My eyes would glaze over when my dad talked about “the good ol’ days.”:when people got married and then had babies. When every child in a household had the same daddy. When Black music was sensual and sexy- not vulgar and extreme. Yeah, okay. Whatever- I would think to myself.

     Yes, my dad married my mom and then had my little brother and me. But he also had a baby-mama already, and I know my mother wasn’t a virgin either. As far as Black music is concerned, if you’ve ever seen concert footage of a gyrating Teddy Pendergrass or a pelvic-swiveling Marvin Gaye, you know that the parents of the hip-hop generation are just as disillusioned as their parents were. They believe young people are hopelessly reckless, especially when it comes to sex, and that the music they listen to is at least partly to blame.

     Everyone has a story to tell about the hip-hop generation. They seem to be aware of sex at an earlier age and having more babies at younger ages. But for every sociologist who can cite statistics to back these theories up, there’s another who can do the opposite. The rise of AIDS and the “baby-daddy syndrome” make it clear that things have changed. But is hip-hop to blame?

     Hip-hop is no longer the alternative youth music that it was in the ’70s. It’s now mainstream and acceptable. Which is part of the problem when it comes to sex. There aren’t many choices if you’re not down with the overtly misogynistic and promiscuous lifestyle that hip-hop often sells. It seems like hip-hop has given young girls the bravura to fit in because their are no good girls in hip-hop. Hell, there are hardly any good girls in American pop culture, period.

     Hip-hop has always been sexy. And women who love hip-hop have always struggled with the image of hip-hop vixens. We’ve also grown up in a society that has long worshipped the female form. Women wearing midriff tops and Daisy Dukeslong before Brittany Spears’ belly button became a sex symbol. And people have grown up with single mothers who taught them sex didn’t necessarily mean marriage. And we learned that smoking weed doesn’t just give you the munchies; it makes you horny.

     So maybe Dawn’s generation isn’t much different from mine. But 15 years ago we didn’t have 24-hour-a-day rap videos or Sex in the City and Real Sex. And we damn sure didn’t haveBlackplanet.