Adidas and Puma track suits, donkey chains and Kangol hats were once as synonymous with hip hop as a leather jacket, T-shirt and jeans are to James Dean. Teens wanting to fit into the hip-hop culture in the early 80's knew a fresh pair of Adidas sneakers helped them walk the way of hip-hop. Today, in addition to endorsing other designs, rappers and hip-hop moguls successfully peddle their own fashion lines. From Sean Combs' Sean John label, to Russell Simmons' Phat Farm to Nelly's Apple Bottoms line, hip-hop forces offer their own styles of clothing and life to buyers, including teens.
Hip hop in general, and rap specifically, often carries with it a swagger, braggadocio and way of expression that represents the aggressive, previously-unheard culture from which it sprang. Rap lyrics in particular often incessantly contain the same types of themes and language, sometimes inventive and sometimes degrading. Either way, it introduces teenagers who would have never otherwise been exposed to such "ghetto grammar" as pimp cups, bling-bling and dissin. For teens listening to hip-hop music and watching hip-hop videos day and night, committing the lyrics to memory, the music's language is adopted as their own way of expression, whether they live in Los Angeles, Johannesburg or Dublin.
Watching a rapper flaunt "the good life" in front of his decadently-luxurious rap video mansion, while voluptuous, bikini-clad models bounce their physical assets for the viewing audience, would entice an adult male, let alone a highly-impressionable teen boy, to seek out the same situation for himself. Also, teenage girls who digest these same hip-hop video images, according to some scholars, adopt the viewpoints they present of females as their own self images - whether that image is of females as objects to be desired or females that can only get what they want by working what "mama" and nature gave them. This sexual mindset is believed to lead to increases in promiscuity, unplanned pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases among teens.
Despite criticism of hip hop's descent from lyrics embracing intelligence and social consciousness down to a dungeon featuring endless tales celebrating immoral, gangster behavior, hip hop did exert a positive influence of awareness on teens, particularly those of voting age, by endorsing President Barack Obama's campaign for a successful 2008 election. Well-known rapper Common, for example, notably recited, "My raps ignite the people like Obama" in his song, "The People." Perhaps not surprisingly, young voters of different ethnicities not only gave Obama's campaign their zealous volunteer support, they also gave him 66 percent of their votes, according to national exit polls. That number was up from 54 percent for 18- to 29-year-olds who voted Democrat in the 2004 presidential election, according to the Pew Research Center.