, wealth, being better than others, hating others, "beating the haters," and so on.

These are my questions: 

1) Why do people seem to skip stages? 

It seems like the most common spiral dynamics transition is stage red to stage orange. Also, the combination of red and orange seems to be very popular among hip hop stars who became successful, such as Kanye West, Lil Wayne, etc. I know that stage red --> stage blue is considered a classical transition -- somebody goes to jail and comes out as a religious fundamentalist -- but the stage red to orange transition seems just as common if not more. Could this be because the individualism of orange feels more familiar to red?

2) Why do people from higher stages such as orange like the vibe and aesthetic of hip-hop? 

They're definitely not working on integrating low spiral stages. But they must be aware that it's a lower stage of development, as you don't normally go shoot people and brag about it as a stage orange or above person.

One possibility is that they enjoy the power fantasy and themselves aspire to wealth and power, so they can imagine themselves feeling powerful like the rapper, except through career or business rather than criminality. It may also just be that the genre is fun and people like listening to it for its unique sound. But that still wouldn't explain why the lyrics remain so blatantly stage red and don't adapt to a higher-spiral market. 

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These are just some things to think about. 

It seems to me like rap is a strange combination of red and orange, and it's interesting from a sociological point of view how it works. 

What do you think?




 

[enchanted]

Yes Leo has said it is too. Its obviously stage red and also really stupid if you listen to the lyrics. 

I find it it funny how much we criticize religious people on in this forum for leading an epistemologically unquestioned life but rarely mention how stupid the people are who devoted their lives and who's whole personality is wrapped up in a culture that has anthems about fucking hoes and cars and are somehow off limits. 

Edited yesterday at 11:14 AM by enchanted

[Carl-Richard]

17 hours ago, AtmanIsBrahman said:

1) Why do people seem to skip stages?

 

On 16.10.2024 at 4:12 AM, Carl-Richard said:

In his book, he makes the distinction between cognitive complexity and symbolic code, and also presents the concept of downward assimilation. To put it as an example: it's possible for a cognitively Blue person to engage with ideas way above Blue (maybe even Yellow), because they have installed the language (symbolic code) of the higher stages, but they are engaging with it in a simplified way which is consistent with their cognitive complexity, "assimilating it downwards". So there is a big potential to fool oneself that one is more complex than one actually is.

 

Pop music that only sing about partying and drinking are also Stage Red. It also tends to be incredibly simplistic musically (e.g. Black Eyed Peas "I Gotta Feeling" or Rebecca Black's "Friday"). Metal music that sings about gore (e.g. Cannibal Corpse) is also Red, but some metal music with gore lyrics is also relatively complex musically (e.g. Necrophagist, Suffocation).

So again we can distinguish between aesthetic (and expression) and actual cognitive complexity. Even if I wanted to write a classic brutal death metal album, I would still be the cognitive complexity I am. My relationship to the music could be perhaps also ironic or nostalgic rather than a honest/authentic expression of the values in the music.

More classic examples of Red in music: lyrics about sex and women in 80s hair metal (e.g. Guns and Roses "Welcome to the jungle", essentially every Whitesnake song). Satanism in music, e.g. some early "black" metal (Venom) and thrash metal (Slayer), death metal (Morbid Angel), Norwegian black metal (Mayhem, Emperor, etc.; some of these people actually killed people and burned down churches so you could say they lived the expression of the values).

Most of the honest expression of Red you see happens in teenage years (which is where the examples you've listed and also my examples tend to originate from). You could say teenage years (in the West) is a time where you're authentically Red-Blue and being encouraged by the surrounding society to transition to Blue (authentically) while downward-assimilating code from that society (Orange and Green).

People who are seemingly jumping from Red to Orange might actually only have adopted a simplified version of Orange consistent with their cognition and true code at Blue or so. True authentic expression of Orange might happen later (or earlier depending on what kind of person you are). That's also an explanation for the "Red-Green conflation" phenomena I've described before: teenagers downward assimilating Green code ("just be free yo") to fit their Red true code and cognitive complexity.

Edited 22 hours ago by Carl-Richard