I was listening to the Satellite Radio Old School Rap Station and the Too Short Gem "Da Ghetto" came on. Setting aside 90s rap mysogyny and violence, there were a lot of rap lyrics like this:


So just peep the game and don't call it crap
Cause to me, life is one hard rap
Even though my sister smoked crack cocaine
She was nine months pregnant, ain't nothing changed
600 million on a football team
And her baby dies just like a dope fiend
The story I tell is so incomplete
Five kids in the house and no food to eat
Don't look at me and don't ask me why
Mama's next door getting high
Even though she's got five mouths to feed
She's rather spend her money on a H-I-T
I always tell the truth about things like this
I wonder if the mayor overlooked that list
Instead of adding to the task force send some help
Waiting on him I'd better help myself
Housing Authority and the O.P.D.
All these guns just to handle me in the
ghetto


Reading it now it sounds like Trump or Rush Limbaughs vision of what inner city life must be like.

I mean think about "Self-Destruction", you assemble some of the best rappers of the day and Identify the problem facing the black community as something we are doing to ourselves? Think about the think pieces the West Coast Version "All in the Same Gang" would inspire with lines like "A basehead cluck can't blame nobody for smoking" coming from NWA members or respectability politics in the very first verse "I'm trying to stress the fact that you're dumb, Get yourself presentable, son, and just come".

I think about Ice-T's Colors or the Movie Menace to Society and I think, having lived through all of that and looking back on it, I can see why so many politicians we are roasting today thought the 90s crime bill was a good idea at the time.

I think I might ruin a perfectly good rap discussion by bringing todays politics into it, but yeah, this is what I was thinking about listening to Old School Hip-Hop.




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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and 2. it is telling also in a way

what do I mean?

the idea that 30+ years on folks with today's perspectives when faced with activities/views from back then would react differently (negatively)

that is VERY today as a thing

back then, that was actually applauded as a "view into reality" (and in a lot of ways it was)

also, it was applauded because Too Short was doing something beyond pimp/mack/game tales

would it be received differently by a different group of folks?

of course

but its kinda like looking at pictures of sharecroppers and saying they should have had better lotion.

context is important

I think Black Twitter (or twitter in general) is a good bellwether for where opinions are and and heading.

I think you see a lot of ideas that start out on twitter and reach a groundswell there become what you here people talking about on TV weeks later and become conventional wisdom months later.

All assuming you are following the right folk.


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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

not without beating you over the head with the systematic racism stick as i you dont already know

man.. wtf are you trying to say?

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

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"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

and the cycle continues.

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TBH the fact that you're even a mod here fits squarely within Jag's narrative of OK-sanctioned aggression, bullying, and toxicity. *shrug*

and immediately think the solution to them is adding more policing to the community is at best ignorant/not very smart or at worst a bigot.

It's like saying, "Well, look at all this fire. It needs liquid to put it out...Gasoline is a liquid! Weeeeeeee!!!!"

Poverty breeds higher crime (not race) so if someone heard these artists' stories and didn't ask, "Why are the communities this way? What is the job market like? Are the education systems striving? Is there adequate health and mental care? Are there institutions to combat gun violence in place? What type of community resources are being provided and what are they being used for?" then they just aren't the type of person that should be evaluating a "culture" in the first place.

But see, it's never been about solving the problems. It's always been about monetizing them.

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>It's like saying, "Well, look at all this fire. It needs
>liquid to put it out...Gasoline is a liquid! Weeeeeeee!!!!"

...and there are folks surrounding them shouting "don't add gasoline to the fire!". But the idiots do it anyway and then 20-30 years later, those same idiots ask for forgiveness...claiming they didn't know any better. and then even BIGGER idiots talk about, "well, there were rap songs talking about fires back then..."

For example, here's a panel composed of prominent black leaders back then saying don't put gasoline on the fire:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?53624-1/solutions-urban-violence

I know we get gaslighted about how all these black leaders were for the 1994 crime bill...damn near begging for it, but the only folks who had any level of support, on that panel, were Mayor Schmoke (Bmore) and Detroit's (or Chicago's...it's been awhile since I've watched this) mayor. They both wanted more police, with the Detroit mayor saying he wanted police that respected us. Outside of them, nobody...Mfume, Jesse...thought this thing was a good idea. All these problems that we have now because of that bill, these folks predicted would happen.

It is a crazy position that the OP is taking. That they (Biden,Rush, et al) got their cues from all this rappity rap music they were listening to /s

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A bad Samaritan averaging above average men (c) DOOM

And we all know, if there was a unison effort that said "our communities need more resources" it'd be ignored.

-Why would they facilitate better infrastructure services to clean the neighborhoods?
-Why would they allow the property values to soar?
-Why would they invest in providing 'rich suburb' type education in these areas?
-Why would they actively provide education and resources to entrepreneurs in these communities to create business havens for the community so that local dollars stay mostly local (like providing residency requirements to receive the resources)?
-Why would they actively provide after school programs that community children can grow from (STEM clubs-Robotics and Coding, sports, sports medicine, music/arts, reading/book clubs, counseling/mental health, etc)?
-Why would they evaluate how we distribute tax resources state wide instead of per city/village/town?
-Why would they focus on more intelligent and community supportive/supported crime fighting methods?


Nah, criminalizing the poor and sending fathers and mothers to jail to leave behind children without guidance and now even more limited resources who'll just repeat the vicious cycle is the solution.

Yay, America!

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