Hip-Hop started as an outlet for oppressed youth in low income neighborhoods and served as a reflection of our communities. The uglier the image became, the uglier the truths in the music became.

Public Enemy, NWA and others told harsh truths about police brutality, capitalism, and the rest of white supremacy’s dictatorial agenda. Later, Biggie and Tupac represented cold realities of youth becoming desensitized by the aforementioned. Today, artists like Chief Keef, Young Thug, and Fetty Wap represent a generation suffering from compounded abandonment, so lost in the muck of nihilistic senselessness that many literally can’t understand their songs.

Modern mainstream Hip-Hop resembles little more than a primal chest thumping contest (with respectability politics sprinkled in under the guise of consciousness). Certain critics of the genre believe its counterproductive messages are being purposely promoted by record label executives as a vessel of white supremacy. They could be right. Many of those same critics place blame on rappers and feel their messages are destroying our community. They are definitely wrong.

The cognitive dissonance in condemning the system but refusing to condemn it’s pawns may sound flawed, but consider how many of the issues currently plaguing our communities existed before any MC ever stepped in a booth.

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