Selling Gangsta

I listen to a lot of rap/hip-hop and the ongoing trend to to tell everyone how gangsta (or gangster for the non dark people) you are. My ipod is littered with people screaming at a mic about how many bullets they can put in someone. The weirdest thing about all of this is that it sells, and by the bucket load! Although alum sales as a whole have been on the decline, hip-hop music has grown by leaps and bounds. There are just a couple of things wrong with this trend and I will try my best to explain.

I know that a lot of these musicians (depending on who you talk to) came from some pretty violent places in the country. So they rap about what they have seen. But do you mean to tell me that every single person that raps has sold drugs? This seems pretty weird. I grew up in the ghetto and I never sold drugs or rob anyone. Do black people really want to hear most of this? I don't think so. Are you that twisted that you have to live in that environment and then listen to it for pleasure. Most of these albums are bought by white kids in the suburbs so do you really have to show a white kid how hard you are when the only black people they have seen are on BET.

Last year there was a "campaign" called "stop snitching" and all the "hard" rappers were taking part in. The thing about that is if you listen to their songs they would give you a detail account of the stuff they have done themselves. So are these people lying or are they just stupid. I have always hated when someone would say that an artist is not hard because he isn't rapping about killing people. It seems like that is what the majority of rap is about these days.

I like rap and I will listen to a song with accounts of murder and mayhem, but I refuse to accept the fact that these people are still doing this shit. If you sold 3 million copies of an album and are still living in the ghetto you are not gangsta you are stupid. I have never met anyone that said, "Man I love the excitement of waking up in the morning and running from some guy that wants to rob my ass." This is music as an art form and as such you have the ability to take artistic license....lying if you need to specific. Look at Johnny Cash. Awesome artist, but he never went to jail for murder.

Gangsta sells because it is the archetype of what white America is use to. I predict in the next couple of years that this trend will fade because people will not want to hear it. You heard it here first.