The views expressed with in this editorial don’t necessarily reflect the views of AllHipHop.com or its staff. The debate over negative lyrics and their impact on our communities has raged for years. Are they glorifying the negative or simply speaking to their everyday existence? I swear I’ve witnessed plenty of debates that swirled around this topic and I’ve never seen anyone retreat from their position. However,
these conversations were always conducted under the pretense that
everyone was telling the truth. If the emcee said he grew up in a less
than stellar home with barely present parents and was raised by the
streets; we took him at his word. We understood and empathized even if his life wasn’t ours. We shook our heads at his realism and brainstormed on ways to make it better; but never did we once consider he was lying.
How bad is that lie in the spirit of the artistic venture or the journey to mega-sales? Is that emcee actually better because he doesn’t participate in those tales of street soldiering he spins or portions thereof? Or
does that make him worse because he’s peddling a fake, doomed life to
his fan base without concern for the affect his words might have? Before
you jump, understand that I do know Hip Hop and the narratives
incorporated within do not exist in a vacuum. I know the
disenfranchised have more pressing issues than song lyrics and I
realize in many instances those lyrics are born of those problems. However, the issue at hand is taking the story most try to run from and running to it.
The issue is the lie.
If
that life is not what we want; if that life is the underbelly of the
community; if that life is the reason some write their first bar, then
why do people wrap themselves in it like a hood flag to create this
criminal persona? Why do they think we will respond in larger numbers
and with grander enthusiasm if they report having been through the
belly of the beast? Are they right?
I
mean, we all know that in a lot of situations our folks are handed s**it
to carve into a community, but do we need to mold a baton out of it and
run so some young guy living in Iowa can live that life vicariously as
he skips through the corn rows?
I remember when that kind of falsehood was unacceptable. Even now there are folks who rail against the fibbers, but for the most part it’s accepted. There are those who will even tell you what they are spitting isn’t real. It’s some nightmarish hood fairy tale. I
guess they and the powers that be in their musical careers think if
they graduated from high school or possibly college and raised a couple
of babies with their wife, we wouldn’t be interested in that life story.
I can’t sit here incredulously wagging my finger and turning my nose up at anyone. I’m guilty as most of us are of being drawn into some of the darker lyrics and not questioning myself. Is
it human nature; like being fixated by a car wreck? Or have we been
socialized in a way that prompts us to respond positively to negativity? I don’t know. What
I do know is it’s so much of what we listen to and that dark tide is
damn near formulated in a studio petrie dish at this point.
I’ll be honest with you. I
don’t care for liars, but I’m not sure how dangerous this particular
lie is or what it says about how the Hip-Hop audience is viewed. I
suppose personal responsibility is the lynch-pin and in some ways the
antithesis of our veracious appetite for street credibility, whatever
that is. The adopted back story should be held in its proper
perspective, which in my opinion should be akin to a grain of salt.
However, if everyone felt that way, the story wouldn’t be needed in the
first place.
So,
I’ve done nothing to relieve my confusion. I think I’ve created more.
The music can be very powerful and people are obviously more
impressionable than they will admit. I also know that we are bombarded with these negative impressions on a daily basis and not just through Hip Hop. So
much so that those who pilfer and then sell our culture back to us have
decided that we thrive on the negativity enough that they will present
it to us without consideration of authenticity; which I think is right
around the spot where I started.