The event in Chicago drew 250 people, including several high school groups. Many of the boys were skeptical about the supposed dire influences of rap. Jock Lucas, 16, hotly argued with female students about the prevalence of lyrics that denigrate women, asserting, as many of the boys did, that a girl who dressed provocatively deserved such labels and might even like them.
"I don't think rap is a bad influence," Lucas said. "They're just speaking about how it goes where they come from. If the people who listen go out and do these things, it's their own fault." Another high school student at the Chicago event, Vasawa Robinson, 19, said rap showed "real life" and that "if you try to show a different picture, the kids won't want to listen."
Hurt's film includes clips from a music video by the rapper 50 Cent, from his album Get Rich or Die Tryin', in which the singer boasts in crude terms of his power and readiness to kill his enemies.
Hurt, who grew up in a black neighborhood of Central Islip, New York, in modest circumstances, was quarterback of the Northeastern University football team and said he had been a fanatical "hip-hop head."
"It was music created by people your age who looked like you, talked like you, dressed like you and weren't apologetic about it," he said.
His views changed, he said, when, after college, he worked in a program teaching male athletes about violence against women.
"Here's the conflict," Hurt said. "You still love hip-hop and you love to see the artists doing well, but then you ask, 'What are they saying? What is the image of manhood?"'
White males may be major customers, "but it influences black kids the most," Hurt said. "They're the ones who order their days around it," he said, "who try to conform to the script."
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