According to recent studies, young men who listen to hip hop have more sex. I swear to you, this was some of the research presented at a recent session on Young People and Sex: The Unspoken and the Taboo at the AIDS Conference.
Eliciting the first laughter of the morning, Miguel Munoz-Laboy from Columbia University pulled up powerpoint slides full of ‘bling,’ which he joked was just junk from his drawer, in order to teach many serious conference participants about the difference between “bling bling hip hop” and “real hip hop.” Whereas the former is determined by what you own and how many women you sleep with, he said, the latter is more about the music and represented by artists such as Jay-Z.
Continuing on in his presentation of what was presumably formal research, he revealed that youth who define hip hop as dance or sex are more likely to have more sex in their lives. This doesn’t go without saying? If youth are associating their favourite music and culture with sex, isn’t it reasonable to draw the connection that sex is of interest and importance to them?
But hang on! Not all youth listen to hip hop and certainly the ones who listen to jazz and classic rock and heavy metal also are having sex. Sex is used today to sell just about everything, and no music is immune to this; even young classical artists are pushed in the direction of looking sexy in order to be popular and commercially successful.
Youth have a very strong association with their music – their playlists define them to their friends and what titles you know often brings you in or easily excludes you from conversations and social circles. This means that certain genres of music become cool, while others wither and die on the fringe of teenage society. And to some, what is unknown is the coolest of all.
So does certain music mean more sex? From a purely a-scientific standpoint, I would say that turning on hip hop before going on a date is not going to mean a different end to the evening. But cultural socialization may cause certain youth that listen to a common set of artists to exhibit sexually similar behaviour.
Maybe one day the ones who listen to polka will be having all the sex.