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Music representations of crime

Music representations of crime are often linked to moral panics that are created by the media to associate types of music with crime. In recent years, the media have made associations between gang crime and urban music such as Grime and Drill due to the inclusion of criminal and deviant activities in the lyrics. Earlier examples include rap music in the 1980s and early 1990s being linked to gang culture in the USA, culminating in the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher 'Biggie' Smalls. Other examples include the lyrics of both Eminem and Marilyn Manson being linked to moral panics around gun crime in the USA, whilst rave music in the 1980s and 1990s in the UK was closely associated with drug culture. Further back, the explosion of the punk scene in the UK and USA was associated with drug abuse, whilst the counter-cultural movements of the 1960s and even the jazz music scene in the USA from the 1920s onwards have been associated with the use of drugs. Many of these movements have been the subject of sociological study, with Howard Becker's famous work The Outsiders - which generated his famous labelling theory - being an investigation into the jazz music scene of the 1950s in the USA.

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