Vulgar language in music is a problem that needs to be addressed now or is it even a problem that we as a society have the power to solve. There have been many different discussions on the topic of profanity in music, however the question remains as to whether music should be censored. In Robert T. M. Phillips' speech to the convention he insists that we must act now to protect our society from the harmful effects of explicit music. Becky L. Tatum argues in her article "The Link Between Rap Music and Youth Crime and Violence" that the effects of rap music are essentially unknown and that extensive research needs to be conducted before making causal hypotheses. Martha Bayles suggests in her article “The Perverse in the Popular,” that society is attracted to evils or negatives and therefore would not allow music censorship to succeed. Therefore the problem is that we do not have an adequate answer to the problem. Bayles suggests that many of our ideas about popular culture come from three sources: Communication Theory, Cultural Studies, and Traditional Philosophy. Communication theory begins with the perception of a defenseless society. Many communication theorists believe that media have the power to transform human consciousness. However, as Bayles points out, after examining the available evidence, W. Russell Newman observed that most human beings are resistant to any message that does not fit the cognitive structure of the mind receiving it. Cultural studies focuses on the political and social impacts of the media. . Cultural studies assumes that all cultural products are ultimately about power and possess value only to the extent that they attack the established social order. Traditional philosophy emphasizes the perennial difficulty of sustaining excellence in a culture that seems... middle of paper......attitudes and behaviors reign. There's about an even split between studies that say music has antisocial effects and studies that suggest the effects are minor or nonexistent. Tatum suggests that you need to conduct thorough research before making casual inferences. What we have here are three very different points of view. There's Phillips insisting that we must act now to protect our society from the harmful effects of explicit music. Then there's Tatum who argues that the effects of rap music are essentially unknown and that more research needs to be done before we can say for sure that there is a problem. Last but not least we have Bayles using the ideal of perverse modernism to show his readers that perhaps this is a problem that has no acceptable answer. It may be that by trying to solve the problem we create a bigger one.