Friday, October 25, 2019

Rap :: essays research papers

Throughout the past years, rap and all other types of music artist use their music to express their views, opinions and feelings in their songs. From their lyrics, you will have a little understanding towards what they see and feel about the society. The artists should be happy because this is a freedom of speech country and they can compose any types of music to express themselves. Although there are voices saying rap music should be censored and it has been influencing youth’s mind, but is rap music negatively influencing the youths’? There is a survey from the United States saying 48% Americans think popular music should be heavily regulated and 59% Americans wanted to restrict violence in music. However, there were no studies providing evidence towards a cause and effect relationship between violence, sex and behavioral effect. Even if there are studies, artist and composer will not be concerned about the regulations and/or rules. From this ignorance, this is how v iolence in rap music begins.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Rap is defined as a form of popular music developed especially in African-American urban communities and characterized by spoken or chanted rhyming lyrics with a syncopated, repetitive rhythmic accompaniment. In the early '90's, rap music was beginning to be popular, and there were two different rapper groups: the East and West Coast. The wars between these two groups were not quite obvious until East Coast rappers began to get more publicity. West Coast rappers were upset and jealous so that they started to make fun of East Coast rappers through their music. East Coast rappers made revenge at West Coast rappers and the war has continue until one day, there was voices saying the other coast had gone too far. Nonetheless, West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur had a personal feud with the East Coast rapper The Notorious B.I.G.. In one of Tupac’s song, he proclaimed he had slept with the Biggie’s wife and Notorious B.I.G. revenged by saying â€Å"stupid niggaz mess with Big Poppa, motherf**kers get roasted if you f**k wit B.

Thursday, October 24, 2019

Development of Youth Culture Essay

There is no single reason for the development of culture; rather, it came about as a result of the number of different social changes occurring at the same time. These developments included the increasing economic power of young people, the influence of the USA and globalisation, social changes at the end of World War 2, development of the media, demographic change in the numbers of young people and the transition to adulthood. Defining youth culture can be difficult because different cultures and interruptions in employment status’s can affect the perspective of what â€Å"youth† is. Culture is the way we live within our culture and youth culture is the way youth lives within it but because of the difficulties youth culture could mean different things to different cultures. Youth culture developed in the early 1950’s, although the idea of youth as a phase in life has a longer history. Youth culture was first developed in America after World War 2, which then Britain decided to follow due to media and other influences from America. In my opinion the most important factor that developed youth culture was the economic changes in society. Due to the demand in workers after the Second World War there was an economic growth. The first person to realise the impact this was having on young people was Abram’s (1959) who analysed the increased economic power of the ‘teenage consumer’. There was a noticeable pattern in what was getting most money spent on, because young people were the age group spending the highest proportion of their income on leisure activities and music, clothes and cosmetics. This increase in economic power created the conditions for the emerging youth culture to develop. For the first time, young people had significant amounts of money to spend. Another extremely important factor for the development was the social change at the end of World War 2. There was much more opportunities for young people and possibilities at this time. Before the war, Britain was characterized by a class structure. By the time it came to the 1950s, we started to see a change in the economy and this opened up oppurtunities and individual expression. Judging on conventional standards, opportunities were becoming bigger. Cinema, art, literature and theatre began to explore new ideas. Amongst many new ideas was that young people were a distinctive group with new values and ideas about their place in society. The next important development for youth culture in my opinion was the influence of the USA and globalisation. With the changing culture and the growth in affluence of the 1950s, there was a ready market for American goods and culture, which included rock and roll music and other products aimed at the new ‘teenage market’. A quote from Leech (’76) saying ‘youthquake’ explained how a change in the new youth was such a sudden change it was like an earthquake. Globalisation recognised what young people wanted and advertised it more. I think the next development of the youth culture which was important was the growth and specialization of media. Media was becoming a lot more popular and so was advertisement. The media started to advertise the products that young people during that time wanted and this was a massive boost for the economics and spread quickly across the world. The 1950’s saw an explosion of different sorts of media. This was only possible because of the growth in social diversity and an increase in spending power that persuaded companies to spend large amounts of money advertising the new media. As a high-spending and newly discovered group, young people became the target for advertisers and hence the commercial media competed to attract this market. Another social condition that made the development of youth culture possible was transition to adulthood. Transition refers to the movement from being economically and socially dependent on parents, towards independence. The length of transition increased over the 20th century as the average period in education. Due to the longer age of being in education, it meant that typical adult responsibilities were taken on increasingly later in life, leaving young people with a number of years where they were physically mature but without the responsibilities of adulthood. This caused young people to want their own place in society. The last social condition that helped youth culture become possible was the demographic change in numbers of young people. After the war because couple had been split for so long because of hundreds of men being sent abroad, many sexual experiences had been delayed for years. The result was that when the men were released from the armed forces in 1945/46, there was a huge increase in birth rate. Although many of the children born at this time were not ‘teenagers’ until the end of 1950’s, they did ensure that youth culture continued and grew as a cultural form. Around 50 to 60 years ago, for the first time, a youth culture appeared to be emerging – young people appeared to be developing their own values, customs, tastes, clothes, music and language. After studying and discussing all the different social conditions that developed youth culture I have discovered that youth culture wasn’t made overnight. It took all these 6 main factors to create this culture and carry it on until this day. Economics was the most important condition in my opinion due to the fact that it all started because of the economic boost after World War 2. America was the country that started this youth culture and Britain followed it after the war ended. Abercrombie et al. (2000) has suggested that youth culture has three distinguishing features: leisure, style and peer group.

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Weighted Average Cost of Capital and Discount Rate

Sampa Video, Inc You have to prepare a presentation to the management of the firm. The presentation should have; analysis of the project, your valuation of the investment and your investment recommendation. You have to be clear and brief and explain the main assumptions and methodologies used in the analysis. The quality of the presentation will be considered in the grading. You have to hand in a handout of the presentation and an executive summary of no more than 2 pages. Guideline Questions for you Report 1. What is the value of the project assuming the firm was entirely equity financed? What are the annual projected free cash flows?What discount rate is appropriate? NPV = $1,228,485 Discount rate = cost of equity (from CAPM) = 15. 8% (see model for projected free cash flows) 2. Value the project using the Adjusted Present Value (APV) approach assuming the firm raises $750 thousand of debt to fund the project and keeps the level of debt constant in perpetuity. NPV of Levered Firm = $1,528,485 3. Value the project using the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) approach assuming the firm maintains a constant 25% debt-to-market value ratio in perpetuity. NPV of Levered Firm = $1,469,972 4. How do the values from the APV and WACC approaches compare?How do the assumptions about financial policy differ across the two approaches? †¢ The level of debt with the fixed debt policy is fixed and thus the interest tax shields have the same risk as the debt. The discount rate for interest tax shields with the fixed debt policy therefore is the debt rate of 6. 8%. †¢ With the 25% debt-to-value policy, the amount of debt varies with the value of the firm so the expected interest tax shields also vary with the value of the firm. These tax shields therefore should be discounted at the expected asset return 15. 8%, which is higher than the debt rate.