Something to listen to: Rap comes to the Commons

This doesn't seem to have turned up in the papers this morning, so you might want to get to Yesterday In Parliament before next Tuesday to hear what happened when the Home Affairs Committee investigation into "Young black people and the criminal justice system" turned its attention to rap music. Amongst those called to give evidence were DJ Dodge and Radio 1's Andy Parfitt.

There were all the factors you'd expect: an MP reading out some rap lyrics totally out-of-context ("Murder... murder... murder... street"), Andy Parfitt stumbling through a defence of how, you know, erm, sometimes rap deals with difficult subjects. DJ Dodge pointed that there were two positive rap songs produced for every one negative rap song (although he didn't have anything to back up the claim - I love the idea that there might be a team who rush out a pair of "Trees are lovely" rap every time there's a new Tupac track unearthed) but that the negative songs are the ones which get the attention.

This interesting point - that maybe we should be asking why negative rap strikes a chord, rather than if negative rap causes crime - was more or less sidelined by the committee, though, who then rolled on to the question of upbringing.
[EDIT - Fixed the link; see comments]