My mother’s and grandmother’s generations often blame the baggy jeans, promiscuity and disrespectful nature of my generation on the music we listen to.

“It gets into your spirit and you get lost,” they say.

They even claim that the hip-hop and R&B they created has been transformed into a self-glorifying and obnoxious genre that sends us into degradation. Maybe they are right about it; maybe it is the music…and the books.

Headed to Borders bookstore, I turned on the radio and listened to Plies describe his future unprotected sexual encounters. Disturbed at the song’s imagery and outcome, I switched from “The Flava Station” and turned to Joe Bullard to sing along with ‘The Elements.’

Once I was in Borders, I headed straight to the black non-fiction section to look for “Forty Million Dollar Slave” by William Rhoden. I had heard Rhoden on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show” earlier that week discussing the state of the black athlete during the Mike Vick fiasco.

Looking for the three bookcases dedicated to non-fiction, I abruptly ran into the fiction section. I glanced at “Sula,” “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” and “Go Tell It on the Mountain”-type novels, then stumbled upon “Naughty Girls,” “Dear G Spot” and “Sex Chronicles I: Gettin’ Buck Wild.”

I stepped back to look at the entire section and noticed that all the titles were sexually driven or suggestive. I was perplexed because the three-minute song I turned off had transformed into a 250-page novel and multiplied.

Chawn Payton, 22, a senior computer-engineering student from Valdosta, is an employee at the FAMU Bookstore. He said he sees the correlation between music and books.

“Authors are getting their material from music, Payton said. “Just like music, the books are either about sex, being on the down-low or cheating.”

Payton said the more prolific and uplifting novels sit on the bookshelves for months, but the newer novels have a shorter shelf time.