tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/hiphop-51044/articlesHiphop – The Conversation2023-08-04T12:30:54Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2085592023-08-04T12:30:54Z2023-08-04T12:30:54Z‘Knowledge of self’: How a key phrase from Islam became a pillar of hip-hop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539283/original/file-20230725-29-1pw7oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C8%2C2977%2C1895&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The popular phrase 'knowledge of self' -- invoked by numerous rappers who adhere to Islam -- is nearly a millennium old.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-nas-pays-tribute-to-old-school-rap-group-eric-b-and-news-photo/51865969">Paul Hawthorne for Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I was 9 years old when Eric B. and Rakim’s “Paid in Full” dropped. I have vivid memories of the bass-laden track booming out of car stereos and hearing it on Black radio, like <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/kiss-fm-off-the-air-wbls-nyc-urban-radio-station-317989/">Kiss FM</a>’s top eight at 8 p.m. countdown.</p>
<p>On the track “<a href="https://genius.com/Eric-b-and-rakim-move-the-crowd-lyrics">Move the Crowd</a>,” Rakim – also known as “<a href="https://www.chron.com/culture/music/article/The-God-MC-Rakim-houston-Southern-hip-hop-rapper-16086689.php">the God MC</a>” – rhymes “All praise is due to Allah and that’s a blessing.” <a href="https://pillarsfund.org/content/uploads/2023/06/MNC-CHAPBOOK-FINAL-6.27.23-2-1.pdf">Growing up as a Black Muslim in the Crown Heights</a> neighborhood of Brooklyn, I was already familiar with the phrase. Like all Muslims, I learned to say it during my daily prayers and as an expression of gratitude.</p>
<p>But when Rakim laced those words into the lyrics of what ultimately became a popular song, he affirmed what I was seeing around me in my Brooklyn community – that Islam and Muslims were prominent features of Black life.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rapper Flavor Flav and Chuck D film a music video." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539295/original/file-20230725-17-eic2ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rapper Flavor Flav and Chuck D of the rap group Public Enemy film their ‘Fight The Power’ music video in 1989.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-flavor-flav-director-spike-lee-and-chuck-d-of-the-news-photo/74291996?adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A key concept</h2>
<p>Rakim dropped another familiar phrase in the song: knowledge of self.</p>
<pre class="highlight plaintext"><code>With knowledge of self, there’s nothing I can’t solve
At 360 degrees I revolve
This an actual fact, it’s not an act, it’s been proven
Indeed and I proceed to make the crowd keep moving.
</code></pre>
<p>When Rakim extols the benefits of “knowledge of self” to himself as an emcee and a human being, he is drawing on a philosophy that has been critical to <a href="http://www.suadabdulkhabeer.com/black-islam">Black Islam</a>, a term I use to describe the different forms of Islamic belief and practice found in Black America.</p>
<p>Knowledge of self comes from this tradition, beginning roughly a century ago, which has become known for advancing Black consciousness, resistance and redemption. Knowledge of self is an ethical pursuit to understand one’s place in and relationship to the world in order to positively change it.</p>
<p>In my 2016 book, “<a href="http://www.suadabdulkhabeer.com/muslim-cool-book">Muslim Cool: Race, Religion and Hip Hop in the United States</a>,” I demonstrate how knowledge of self is fundamental to hip-hop. It is often described as hip-hop’s “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/question/What-are-the-four-main-elements-of-hip-hop">fifth element</a>,” the others being DJing; emceeing or “rhyming”; graffiti or “writing”; and dance, from “b-boying” to “pop locking.”</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Artist Lauryn Hill performs on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539299/original/file-20230725-30-xdtf0u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The concept of ‘knowledge of self’ was instrumental in Lauryn Hill’s breakout 1998 single ‘Doo Wop.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/ms-lauryn-hill-performs-during-the-2019-sonoma-harvest-news-photo/1174919334?adppopup=true">Tim Mosenfelder via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>While the phrase and the consciousness that it represents have been mentioned in too many songs to count – from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmo3HFa2vjg">Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power</a>” to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6QKqFPRZSA">Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop</a>” and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kETkgRNSVzk">Talib Kweli’s “K.O.S. (Determination)</a>” – history shows the term has been a part of Islamic literature for nearly a millennium. For example, the first chapter of the celebrated 12th-century Islamic scholar Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali’s famous text “<a href="https://www.sacred-texts.com/isl/tah/tah05.htm">The Alchemy of Happiness</a>” is titled “The Knowledge of Self.”</p>
<p>In my book, I make the case that Islam, specifically Black Islam, gave hip-hop knowledge of self.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Elijah Muhammad speaks at a conference." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539319/original/file-20230725-29-j123v5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elijah Muhammad led the Nation of Islam from 1934 until his death in 1975.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chicago-il-elijah-muhammad-leader-of-the-black-muslims-news-photo/515177512?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The lessons</h2>
<p>Rakim’s reference to knowledge of self’s being an “actual fact” is a nod to the “<a href="https://online.fliphtml5.com/xrqx/dcip/#p=2">actual facts</a>” of the “Lost-Found Muslim Lessons,” the catechism taught by Master W.D. Fard Muhammad, who founded the Nation of Islam on July 4, 1930. Master Fard taught these lessons to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, who would become the religious movement’s leader. </p>
<p>These lessons are fundamental to the way that the Nation of Islam understands the world and the role of Black people in it. The lessons are also studied by the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2006/08/04/5614846/god-the-black-man-and-the-five-percenters">Nation of Gods and Earths</a>, a related spiritual path, of which Rakim is a member. Knowledge of self comes to hip-hop through these lessons.</p>
<p>Rakim was not alone. During the <a href="https://uhhm.org/revolution-of-hip-hop/">golden age of hip-hop</a>, a period from about the mid-1980s through mid-1990s, rappers – influenced by Black Islam – steadily proclaimed their knowledge of self in their music. Big Daddy Kane declared there’s “<a href="https://genius.com/Big-daddy-kane-young-gifted-and-black-lyrics">no pork on my fork</a>,” an acknowledgment of the Islamic injunction against the consumption of swine. The Poor Righteous Teachers gave the Arabic greeting <a href="https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx_LfwFaVQ77HWVnvhYPfS9frgaR6k7o-O">as salaamu alaikum</a> with the dome of Harlem’s Masjid Malcolm Shabazz in the background in the music video for “Rock Dis Funky Joint.” And from Brooklyn to the California Bay, acclaimed emcees like <a href="https://youtu.be/WeoCOdbAy3s">Guru</a> and <a href="https://robflow.bandcamp.com/track/praying-to-the-east-original-version">local acts</a> were rhyming about “praying to the east,” a reference to the Muslim practice.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rap group Poor Righteous Teachers in New York City." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540568/original/file-20230801-21-zdr7od.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poor Righteous Teachers was one of many rap groups whose music was influenced by Black Islam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rap-group-poor-righteous-teachers-appear-in-a-portrait-news-photo/1470055741?adppopup=true">Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>The message</h2>
<p>Long before rappers spoke of knowledge of self in the 1980s, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad expounded on the term in his book “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/message-to-the-blackman-in-america-messenger-of-allah-leader-and-teacher-to-the-american-so-called-negro/oclc/547614">Message to the Blackman in America</a>,” released in 1965 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement. In it, he emphasized Black self-reliance – with knowledge of self being a key component.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Muhammad Ali sits in his home and reads the book 'Message to the Blackman.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=391&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539316/original/file-20230725-15-152dsl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Elijah Muhammad’s book ‘Message to the Blackman in America’ played a critical role in Muhammad Ali’s life.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/former-heavyweight-boxing-champion-cassius-clay-or-muhammad-news-photo/517259190?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>“The so-called Negroes must be taught and given Islam,” Muhammad wrote. “Why Islam? Islam, because it teaches first the knowledge of self. It gives us the knowledge of our own. Then and only then are we able to understand that which surrounds us … this kind of thinking produces an industrious people who are self-independent.”</p>
<p>In some ways, it comes as little surprise that a term promulgated by a fierce advocate of self-reliance in the mid-1960s would be so widely embraced by hip-hop shortly after it was born as a counterculture in the early 1970s.</p>
<h2>Hip-hop’s consciousness</h2>
<p>When Black Islam helped hip-hop culture cultivate knowledge of self, it created an aspiration, arguably unique for contemporary popular music as a whole, to not just rhyme about it or write graffiti about it, and so on, but to apply it in real life. As a result, knowledge of self became hip-hop’s consciousness, emphasizing an awareness of injustice and the imperative to address it through both personal and social transformation. Critically, this consciousness, while informed by Black Islam, is embraced by hip-hop community members of all stripes.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man wearing glasses and a suit speaks in front of microphones at a rally." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539310/original/file-20230725-28-ahl1f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The 1989 song ‘Self-Destruction’ opens with a sample of a speech by Malcolm X.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nation-of-islam-leader-malcolm-x-draws-various-reactions-news-photo/515392246?adppopup=true">Bettmann via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>The consciousness led to different forms of hip-hop-based activism. Songs against gun violence like The Stop the Violence Movement’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxyYP_bS_6s">Self-Destruction</a>” and “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJD1oDKKMdM">We Are All in the Same Gang</a>” by the West Coast All Stars.</p>
<p>“Self-Destruction” opens, not inconsequentially, with a sample of a speech by Malcolm X, the onetime spokesman for the Nation of Islam and icon of Black Islam. The consciousness also contributed to the formation in 2004 of the <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2004/6/23/rap_on_politics_first_national_hip">National Hip-Hop Political Convention</a>, which set the stage for other, albeit less radical and comprehensive, engagements with politics by the hip-hop generation, like the <a href="https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/p-diddy-in-8216-vote-or-die-8217-campaign-706486/">Vote or Die</a> campaign and the push for <a href="https://www.npr.org/2008/11/07/96748462/obama-hip-hop-from-mixtapes-to-mainstream">Obama in 2008</a>. </p>
<p>Nearly 10 years later, this consciousness was on display at the 2017 Grammy performance by A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes and Consequence that was an open call to “resist” in the Trump era. This consciousness also continues to inspire the many organizations like <a href="https://www.kuumbalynx.com/menu/about-us">Kuumba Lynx</a> and the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2013/02/16/172191234/from-the-inner-city-leading-a-new-generation-of-muslim-americans">Inner-City Muslim Action Network</a> in Chicago that use hip-hop as a form of arts-based activism for youth. </p>
<p>And, of course, it remains in the music.</p>
<h2>The knowledge continues</h2>
<p>On the track “Family Feud,” Jay-Z – like Rakim – praises God, but this time in Arabic: “<a href="https://genius.com/Jay-z-family-feud-lyrics">Alhamdulillah</a>,” <a href="https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxD-lGB_QTKoYq8VQL_M7Fc4myiXNipfIY">Mumu Fresh</a> questions others’ knowledge of self with the line “Good morning, sunshine, welcome to reality/I tried to wake you, but you were sleepin’ so peacefully in your fallacy.” <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/night-life/busta-rhymes-extinction-level-event-2-the-wrath-of-god">Busta Rhymes </a> dropped “Extinction Level Event 2: The Wrath of God,” full of warnings and prophecies. And in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prmQgSpV3fA">freestyle</a> viewed around the world, Black Thought rhymes about the wisdom he got at the <a href="https://pluralism.org/mosque-minaret-and-mihrab">masjid</a>. This consciousness is so entwined with music that Kendrick Lamar’s “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/08/26/753511135/kendrick-lamar-alright-american-anthem-party-protest">Alright</a>” became a Black Lives Matter movement anthem.</p>
<p>Like hip-hop, this consciousness operates globally. Take, for example, the Iraqi-Canadian <a href="https://music.empi.re/iraqforever">Narcy</a>, Cape Town’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_w4TQCloCA">YoungstaCPT</a>, Cuban hip-hop artist <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDOg7B8NBsc">Robe L. Ninho</a> and the U.K.’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqp_fsJlw5A">Enny</a>, whose works track their own journey for knowledge of self.</p>
<p>Things have changed since Rakim dropped “Move the Crowd” in 1987. Gentrification is pushing my community out of Brooklyn, and Islam and Muslims are more known and subject to the state and interpersonal violence of anti-Muslim racism. Yet hip-hop still affirms what I see around me – knowledge of self is as vital as ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/208559/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Su'ad Abdul Khabeer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar explains how a concept that appeared in Nation of Islam literature nearly a century ago essentially defines hip-hop’s consciousness today.Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, Associate Professor of American Culture, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2000362023-07-19T12:22:54Z2023-07-19T12:22:54ZHip-hop and health – why so many rap artists die young<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537895/original/file-20230717-17-u3sao8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=30%2C38%2C2502%2C2483&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Hip hop artists, from top left, clockwise, DMX, Lexii Alijai, Prince Markie Dee and Trugoy the Dove have all passed away within the past decade. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty Images </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The song “Be Healthy” from the 2000 album by hip-hop duo dead prez, “<a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/dead-prez-lets-get-free/">Let’s Get Free</a>,” is a rare rap anthem dedicated to diet, exercise and temperance:</p>
<p><em>“They say you are what you eat, so I strive to eat healthy / My goal in life is not to be rich or wealthy / ‘Cause true wealth come from good health and wise ways / We got to start taking better care of ourselves”</em> </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/47757IZRc5c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">“Be Healthy,” from the 2000 album “Let’s Get Free”</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In what’s widely recognized as <a href="https://www.grammy.com/news/2023-grammys-celebrate-50-years-hip-hop-star-performance-segment">hip-hop’s 50th anniversary</a>, an unfortunate reality is that several of its pioneering artists aren’t here to celebrate. The number of rappers who never live to see much more than 50 years themselves is astounding.</p>
<p>Rappers and rap fans can’t help but take notice that their peers and favorite rappers are dying young. Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul, 53, <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2023/02/de-la-soul-trugoy-the-dove-dead-at-54.html">passed away in February 2023</a> after a <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trugoy-the-dove-member-of-hip-hop-trio-de-la-soul-dies-at-54">battle with congestive heart failure</a>. Gangsta Boo, hailed as the “<a href="https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/entertainment/music/2023/01/14/gangsta-boo-celebration-of-life-memphis-rap-railgarten/69804248007/">Queen of Memphis</a>” and known for her work with Three 6 Mafia, <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/gangsta-boo-dead-former-three-6-mafia-rapper-dies-obituary-1235192876/">died at the age of 43</a> of a drug overdose in January 2023. Takeoff, a member of the Atlanta trio Migos, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/01/arts/music/takeoff-migos-dead.html">killed in November 2022</a>. He was 28 years old. </p>
<p>Rapper <a href="https://www.vibe.com/news/entertainment/jim-jones-stands-on-rappers-have-the-most-dangerous-job-comment-1234672569/">Jim Jones has claimed</a> that rap is the most dangerous profession due to rappers <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/takeoff-death-hip-hop-rap-violence/672117/">being violently killed so frequently</a>. Similarly, <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/a/backwoodsaltar/fat-joe-rappers-endangeed-species-pnb-rock-death">rapper Fat Joe believes</a> rappers are an endangered species. In the 2022 song “On Faux Nem,” Lupe Fiasco put it more succinctly: “Rappers die too much.”</p>
<p>As a rapper, a fan of hip-hop’s art and artists, and a <a href="https://news.virginia.edu/content/meet-ad-carson-uvas-professor-hip-hop">professor of hip-hop</a>, I agree with Lupe Fiasco: Rappers die too much. Whether it’s from gun violence, heart disease, cancer, self-harm or drugs, the number of rappers whose lives have ended prematurely is alarming.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Rap star Nipsey Hussle looks out." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537537/original/file-20230714-17-t3lnuk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=635&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rap star Nipsey Hussle was shot and killed in Los Angeles in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-nipsey-hussle-attends-a-craft-syndicate-music-news-photo/1080924940?adppopup=true">Prince Williams/WireImage via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The (un)exceptional spectacle of American gun violence</h2>
<p>Stories of rappers who die violently are well known. News media are quick to report on <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/11/01/gun-violence-has-killed-at-least-1-rapper-every-year-since-2018-2/">violence in hip-hop</a> to <a href="https://theconversation.com/scapegoating-rap-hits-new-low-after-july-fourth-mass-shooting-186443">support their view</a> that the music and the people who make it are exceptionally violent. Violence, death and conflict attract attention. Pair any of those with racial stereotyping and scapegoating and it’s easy to see why the murders of hip-hop stars such as Nipsey Hussle, the Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur and countless other artists garner so much attention.</p>
<p>Though they were all taken by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/rappers-are-victims-of-an-epidemic-of-gun-violence-just-like-all-of-america-194429">very American plague of gun violence</a>, news and historical accounts often amplify the spectacle of violent Black death, even when they claim to honor those who are killed. </p>
<p>I’ve <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/05/24/173838383/a-letter-to-my-mother-just-in-case">written extensively</a> about the trend of scapegoating rappers. It is also the topic addressed in the song “<a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/track/ankh-featuring-nathaniel-star">ANKH</a>” from my forthcoming mixtap/e/ssay, “<a href="https://aydeethegreat.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Illicit-Press-Release-6-23-pdf-232x300.jpg">V: ILLICIT</a>”:</p>
<p><em>“He died by the gun but they blamed the music. / They said, ‘What he said was evidence.’ And used it. …/ No compassion for the life torn apart when the bullets hit him, / cause he talked about the block in his art, so he’s not a victim. / Cameraman said, ‘They don’t value life too much.’ / He reported here before. Even twice some months. / Somewhere in his mid-twenties was his deadline (dying). / ‘Another N— Killed Here’ was the headline (crying).”</em></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 442px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/track=594009146/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=de270f/tracklist=false/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/track/ankh-featuring-nathaniel-star">ANKH (featuring Nathaniel Star) by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<p>An awful byproduct of this culture of consuming carnage is that the kinds of violent gun tragedies people are experiencing <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2022/gun-deaths-per-year-usa/">all across the U.S.</a> are being spotlighted in hip-hop and used as <a href="https://theconversation.com/scapegoating-rap-hits-new-low-after-july-fourth-mass-shooting-186443">excuses to criminalize and pathologize</a> certain people and the music they enjoy, the art they create, the neighborhoods they live in or the places they grew up.</p>
<p>Another heartbreaking consequence is that some rappers only gain wide popularity and realize financial success <a href="https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/23/posthumous-albums-by-young-rappers-are-topping-the-charts">after they’ve died</a>. Deceased rappers are an unfortunately abundant commodity. Juice WRLD and Pop Smoke are prime examples: They both sold four to five times as much music after their deaths than when they were alive.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538103/original/file-20230718-21-dohcve.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Before and after death sales.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The Economist</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Along with being alarmed by these tragedies, it’s important to examine the conditions that affect mortality and attempt to get to the actual causes rather than scapegoating a musical form.</p>
<h2>Deadly diseases</h2>
<p>While violence brings about headlines, guns are not the only cause for concern. Diseases – many of them preventable – are also a factor.</p>
<p>Heart disease, lung disease, cancer, diabetes, strokes and renal disease are among the top 10 causes of death <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/lcod/men/2017/nonhispanic-black/index.htm">among Black men</a> and <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/lcod/men/2018/byrace-hispanic/index.htm">Hispanic men</a>, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It makes sense that these causes also prominently figure in the deaths of hip-hop artists. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Rapper Big Pun performs on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537899/original/file-20230717-210016-dd9z7i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rapper Big Pun, who sold a million albums, died at 28.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/big-pun-and-fat-joe-performing-at-les-poulets-on-may-13-news-photo/547402373?adppopup=true">Hiroyuki Ito/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Gone before retirement</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/14/arts/music/james-yancey-producer-known-for-soulful-hiphop-dies-at-32.html">Rapper and producer J-Dilla</a> (32), rappers <a href="https://www.chron.com/entertainment/music/article/houston-rappers-remember-big-moe-dead-at-33-1797262.php">Big Moe (33)</a>, <a href="https://www.complex.com/music/a/complex/black-the-ripper-dead-at-32">Black the Ripper (32)</a> from the U.K., <a href="https://www.vibe.com/news/entertainment/founding-three-6-mafia-member-lord-infamous-dead-40-199175/">Lord Infamous (40)</a>, <a href="https://hiphopdx.com/news/id.20369/title.big-hutch-releases-statement-on-passing-of-above-the-law-member-kmg?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter#">KMG the Illustrator (43</a> from Above the Law, <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2021/04/09/dmx-hip-hop-legend-dies-50-after-heart-attack/7074550002/">DMX (50)</a>, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/big-t-death-cause-texas-rapper-age-52-wanna-be-a-baller-a8343506.html">Big T (52)</a>, <a href="https://onthisdateinhiphop.com/news/april-3-tweedy-bird-loc-passes-away-2020/">Tweedy Bird Loc (52)</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/black-rob-dead-1157364/">Black Rob (52)</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2000/02/09/arts/christopher-rios-28-rapper-recorded-under-name-big-pun.html">Big Pun (28)</a> all died from heart attacks. <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/heavy-d-cause-death-pulmonary-embolism-276405/">Heavy D (44) experienced a pulmonary embolism</a> that led to his death. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/arts/music/prince-markie-dee-fat-boys-dead.html">Prince Markie Dee (52) of the Fat Boys</a> passed away from congestive heart failure. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/craig-mack-flava-in-ya-ear-rapper-dead-at-47-127656/">Craig Mack (47)</a> died from heart failure. And Brax (21) <a href="https://variety.com/2020/music/news/brax-dead-influencer-rapper-1234823912/#">died from cardiac arrhythmia</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://ew.com/article/2016/03/23/phife-dawg-dead-dies/#">Phife Dawg (45)</a> of A Tribe Called Quest, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tim-dog-f-k-compton-rapper-dead-at-46-98451/">Tim Dog (46)</a> and <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/biz-markie-dead-1191772/">Biz Markie (57)</a> all passed away from complications related to diabetes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest performs at a music festival." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537822/original/file-20230717-210447-vwdxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In 2016, Phife Dawg of A Tribe Called Quest died at 45 after a long battle with Type-1 diabetes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/phife-dawg-of-a-tribe-called-quest-performs-at-2013-h2o-news-photo/176730972?adppopup=true">Rodrigo Vaz/FilmMagic via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/21/arts/music/21guru.html">Guru (48) of Gangstarr</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bushwick-bill-geto-boys-rapper-dead-obituary-846047/">Bushwick Bill (52) of the Geto Boys</a>, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2022-11-07/hurricane-g-death-rapper-lung-cancer">Hurricane G (52)</a> and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/18/arts/music/kangol-kid-dead.html#">Kangol Kid (55)</a> died from cancer. <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/dj-kay-slay-55-dead-covid-19-battle-obituary-1235060195/">DJ K Slay passed away at 55</a> from what was described as COVID-19 complications.</p>
<p>Eazy-E <a href="https://deadline.com/2021/07/the-mysterious-death-of-eazy-e-docuseries-wetv-1234793623/">died of AIDS at 30</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/arts/music/nate-dogg-hip-hop-collaborator-dies-at-41.html#:%7E:text=He%20was%2041.,on%20the%20songs%20of%20rappers.">Nate Dogg’s death at 41</a> was attributed to a stroke. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-pimpc5feb05-story.html">Pimp C’s death at 33</a> was attributed to sleep apnea and an <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/06/arts/06arts-DRUGSKILLEDP_BRF.html">overdose of cough syrup</a>. <a href="https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/01/28/autopsy-st-paul-rapper-lexii-alijai-died-of-accidental-overdose">Lexii Alijai (21)</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/philadelphia-rapper-chynna-rogers-dies-25-n1180051">Chynna (25)</a>, and <a href="https://www.billboard.com/music/rb-hip-hop/digital-underground-shock-g-cause-of-death-9585758/">Shock G (57)</a> all reportedly died of accidental drug overdose.</p>
<p><a href="https://ew.com/article/2012/07/19/ms-melodie-rapperdead-at-43/">Ms. Melodie passed away</a> in her sleep at the age of 43. <a href="https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2023-06-18/big-pokey-death-houston-rapper-texas#">Big Pokey collapsed onstage</a> and passed away at 48. <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/whodini-john-fletcher-dead-1107571/">Ecstasy of Whodini died at 56</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Artist Ms. Melodie performs on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=890&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/537824/original/file-20230717-243941-wecfnd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1119&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Ms. Melodie of Boogie Down Productions passed away in 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/late-rapper-ms-melodie-of-boogie-down-productions-performs-news-photo/465938029?adppopup=true">Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>A renewed focus on health</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, this list of tragic lives halted from ages 21 to 57 is not a comprehensive account of all the rappers who have passed away well before the age of retirement.</p>
<p>The occasion of celebrating 50 years of hip-hop provides a moment to reflect and honor some of the artists who contributed to the culture and are not here to celebrate this golden anniversary. It’s also, perhaps, an opportunity to consider some of the outcomes of systemic barriers to health and wellness, such as <a href="https://health.gov/healthypeople/priority-areas/social-determinants-health/literature-summaries/access-health-services">access to affordable health care</a>, varied dietary options and mental wellness resources.</p>
<p>Given the number of rappers and other prominent hip-hop artists who have died young, ultimately it may come down to seriously taking heed to dead prez’s instructions from “Be Healthy”: “We got to start taking better care of ourselves.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200036/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As hip-hop turns 50, an unfortunate reality is that so many of its pioneering artists never live to see much more than 50 years themselves, a professor of hip-hop writes.A.D. Carson, Associate Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2018432023-05-31T12:39:54Z2023-05-31T12:39:54ZStreet scrolls: The beats, rhymes and spirituality of Latin hip-hop<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528174/original/file-20230525-27-wjzwiv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C1014%2C674&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Puerto Rican singer Residente performs in Havana in 2010. His back reads, 'We receive flowers and bullets in the very same heart.'</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/puerto-rican-singer-rene-perez-aka-residente-of-hip-hop-and-news-photo/97987551?adppopup=true">STR/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>As a first-generation college graduate and a Latino from a family that constantly scrambled to make ends meet, there was very little in my upbringing that foreshadowed my current life <a href="https://religion.arizona.edu/people/nava">as a religion professor and scholar</a>. I didn’t grow up surrounded by books, and I spent many more hours in childhood dissecting hip-hop and shooting hoops than doing schoolwork. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until late in college, when a couple of teachers lit a fire in my bones, that I became hungry for the stuff of books and ideas. Learning about the world’s religions instilled in me a newfound passion for all the existential questions and conundrums of the human condition, connecting me with a truth beyond myself, a sublime pattern that brought the world into greater focus.</p>
<p>But if the study of religion swept me up into the stars, hip-hop brought me back down to earth. It was my first love, and its beats and rhymes schooled me in things closer to home. Hip-hop had its finger on the pulse of Black and brown lives on the frayed edges of the Americas, lives like my father’s and his father’s before him: cleaning trains, floors and toilets, doing whatever they could to support their families.</p>
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<span class="caption">Rock Steady Crew members break-dance in the yard of Booker T. Washington Junior High School in New York on May 8, 1983.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/members-of-the-rock-steady-crew-break-dance-in-the-yard-of-news-photo/159723630?adppopup=true">Linda Vartoogian/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>There is an unstudied wisdom in the defiant, dirty beats of hip-hop, and even religious dimensions – <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo145420021.html">a focus of my research today</a>, which explores the prophetic and even mystical elements in the genre. Its lyrics can be sweet like honey, as the biblical prophet Ezekiel <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+3&version=KJV">describes the scroll of the Lord</a>. Yet they can also be bitter, like the herbs of Passover – a remembrance of pains and indignities. Hip-hop turns 50 this summer, and throughout its history, Latinos’ experiences have been important threads in this music’s cries for justice.</p>
<h2>‘Latins goin’ platinum’</h2>
<p>Back in the day, my brother was a b-boy – a break dancer – and his group, the Royal Rockers, convinced me that in this fresh new culture, Black and brown youth had a story to tell. </p>
<p>Making their feet flutter like centipedes, their tails rise up like scorpions in a battle, these Tucson kids thrust themselves into public view, refusing to remain invisible. Their body language flipped the prevailing narrative about our battered neighborhoods, turning them into places of pride rather than shame. </p>
<p>Latinos beyond the U.S. borderlands were also very much part of <a href="https://timeline.carnegiehall.org/genres/rap-hip-hop">hip-hop’s history</a>. While there is no doubt that its inventors were Black Americans, <a href="https://utpress.utexas.edu/9780292718036/">Latinos added new colors</a> to the prevailing palette of hip-hop. Whether in the South Bronx or East L.A., brown-bodied youth embraced hip-hop as <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/from-bomba-to-hip-hop/9780231110778">an ingenious instrument of self-expression</a>: <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/reggaeton">a perfect medium to assert, define</a> and even reinvent ourselves.</p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6QQMRgqK5kFp5yaDUVFC4p?utm_source=generator&theme=0" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p>When it came to emceeing, rap in Latino circles started experimenting with Spanish words and slang by the 1980s. Artists peppered their verses with shouts of Latin pride, and my friends and I heard it loud and clear.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A man with a faint mustache wearing a Los Angeles baseball cap points at the camera close-up." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528154/original/file-20230525-19-qp7m4a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1111&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Kid Frost, born Arturo Molina Jr., in New York City in 1991.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rap-collective-group-latin-alliance-and-kid-frost-appear-in-news-photo/1273387989?adppopup=true">Al Pereira/Getty Images/Michael Ochs Archives</a></span>
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<p>Kid Frost, to take a West Coast example, put in rhymes what we felt but didn’t have the courage to say. While he had the thuggish pretense of the gangster rap era, his body teetering to the side like the Tower of Pisa and his mouth riddled with threats, Kid Frost’s bars were also <a href="https://remezcla.com/features/music/tbt-30-years-dropping-la-raza-remains-historic-part-hip-hop-history/">filled with cultural knowledge</a>. Echoing the unruffled cadences of Latino subcultures around him – from kids cruising in lowrider cars to the <a href="https://www.laits.utexas.edu/onda_latina/program?sernum=MAE_82_15_mp3&header=Identity">street speech of caló</a>, a coded argot from zoot-suit culture in the 1930s and 1940s – Kid Frost used barrio language to <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4488380">rewrite the story of hip-hop</a> with Indigenous and Chicano lives as significant characters.</p>
<p>Meanwhile on the East Coast, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xpbpa/el-general-pioneered-the-sound-of-reggaeton-then-disappeared-entirely">the Panamanian reggaeton pioneer El General</a> brought even greater visibility to Latin-accented hip-hop, as did Fat Joe and Big Pun. </p>
<p>“Cause everybody’s checkin’ for Pun, second to none / ‘Cause Latins goin’ platinum was destined to come,” he announced to the world, like a boxing ring announcer before a prime event, in “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibdvIKLgtg8">You Came Up</a>.” </p>
<p>Both Fat Joe and Big Pun were big in stature and big in lung capacity, but Big Pun was the better rhyme-spitter; his flows spilled off his tongue in torrents of alliteration and assonance, rarely pausing to take a breath or gulp, as if he didn’t require as much oxygen as other humans.</p>
<p><a href="https://untappedcities.com/2014/02/13/daily-what-big-pun-place-guerilla-street-sign-goes-up-in-the-bronx/">In his hood, the South Bronx’s Soundview Projects</a>, social and psychological stresses seemed to weigh heavily on residents. In <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0B8drtTSp68pZdkmVrG9ZA">one memorable rap, “Twinz</a>,” he painted a picture of himself holding his “rosary as tight as I can,” fingering it to keep evil away on streets that swallowed the weak. Big Pun and his rap progenitors – from Big Daddy Kane and Fat Joe to Wu-Tang and Mobb Deep – projected violent images of oversized badness: of being the predator, not the prey.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A black and white picture, taken from below a stage, of two large men rapping into microphones." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528155/original/file-20230525-25-bqxfsg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Big Pun and Fat Joe performing on May 13, 1998.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/big-pun-and-fat-joe-performing-at-les-poulets-on-may-13-news-photo/547402273?adppopup=true">Hiroyuki Ito/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
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<h2>La nueva religíon</h2>
<p>Fast forward a couple of decades, and today’s Latino rappers and reggaetoneros are breaking new ground, frequently adding more sensitive, introspective and socially conscious touches to hip-hop. </p>
<p>One of the <a href="https://ledgernote.com/blog/interesting/most-streamed-artists-ever/">most-streamed artists in the world today</a>, the Puerto Rican hitmaker Bad Bunny, is representative of this new style. Raised in a Catholic home, <a href="https://www.thefader.com/2018/08/28/bad-bunny-cover-story-conejo-malo-interview">his voice nurtured in a church choir</a>, Bad Bunny’s breadth – reggaeton, cumbia, boogaloo, trap, bomba, salsa – owes a lot to <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/08/1014211817/no-boundaries-on-the-island-the-music-of-puerto-rico">the musical diversity of the island</a>. </p>
<p>Like so many artists of Latin American and African American heritages, he slips on religious sentiments, then drops them for bawdy ones in a beat, changing his mood like a stage performer between acts. Unlike R.E.M., Bad Bunny hasn’t exactly <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwtdhWltSIg">“lost” his religion</a> as much as he’s reformed it, adding in dance rhythms, folk motifs, feminist sensibilities, LGBTQ rights and barrio experiences. </p>
<p>“El diablo me llama pero Jesucristo me abraza – amén,” he sings in his verse for the viral hit “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLFNgKOPS50">I Like It</a>,” a trap version of Pete Rodriguez’s 1967 “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiM9GqZG9kE">I Like It Like That</a>”: The devil calls me but Jesus Christ holds me.</p>
<p>He named his first major tour “La Nueva Religíon,” a fitting name for <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2022/08/25/bad-bunny-spirituality-243615">the eccentric combinations of spirituality</a>, sexuality, dance and pan-Latin motifs in his music. Since the tour in 2018, the term has endured, referring not only to Bad Bunny’s fans – devotees of this “new religion” – but also a generation that is questioning traditional gender roles, chasing new spiritual experiences and raising their fists in support of human rights. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A large crowd outside, with men on a truck holding Puerto Rican flags." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/528156/original/file-20230525-25-nhl8zb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Rapper Bad Bunny (holding flag), singer Ricky Martin (black hat) and rapper Residente (blue hat) join protests against the governor of Puerto Rico in 2019.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/rapper-bad-bunny-singer-ricky-martin-and-rapper-residente-news-photo/1162646990?adppopup=true">Joe Raedle/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Ever since Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria in 2017 – when over 300,000 homes in Puerto Rico <a href="https://spp-pr.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2018/07/HUD-Housing-Damage-Assessment-Recovery-Strategies-6-29-18.pdf">were damaged or destroyed</a> – Bad Bunny has produced anthems and rally cries as much as songs. Take “El Apagón,” “The Blackout,” a rebellious <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-latin/bad-bunny-releases-documentary-for-el-apagon-1234594915/">condemnation of the government’s inaction</a> on power outages that have swept the island since Maria, and locals’ sense that their own needs go unmet while wealthy outsiders flood in.</p>
<p>He’s not alone: Many of today’s rappers are sampling some of the more righteous trends in the history of hip-hop. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP9Bto5lOEQ">The Cuban rap song “Patria y Vida</a>,” for instance – a collaboration between Gente de Zona, the Orishas, Descemer Bueno and other artists – appeared in Cuba like a storm in 2021. Capturing feelings of widespread discontent with the Cuban government, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/altlatino/2021/07/19/1017887993/explaining-patria-y-vida-the-cuban-song-defying-an-evil-revolution">the rap reclaims and revolutionizes</a> the classic slogan from the Cuban revolution of the 1950s, “Patria o Muerte” (“Homeland or Death”). In the hands of these Cuban rappers, the phrase becomes “patria y vida”: “We no longer shout homeland or death, but homeland and life instead.”</p>
<p>Further south in the Americas, consider MC Millaray, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/27/world/americas/mc-millaray-chile-mapuche-rapper.html">a 16-year-old Indigenous rapper</a> from Mapuche lands in Chile, whose fierce raps swing between Spanish and Indigenous languages. She wields her words like incantations to summon Mapuche ancestors and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pWmhrsAKPI">defend the dignity of Indigenous lives</a> throughout the Americas. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A young woman's face, with a serious expression, lit up against a dark room." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527636/original/file-20230523-23-b2kdxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chilean Mapuche rap singer MC Millaray records at a studio in Santiago on March 25, 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/chilean-mapuche-rap-singer-mc-millaray-records-at-a-studio-news-photo/1250034416?adppopup=true">Martin Bernetti/AFP via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Romp and grace</h2>
<p>Now <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-hip-hop-has-enhanced-american-education-over-the-past-50-years-from-rec-rooms-to-classrooms-202794">50 years in the making</a>, hip-hop continues to be a powerful amulet against powers that try to silence the young and underprivileged. It’s eloquent proof of an enduring truth: that hardship can fuel ingenuity and cunning, and that poetry can be fashioned out of society’s scraps. </p>
<p>For my brother and his breaking crew, hip-hop was a lesson in grace: how the body can find the still point in the midst of spins, leaps and flying arms and legs. For me, always drawn by the rapping, it was also a lesson in grace: the emcee’s adroit arrangement of syllables and syntax, the way they sculpted their bars, making language bounce, dance and romp. </p>
<p>For both of us, it was like a first love, making us feel rapturously free yet connected – liberating and revelatory at once.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201843/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alejandro Nava is affiliated with Casa Alitas, a non-profit organization that works with refugees and asylum-seekers. </span></em></p>Latino artists have been forging their own paths in hip-hop for decades, giving voice to young peoples’ pain, faith and demands for change.Alejandro Nava, Professor of Religious Studies, University of ArizonaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1864432022-07-07T12:26:53Z2022-07-07T12:26:53ZScapegoating rap hits new low after July Fourth mass shooting<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/472870/original/file-20220706-25-p2t2ut.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=862%2C181%2C4889%2C3638&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Flowers are laid near the scene of a mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/flowers-are-laid-near-the-scene-of-a-shooting-at-a-fourth-news-photo/1241722394?adppopup=true">Jim Vondruska/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When local police named 22-year-old Robert E. Crimo III as “a person of interest” in the July 4 mass shootings in an affluent Chicago suburb, several news outlets described him in headlines as a “rapper.” </p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/07/05/robert-crimo-highland-park-parade-shooting/">A Washington Post</a> headline read “Robert Crimo III, ‘Awake the Rapper,’ arrested in Highland Park shooting.” A <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7zvxz/highland-park-person-of-interest-robert-crimo">Vice News</a> headline read “Police Arrest Local Rapper in Connection to Highland Park Mass Shooting.”</p>
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<p>In addition to the headlines, media outlets noted that Crimo had musical references to mass shootings on his social media accounts as well as crude drawings depicting violence.</p>
<p>But none of these justify the use of “rap” or “rapper” in describing Crimo’s alleged criminal behavior — and everything to do with criminalizing rap and rappers. </p>
<p>In my view, referring to this genre of music and those that make it is a racially loaded signal to readers that Crimo’s musical interests are a significant part of the mass shooting and somehow led to the crimes of which he is accused.</p>
<p>Those crimes include at least <a href="https://www.wcvb.com/article/highland-park-illinois-parade-shooting-what-we-know/40523471#">seven counts of first-degree murder</a> which, if he’s convicted, carry a maximum sentence of life without parole. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/05/us/robert-e-crimo-highland-park-suspect/index.html">Crimo is scheduled to appear</a> for a preliminary hearing on July 28 and is being held in detention without bail. </p>
<p>As far as I can tell, none of those alleged crimes had anything to do with Crimo’s career as a rapper.</p>
<p>But rap is an easy target.</p>
<h2>Scapegoating rap</h2>
<p>Rap has long been used to conspicuously stereotype, caricature and reinforce mythologies about Black people. As <a href="https://music.virginia.edu/people/profile/acarson">a rapper and scholar</a>, I wrote about this scapegoating in a <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/file_sets/pv63g236n">chapbook</a>, “Rap & Storytellingly Invention,” published with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">peer-reviewed album</a> I released in 2020. </p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 410px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<p>Since the rise of hip-hop in the early 1980s, critics of rap sought to tie the music to violent crime. </p>
<p>One of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">the first targets</a> was <a href="https://www.rundmc.com/">Run-DMC</a>, the rappers from Queens, New York, given credit for <a href="https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a30644382/run-dmc-facts/">bringing hip-hip to mainstream</a> music and culture. </p>
<p>During the group’s 1986 “Raising Hell” tour, police and journalists <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-19-me-16897-story.html">blamed its music for violence</a> that occurred in towns it visited. At its show in Long Beach, California, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/19/us/42-are-hurt-as-gang-fighting-breaks-up-california-concert.html">gang violence in the crowd</a> also was blamed on rap. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, politician and civil rights activist <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-tupacdelores20march2096-story.html">C. Delores Tucker</a> became one of the most outspoken anti-rap voices, focusing her ire on <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/tupac-shakur">Tupac Shakur</a> and the <a href="https://historyofthehiphop.wordpress.com/music-genres/gangsta-rap/">“gangsta rap”</a> subgenre.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing against rap – or some version of it – continues to this day.</p>
<p>The latest target is <a href="https://theconversation.com/chief-keef-changed-the-music-industry-and-its-time-he-gets-the-credit-he-deserves-170172">drill rap</a>, a hip-hop subgenre that originated in Chicago and has since spread across the world.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor Eric Adams <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mayor-eric-adams-drill-rap-1299108/">condemned drill rap</a> on Feb. 11, 2022, after the murders of two Brooklyn rap artists, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jayquan-mckenley-funeral/">Jayquan McKenley </a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/rising-brooklyn-rapper-tdott-woo-fatally-shot-gun/story?id=82647146">Tahjay Dobson</a>. </p>
<p>Adams said the violence portrayed in drill rap music videos was “alarming” and that he would sit down with social media companies to try to remove the content by telling them they “have a civic and corporate responsibility.” </p>
<p>“We pulled Trump off Twitter for what he was spewing,” Adams said, “yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”</p>
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<p>Similar tactics have been employed in the past to shut down drill music. </p>
<p>London drill rappers have been targeted since 2015 by the Metropolitan Police’s <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal">Operation Domain</a>, a joint effort with YouTube to monitor for “videos that incite violence.”</p>
<p>It’s as if politicians and police don’t understand that the music emerging from these places is a reflection of crisis, not the source of it.</p>
<h2>Tragic myths and realities</h2>
<p>Despite the immense popularity of hip-hop, the culture and the music continue to be portrayed as a cultural wasteland in both subtle and explicit ways.</p>
<p>Worse, in my view, these harmful assumptions affect the ways ordinary people who experience tragedies are described. </p>
<p>The word “rapper” is used to conjure negative imagery. It leaves hollow expectations in its place, to be filled with the specter of death and the spectacle of violence. The person described by it becomes a <a href="https://scalawagmagazine.org/2018/11/boogeymen/">boogeyman</a> in the public imagination. </p>
<p>In the most unjust of circumstances, “rapper” has become a social shorthand for presumptions of guilt, expectations of violence and sometimes worthiness of death. </p>
<p>Such was the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots">Willie McCoy</a>. In 2019, the 20-year-old was killed by six policemen while he slept in his car at a Vallejo, California, Taco Bell. The officers claimed they saw a gun and tried to wake him. When McCoy moved, the officers fired 55 shots in 3½ seconds. </p>
<p>While rap music appears to have had nothing to do with the tragic events of his death, <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/17/vallejo-police-officer-colin-eaton-disciplined-for-excessive-force-in-2020-according-to-investigation/">descriptions of McCoy</a> as a rapper were reported more prominently and consistently than the 55 shots police fired at him while he slept.</p>
<p>Even playing rap music might result in death. In 2012, a 17-year-old named <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/17/michael-dunn-convicted-killing-17-year-old-after-telling-teen-turn-down-rap-music/15732203007/">Jordan Davis</a> was shot and killed by a man who complained about the <a href="https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/monday-night-marks-8-years-since-murder-of-jordan-davis-over-loud-music-at-jacksonville-gas-station/77-2297d230-84cb-4cdf-bacd-00b583df6648">“loud” music Davis was playing</a> in his car at a Florida gas station. </p>
<p>During the proceedings, dubbed “the loud music trial,” Michael Dunn testified that <a href="http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/atonal-notes/on-white-thugs-like-michael-dunn-and-the-scapegoating-of-hip-hop">the music Davis and his friends were playing</a> in Davis’ car was “thug music” or “rap crap.”</p>
<p>Dunn’s defense depended on his victims’ being viewed as thugs by association with rap. </p>
<p>In jail, Dunn was <a href="https://participant.com/film/3-12-minutes-ten-bullets">recorded</a> on the phone speculating whether Davis and his friends were “gangster rappers.” He claimed he’d seen YouTube videos. </p>
<p>In describing these tragedies, the words “rappers” and “rap music” are code for “Black” and “other,” meant to elicit fear and justify violence. There’s no question in my mind that they would have been perceived differently if the words “poets” or “poetry” had been used instead. </p>
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<h2>Moral decline blamed on rap</h2>
<p>The day after the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-victims/">May 24, 2022, mass shooting</a> at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/district/ronny-jackson/J000304">Ronny Jackson</a> promptly blamed the violence on rap music and video games.</p>
<p>“Kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays,” the Texas Republican <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-school-shooting-god-family-ronny-jackson">told Fox News on May 25, 2022</a>. “I think about the horrible stuff that they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch … with all of this horrible violence.”</p>
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<p>For Jackson and other critics, rap seems to explain criminal behavior and signal moral decline. In the eyes of Georgia’s <a href="https://fultoncountyga.gov/districtattorney">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis</a>, rap might be something else as well – evidence. </p>
<p>Atlanta rappers <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/young-thug-focused-faith-mental-192746912.html">Young Thug</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/rapper-gunna-now-in-fulton-jail-on-racketeering-charge/SW5HGGXXIJFNLAYD2A5EZEH324/">Gunna</a> were among 28 defendants <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/">charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act</a> in May 2022 with conspiracy and street gang activity. </p>
<p>They are now in jail in Atlanta awaiting trial. </p>
<p>In the indictment, prosecutors cite lyrics from Young Thug’s songs as “overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.” </p>
<p>Several tracks are quoted, including “Slatty,” on which <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=slatty+lyrics&oq=%22Slatty%2C%22&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l2j46i512l2j0i512j46i10i512j0i512j46i10i512j0i10i512.3369j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Young Thug raps</a>: “I killed his man in front of his mama /
Like f–k lil bruh, his sister, and cousin.”</p>
<p>Free speech has its limits. </p>
<p>“The First Amendment,” Willis explained, “does not protect people from prosecutors using [lyrics] as evidence if it is such.” </p>
<h2>Made in America</h2>
<p>Indeed, violence perpetuated by people who rap is as real any other American violence.</p>
<p>Young Thug, Gunna or any other rapper accused of crimes is not exempt from accountability. But, in my view, assuming people are criminals simply because they rap – even if they rap about violence – is wrong. </p>
<p>Admittedly, throughout hip-hop history, rappers have constructed personas as antiheroes. Performances of masculinity, violence, intimidation, gun ownership and misogyny are meant to signal a kind of authenticity. </p>
<p>In her 1994 book “Outlaw Culture,” bell hooks included a <a href="http://challengingmalesupremacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Misogyny-gangsta-rap-and-The-Piano-bell-hooks.pdf">chapter on “gangsta rap.”</a> Hooks explained that the abhorrent behaviors scrutinized and highlighted in rap are American values that people living and surviving here adopt.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">December 1986 story on Run-DMC</a>, Rolling Stone writer Ed Kiersh said out loud what many were thinking.</p>
<p>“To much of white America,” Kiersh wrote, “rap means mayhem and bloodletting.” </p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
<p>But those who still seek to vilify rap might do well to focus on the sources of the crisis of violence in America rather than blaming the music that reflects it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/186443/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since rap music emerged in mainstream culture in the late 1980s, politicians have derided its lyrics and imagery as violent. Over the years, rap has become an easy target to blame for violence.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1843732022-06-14T12:29:27Z2022-06-14T12:29:27ZWhen all else fails to explain American violence, blame a rapper and hip-hop music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/468098/original/file-20220609-24-ehtoua.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=94%2C152%2C3406%2C2178&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Young Thug performs onstage on March 17, 2022, in Austin, Texas. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/young-thug-performs-onstage-at-samsung-galaxy-billboard-news-photo/1386115571?adppopup=true">Amy E. Price/Getty Images for SXSW</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The day after the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/05/25/uvalde-school-shooting-victims/">May 24, 2022, mass shooting</a> at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. Rep. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/member/district/ronny-jackson/J000304">Ronny Jackson</a> promptly blamed the violence on rap music and video games.</p>
<p>“Kids are exposed to all kinds of horrible stuff nowadays,” the Texas Republican <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/texas-school-shooting-god-family-ronny-jackson">told Fox News on May 25, 2022</a>. “I think about the horrible stuff that they hear when they listen to rap music, the video games that they watch … with all of this horrible violence.”</p>
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<p>For Jackson and other critics, rap seems to explain criminal behavior and signal moral decline. In the eyes of <a href="https://fultoncountyga.gov/districtattorney">Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis</a>, rap might be something else as well – evidence. </p>
<p>Atlanta rappers <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/young-thug-focused-faith-mental-192746912.html">Young Thug</a> and <a href="https://www.ajc.com/news/crime/rapper-gunna-now-in-fulton-jail-on-racketeering-charge/SW5HGGXXIJFNLAYD2A5EZEH324/">Gunna</a> were among 28 defendants <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/13/young-thung-gunna-rap-lyrics-court/">charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act</a> in May 2022 with conspiracy and street gang activity. </p>
<p>They are now in jail in Atlanta awaiting trial. </p>
<p>In the indictment, prosecutors cite lyrics from Young Thug’s songs as “overt acts in furtherance of the conspiracy.” </p>
<p>Several tracks are quoted, including “Slatty,” on which <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=slatty+lyrics&oq=%22Slatty%2C%22&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i512l2j46i512l2j0i512j46i10i512j0i512j46i10i512j0i10i512.3369j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8">Young Thug raps</a>: “I killed his man in front of his mama /
Like f–k lil bruh, his sister, and cousin.”</p>
<p>Free speech has its limits. </p>
<p>“The First Amendment,” Willis explained, “does not protect people from prosecutors using [lyrics] as evidence if it is such.” </p>
<h2>Scapegoating rap</h2>
<p>Rap has long been used to conspicuously stereotype, caricature and reinforce mythologies about Black people. As <a href="https://music.virginia.edu/people/profile/acarson">a rapper and scholar</a>, I wrote about this scapegoating in a <a href="https://www.fulcrum.org/concern/file_sets/pv63g236n">chapbook</a>, “Rap & Storytellingly Invention,” published with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hip-hop-professor-looks-to-open-doors-with-worlds-first-peer-reviewed-rap-album-153761">peer-reviewed album</a> I released in 2020. </p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 410px; height: 406px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=734046536/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=0f91ff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless="" width="100%" height="400"><a href="https://aydeethegreat.bandcamp.com/album/i-used-to-love-to-dream">i used to love to dream by A.D. Carson</a></iframe>
<p>Since the rise of hip-hop in the early 1980s, critics of rap sought to tie the music to violent crime. </p>
<p>One of <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">the first targets</a> was <a href="https://www.rundmc.com/">Run-DMC</a>, the rappers from Queens, New York, given credit for <a href="https://www.oprahdaily.com/entertainment/a30644382/run-dmc-facts/">bringing hip-hip to mainstream</a> music and culture. </p>
<p>During the group’s 1986 “Raising Hell” tour, police and journalists <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-08-19-me-16897-story.html">blamed its music for violence</a> that occurred in towns it visited. At its show in Long Beach, California, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/19/us/42-are-hurt-as-gang-fighting-breaks-up-california-concert.html">gang violence in the crowd</a> also was blamed on rap. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, politician and civil rights activist <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/la-fi-tupacdelores20march2096-story.html">C. Delores Tucker</a> became one of the most outspoken anti-rap voices, focusing her ire on <a href="https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/tupac-shakur">Tupac Shakur</a> and the <a href="https://historyofthehiphop.wordpress.com/music-genres/gangsta-rap/">“gangsta rap”</a> subgenre.</p>
<p>The finger-pointing against rap – or some version of it – continues to this day.</p>
<p>The latest target is <a href="https://theconversation.com/chief-keef-changed-the-music-industry-and-its-time-he-gets-the-credit-he-deserves-170172">drill rap</a>, a hip-hop subgenre that originated in Chicago and has since spread across the world.</p>
<p>New York City Mayor Eric Adams <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/mayor-eric-adams-drill-rap-1299108/">condemned drill rap</a> on Feb. 11, 2022, after the murders of two Brooklyn rap artists, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/jayquan-mckenley-funeral/">Jayquan McKenley </a> and <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/rising-brooklyn-rapper-tdott-woo-fatally-shot-gun/story?id=82647146">Tahjay Dobson</a>. </p>
<p>Adams said the violence portrayed in drill rap music videos was “alarming” and that he would sit down with social media companies to try to remove the content by telling them they “have a civic and corporate responsibility.” </p>
<p>“We pulled Trump off Twitter for what he was spewing,” Adams said, “yet we are allowing music, displaying of guns, violence. We’re allowing it to stay on these sites.”</p>
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<p>Similar tactics have been employed in the past to shut down drill music. </p>
<p>London drill rappers have been targeted since 2015 by the Metropolitan Police’s <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnp8v/met-police-youtube-drill-music-removal">Operation Domain</a>, a joint effort with YouTube to monitor for “videos that incite violence.”</p>
<p>It’s as if politicians and police don’t understand that the music emerging from these places is a reflection of crisis, not the source of it.</p>
<h2>Tragic myths and realities</h2>
<p>Despite the immense popularity of hip-hop, the culture and the music continue to be portrayed as a cultural wasteland in both subtle and explicit ways.</p>
<p>Worse, in my view, these harmful assumptions affect the ways ordinary people who experience tragedies are described. </p>
<p>The word “rapper” is used to conjure negative imagery. It leaves hollow expectations in its place, to be filled with the specter of death and the spectacle of violence. The person described by it becomes a <a href="https://scalawagmagazine.org/2018/11/boogeymen/">boogeyman</a> in the public imagination. </p>
<p>In the most unjust of circumstances, “rapper” has become a social shorthand for presumptions of guilt, expectations of violence and sometimes worthiness of death. </p>
<p>Such was the case with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/12/willie-mccoy-shooting-vallejo-police-55-shots">Willie McCoy</a>. In 2019, the 20-year-old was killed by six policemen while he slept in his car at a Vallejo, California, Taco Bell. The officers claimed they saw a gun and tried to wake him. When McCoy moved, the officers fired 55 shots in 3.5 seconds. </p>
<p>While rap music appears to have had nothing to do with the tragic events of his death, <a href="https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/02/17/vallejo-police-officer-colin-eaton-disciplined-for-excessive-force-in-2020-according-to-investigation/">descriptions of McCoy</a> as a rapper were reported more prominently and consistently than the 55 shots police fired at him while he slept.</p>
<p>Even playing rap music might result in death. In 2012, a 17-year-old named <a href="https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/crime/2016/11/17/michael-dunn-convicted-killing-17-year-old-after-telling-teen-turn-down-rap-music/15732203007/">Jordan Davis</a> was shot and killed by a man who complained about the <a href="https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/news/local/monday-night-marks-8-years-since-murder-of-jordan-davis-over-loud-music-at-jacksonville-gas-station/77-2297d230-84cb-4cdf-bacd-00b583df6648">“loud” music Davis was playing</a> in his car at a Florida gas station. </p>
<p>During the proceedings dubbed “the loud music trial,” Michael Dunn testified that <a href="http://www.redwedgemagazine.com/atonal-notes/on-white-thugs-like-michael-dunn-and-the-scapegoating-of-hip-hop">the music Davis and his friends were playing</a> in Davis’ car was “thug music” or “rap crap.”</p>
<p>Dunn’s defense depended on his victims’ being viewed as thugs by association with rap. </p>
<p>In jail, Dunn was <a href="https://participant.com/film/3-12-minutes-ten-bullets">recorded</a> on the phone speculating whether Davis and his friends were “gangster rappers.” He claimed he’d seen YouTube videos. </p>
<p>In describing these tragedies, the words “rappers” and “rap music” are code for “Black” and “other,” meant to elicit fear and justify violence. There’s no question in my mind that they would have been perceived differently if the words “poets” or “poetry” were used instead. </p>
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<h2>Made in America</h2>
<p>Indeed, violence perpetuated by people who rap is as real any other American violence.</p>
<p>Young Thug, Gunna, or any other rapper accused of crimes are not exempt from accountability. But, in my view, assuming people are criminals simply because they rap – even if they rap about violence – is wrong. </p>
<p>Admittedly, throughout hip-hop history, rappers have constructed personas as antiheroes. Performances of masculinity, violence, intimidation, gun ownership and misogyny are meant to signal a kind of authenticity. </p>
<p>In her 1994 book “Outlaw Culture,” bell hooks included a <a href="http://challengingmalesupremacy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Misogyny-gangsta-rap-and-The-Piano-bell-hooks.pdf">chapter on “gangsta rap.”</a> Hooks explained that the abhorrent behaviors scrutinized and highlighted in rappers are American values that people living and surviving here adopt.</p>
<p>In his <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com./music/music-news/run-d-m-c-is-beating-the-rap-106981/">December 1986 story on Run-DMC</a>, Rolling Stone writer Ed Kiersh said out loud what many were thinking.</p>
<p>“To much of white America,” Kiersh wrote, “rap means mayhem and bloodletting.” </p>
<p>Perhaps.</p>
<p>But those who still seek to vilify rap might do well to focus on the sources of the crisis of violence in America rather than blaming the music that reflects it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184373/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>A.D. Carson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Since rap music emerged in mainstream culture in the late 1980s, conservatives have derided its lyrics and imagery as violent. But hip-hop artists argue those images reflect urban realities.A.D. Carson, Assistant Professor of Hip-Hop, University of VirginiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/912642018-03-19T16:00:07Z2018-03-19T16:00:07ZA 1988 song about television addiction is more pertinent today than ever<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/209895/original/file-20180312-30958-14fup9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chuck D (L) and Flavor Flav of the US rap group Public Enemy performing in 2009.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Steve C Mitchell/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Veteran American hip hop group <a href="http://publicenemy.com/">Public Enemy</a> need no introduction when it comes to paradigm shifts in that music genre. From the moment leader and rapper Chuck D, fellow rappers Flavor Flav and Professor Griff, group DJ Terminator X and the S1W group (aka Security of the First World) launched off the <a href="http://www.defjam.com/">Def Jam</a> record label’s platform in 1987, their acute sociopolitical presence resonated throughout hip hop culture and far beyond.</p>
<p>With their debut album <a href="https://www.allmusic.com/album/yo%21-bum-rush-the-show-mw0000194784">“Yo! Bum Rush The Show”</a> (1987), it was clear that Chuck D’s lyrical pressure was destined to confront racism, destitution and a myriad of other issues connected with African American life. </p>
<p>However, the song I would like to discuss here is the lesser-celebrated <a href="https://genius.com/Public-enemy-she-watch-channel-zero-lyrics">“She Watch Channel Zero?!”</a> from their 1988 sophomore album <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-best-albums-of-the-eighties-20110418/public-enemy-it-takes-a-nation-of-millions-to-hold-us-back-20110330">“It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back”</a>. Dealing with the subject of television addiction, Chuck D reaches beyond the sphere of the African American and into most of westernised existence.</p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">‘She watch Channel Zero?!’ by Public Enemy.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This reach is further exemplified through the sonics of the song. Its driving metal edge also championed the rap-metal fusion sub-genre. It not only forged collaborations with the American heavy metal band <a href="https://anthrax.com/">Anthrax</a>, but also opened the door for <a href="https://www.ratm.com/">Rage Against The Machine</a>, <a href="https://linkinpark.com/">Linkin Park</a> and <a href="http://www.paparoach.com/">Papa Roach</a>. </p>
<h2>The ills of television</h2>
<p>The track appears second on side two, after the serene yet curt non-rap “Show ‘Em Whatcha Got”, and follows Flav’s intro speech:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>You’re blind baby, you’re blind from the facts</p>
<p>oh, y'are 'cause you’re watching that garbage.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And so, successive to a brief five seconds of white noise, a metal-laden foray strikes on the ills of television. Four bars of bellicose guitars sampled from the intense “Angel of Death” by American thrash metal band <a href="https://www.slayer.net/">Slayer</a> underpinned with sharp metallic samples and purposely muffled TV snippets construct the atmosphere for Chuck D’s contextual assault:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The woman makes the men all pause</p>
<p>And if you got a woman she might make you forget yours</p>
<p>There’s a five letter word to describe her character </p>
<p>But her brains being washed by an actor.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Chuck D constructs a narrative about a woman who is addicted to soap operas. She becomes wholly obsessed with certain characters in the shows. This obsession damages her ability to distinguish between real life and television representation. As she becomes more overcome by “osmosis” through her television sceeen, desperation sets in as she channel-surfs “cold lookin’ for that hero”. </p>
<p>As broadcasts across channels meld into one, she could be watching any channel. And so she does indeed “watch channel zero”, amplifying the emptiness of all television channels. The song’s timing was highly apposite; the Baby Boomers were seduced by soap operas and Generation X sucked into MTV, and the message here is twofold. The song’s message is that the TV watcher, under the illusion that the heroes she seeks do not exist in reality, she ostracises herself from the realities of life, including her family: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>But her children</p>
<p>Don’t mean as much as the show, I mean</p>
<p>Watch her worship the screen.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She measures herself and her desires against this “perfect” world:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And she hopes the soaps are for real</p>
<p>she learns that it ain’t true, nope…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet, she still denies the real and continues her futile diversion. </p>
<p>After Chuck’s first verse, Flav reappears, this time taking the traditional role of the male partner:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Yo baby, you got to cut that garbage off</p>
<p>Yo! I want to watch the game</p>
<p>Hey yo, lemmie tell you a little sommin’: </p>
<p>I’m'a take all your soaps</p>
<p>An’ then I’m gonna hang ‘em on a rope.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The male antagonist here also longs to watch television, resorting to threats if he too can’t consume his televised ball game.</p>
<h2>Hostile drone</h2>
<p>Repeated no less than 24 times throughout the song, the phrase “she watch” morphs into the music’s relentlessly repetitive yet hostile drone, echoing the experience of television addiction. It’s a metaphor for the process of hyperreality. This story of course, is representational of broader and even current society. Whilst the song’s elements are conventional, the dialogues and sonics reveal the ominousness of screen dependence, the second facet of the song’s message.</p>
<p>French philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/mar/07/guardianobituaries.france">Jean Baudrillard</a>’s notion of <a href="https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-9/">“hyperreality”</a> is a valuable theory to explore this situation. Within the frame of hyperreality, the idea of the simulacra or likenesses replaces that of reality. Characters on TV shows, or indeed, stage sets, film locations and sometimes the actors themselves become signs which can consume and distort one’s sense of reality.</p>
<p>When these signs become more important than the real, one’s real relationships break down. Signs and reality are no longer juxtaposed; rather the sign supplants the real. Once the real disappears, positioning the imaginary against the everyday becomes impossible, leading to problematic social engagement. </p>
<p>Following the explosion of screen-based personal devices such as smartphones and tablets, currently perceived as essential components of contemporary life, the risk of users slipping into hyperreality has multiplied enormously since the television age. As a result the Boomers and Generation X have become highly critical of Millennials (born between 1979 and 1991) and <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-we-be-worried-about-generation-z-joining-the-workforce-heres-why-not-81038">Generation Z</a> (people born after 1992), and anxious for anyone born after 2010 – <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/generation-alpha-2014-7-2?IR=T">Generation Alpha</a> – and their future of living life through a screen. </p>
<p>However, we need to remember that the simulacra that have resulted in this way of life started way before the arrival of the smartphone. The message in “She Watch Channel Zero?!” is more pertinent today than ever, and not only for young people.</p>
<p><em>This article is part of a series featuring Songs of Protest from across the world, genres and generations.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91264/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam de Paor-Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following the explosion of screen-based personal devices, the risk of users slipping into hyper reality has multiplied enormously since the television age.Adam de Paor-Evans, Principal Lecturer in Cultural Theory / Research and Innovation Lead, School of Art, Design and Fashion, Faculty of Culture and the Creative Industries, University of Central LancashireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.