Is rap an art form that gives the street a voice? Or is it all just money, misogyny and materialism?

Foxsports.com columnist Jason Whitlock believes hip-hop has been "hijacked by America's extreme incarceration and it reflects that culture".

He told the Today programme it makes people "comfortable with values we should not be comfortable with".

John Sutherland, professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, thinks on the other hand that a lot of the best rap contains a criticism of those values.

It is an art form that "come to terms with the awful condition of a certain kind of ghettoised segment of the American population," he said.

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