Bustin’ a Cap in Gansta Rap

I hate gangsta rap.


I mean I REALLY HATE gangsta rap.


I hate it SO much that I consider country music a cut ABOVE gangsta rap, albeit a tiny one.


It’s not just because of charming lyrics like Eminem’s


Slut, you think I won’t choke no whore
til the vocal cords don’t work in her throat no more?!


Or Snoop Dogg’s


Hoes be comin to my flat so I can tap that ass


Or Ludacris’ famous exclamation that


Cant turn a ho into a housewife
Hos dont act right
Theres hos on a mission, an hoes on a crackpipe
Hey ho how ya doin, where ya been?


No, that’s not my problem with Gangsta rap.


I recognize that there will always be music with controversial lyrics and sounds designed to piss off wealthy white Christian males and keep them on their toes. I also recognize that any attempt by arrogant middle aged males to censor music they find offensive leads to massive uprisings that discredit them as opponents of free speech, and that’s always a good thing. Our right to bitch and moan and protest in the name of art and our right to disagree is the very embodiment of free speech; that if you have an opinion, somewhere, someone will give you an outlet for it without you fearing for your life.


No, my problem is not with the music itself, because even the worst lyrics in gangsta rap exist in a small percentage of the songs (I know, because I had to search good and hard to find the aforementioned excerpts). My problem with gangsta rap has more to do with the rappers themselves and with their image; an image that serves as an example, whether they like it or not, to hundreds of thousands of kids in North America.

I turn on Much Music, or Music Plus, or MTV airing a special on some renowned gangsta rapper. They show a bunch of videos, and excerpts of his concerts. They talk about his relationships, show a few baby pictures, perhaps an audition video, and sometimes, if you’re really lucky, they’ll even tell you what his birth name is. To me these things are superficial. Everyone has parents, everyone has relationships, and face challenges, and everyone, with the exception of Paris Hilton and everyone featured on MTV’s My Sweet Sixteen (all of whom I think should be burned at the stake… I’d even pay for the firewood), have endured inalienable hardships on their way to material success.


Their music videos all look the same; the rapper is surrounded by beautiful women wearing skin tight two piece outfits, waving their asses in the face of the man referring to them as bitches and hos and treating them no better. Outside their music videos, gangsta rappers are traipsing around in clothes three times their size, weighted down with tacky jewellery known in their world as “bling”, waving guns around like crazed drug lords. They talk endlessly about the ghettos they came from, and the hardships they endured, and I’d like to think that the bulk of what they say is true, but it doesn’t excuse their hypocrisy.


These are men who create clothing lines that every gangsta wannabe will want to buy. They make millions of dollars in a single bound (pun intended). They are among the people most capable of fighting poverty and ignorance in the slums of North America, and they, above every other rich asshole on the continent, has a responsibility to do it. After all, it’s the very slums and ghettos of America that inspired gangsta rap and made their millions. They owe every penny of their fortune to the squalor that made them.


In spite of all this, I have never seen or heard of any rapper, from Eminem to Ludacris to Snoop Dogg to Puff Daddy, P Diddy, or whatever the hell he’s calling himself, give a dime of their earnings to bring youths in America’s slums out of poverty and gang violence and put them in schools, where they belong.

I have no doubt that rappers work long and hard to get themselves out of poverty, racism and violence. I’m convinced that the reason a lot of them won’t invest money in their old neighbourhoods is because they figure that because they got out of the ghetto, everyone can.


They can’t, not without help anyway.


Why?


Because rappers have convinced kids everywhere that joining gangs, waving guns around and calling women “bitches” and “hos” will get them further than any classroom. Sure, Snoop Dogg set an example and gave up drugs, but of all things he could have blabbed about, this wasn’t one of them, and so the kids didn’t hear it. They went on vandalizing public property, and doing drugs, and committing crimes.


Why?


The gangsta rapper message is that you can act like an idiot and a brute as long as you have the money, and the only way to get the money is by being a pimp, or a dealer, or a gang leader, or a rapper.


Guys like Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Ludacris and even Eminem could do so much, if only they knew how to spend their money. They could buy an apartment building from a slumlord, renovate it, and offer it to locals at low rents. They could create scholarships for youths who turned their lives around. They could create jobs by investing in local businesses. They could even offer financial incentives to get good teachers to work in the impoverished areas. Gangsta rappers can afford to do any one of these, and any one of them would do more for the community than sending a handful of people to jail every once in a while, which, if you hadn’t noticed, is all the government is doing. These guys could go from being media figures to first class heroes.


Do they do it?

They waste their money on bling, and cars, and entertainment systems, and third homes and mansions worthy of another MTV special. They waste their time on whore mongering, and drugs, and violence so that at the end of their careers, they are either killed by the very gangsta lifestyle they glorify, or they disappear into obscurity, bankrupt and forgotten.


Chris Rock has a comedy bit called Niggas versus Black People. In it he talks about how black people hate black people, and he splits his people into two groups “Black People” and “Niggas” and “Niggas have got to go!”


OK, let’s be fair here. It’s not a comedy routine, it’s a rant. In this rant he discusses how the very culture gangsta rap has created is encouraging the kind of behaviour that gives black people a bad name. This is the very culture that frowns on educating oneself in favour of “keeping it real… REAL DUMB!”


Only it’s not just affecting black people.

All over North America, kids of every ethnicity are buying into this shit, from Asians, to Latinos, to Jews, to the golden children of old school Conservatives, little Christian white kids from suburbia. All of these people are buying into it. They’re wearing baggy clothes, disrespecting women, and celebrating their own stupidity! The saddest part is that it’s affecting young girls too. The life of a whore or “ho” is glorified, and behaviour anyone with a fraction of a neuron would deem sexually degrading is being encouraged. While young boys assume the baggy gangsta rap costume, girls are assuming the women’s version: huge artificial nails, hair trapped in a hundred pounds of chemicals, and clothes that cover about as much as a place mat. They let themselves be groped, insulted and degraded because rappers make it look ok. Feminism is a bad word, but being a bitch and ho is something to be proud of.


Am I missing something?


People can rant about selfish rich people all they want, but last I checked most rich people give to charity. They can rant about movie stars and the egoism of professional athletes, but a lot of them dedicate themselves to worthy causes, using their money and celebrity to better the world. They tell kids drugs are bad, and to stay in school, and to have self respect. They perform at benefits, and donate medical equipment, and visit sick and impoverished children.

I haven’t seen an ounce of unselfish behaviour from Gangsta rappers. They encourage youths to celebrate ignorance, stupidity, and personal degradation, and give nothing back to society. They promote gang violence, and disrespect to women, whom they encourage to be mindless tools. They waste their money on frivolous expenditures when they have a responsibility to heal the poverty and squalor that created them.


They can do so much. But they don’t. They live like selfish pigs without a second thought to all the harm they are doing.


And that’s why I hate Gangsta Rap.

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