Jason Tanz in his essay “Selling Down: The Marketing of the Hip-Hop Nation” expresses the idea of ​​how companies see teenagers as their main source of profit. They target teenagers because they like hip-hop. According to Tanz, hip-hop “since its earliest days hip-hop has galvanized its audience around certain types of values” (Tanz 93). Now hip-hop is galvanizing its audience to purchase merchandise. Companies use hip-hop to promote products and make money with the likes of teenagers, who are big consumers. Companies operate on consumer tastes to profit from their products, which raises the issue of companies using teenagers to make profits. While the primary focus is primarily on teenagers, Tanz focuses primarily on “white kids,” as he calls them. Companies are taking advantage of the weaknesses of “white guys,” as Tanz expresses it, such as a lack of honesty, confidence, style and swagger. Teenagers want to hide their weaknesses behind the coldness of hip-hop. They can achieve this because “hip-hop has always cast rapper-approved signifiers, commodities that promised to grant inferior status to anyone who consumed them” (Tanz 89). By getting status down, white kids can hide their weaknesses behind it because they will “gain” all those things they lacked. For example, if they lack confidence, belonging to the down state of hip-hop will help them feel more confident because they feel like they belong to the black community. Belonging to the black community means that you will be strong and tough and this is exactly what teenagers want to feel more confident about. Since companies know that their products will be sold if the consumer feels fond of the product, that's why they sell pro... middle of paper... they think they will be cold and down. They use hip-hop artists, so they can get our attention, and they use persuasive language to make us buy the product. These two components constitute a lethal and successful advertisement from which it is impossible to escape. Teenagers are the most sensitive to this problem because they lack the security that older people possess; they want to belong and fit in, so they buy such products to belong to the "status down" of hip-hop and be popular. Companies know that teenagers are an easy target for this safety issue and that is why they use psychological techniques based on consumer tastes to profit from their products.Works CitedTanz, Jason. “Selling: Marketing the Hip-Hop Nation.” Reading Pop Culture: A Portable Anthology. Ed. Jeff Ousborne. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin, 2013. 87-96. Press.