By Hussein Amuri
NWA lyricist/vocalist MC Ren (Lorenzo Jerald Patterson) photographed in Los Angeles, 1990 by Ithaka Darin Pappas.
In the wake of the death of George Floyd, NPR Music sought to introduce a new podcast for its program that aimed to reveal the interconnection between hip-hop and the over-criminalization of Black people in this country. Titled Louder Than Riot, the podcast interviews and analyzes famous rappers like Bobby Shurmda, Nipsey Hussle, and Killer Mike, and through these figures’ interactions with law enforcement, the podcast examines American criminal justice and its racist impact on Black communities and other minority communities through the lens of music.
In his Journal of Black Studies article titled “Hip-Hop, Gangs, and the Criminalization of African American Culture: A Critical Appraisal of Yes Yes Y’all,” Ph.D. candidate at New York University Serouj Aprahamian tackles the ever-growing misconception that hip-hop was born out of gangs and criminal activities that populated much of the 1970’s Bronx parties (Aprahamian, 299). He also argues throughout his scholarly work, especially through the book Yes Yes Y’all: The Experience Music Project Oral History of Hip-Hop: The First Decade, that hip-hop was not born out of gangs and criminalization. Rather, hip-hop is a product of America’s war on drugs, and the systematic racial separation laws that emerged through Redlining, both of which have resulted in the oppression of Black people and other minorities (Aprahamian, 303).
50 years since the introduction of the genre of music to the world, hip-hop is still constantly associated with crime, which has resulted in the ever-expanding crisis of mass incarceration. Mass incarceration is a huge problem, and for one to truly understand the crisis it poses, one has to understand the historical and racist criminalization of hip-hop music, which has greatly contributed to mass incarceration; the criminalization of hip-hop is a widely used tool meant to silence and break down Black and brown communities.
“Awareness should be paid to the one lesson upon which all of hip-hop.. seems to agree: that the United States system of crime and punishment is inequitable, unfairly administered, and purposely aimed to disempower people of color and the voiceless,” stated Andre Douglas Pond Cummings. In his Santa Clara Law Review article titled “Thug Life: Hip-Hop ‘s Curious Relationship with Criminal Justice,” Cummings expands on the issue by arguing what hip-hop is, and what it was born out of was African-American resistance to the ever-growing oppression of Black and brown communities under white-dominated governments both at the federal and local level.
Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, it was fairly common to see the FBI and CIA engaged in investigative operations that sought to criminalize black leaders who were profoundly influenced by hip-hop. Those agencies used their engagement with hip-hop as a tool to advocate for change in their communities (Cummings, 522).
In the early ’70s, with chapters in most major American cities, the Black Panther Party saw itself become the target of multiple FBI investigations involving domestic terrorist activities. The investigations sought to promote “law and order” in the United States. (Abdelfatah, Arablouei, York, et al) In his Guardian article titled “After the Party: Music and the Black Panther Party,” journalist Dorian Lynskey shines a light on the existence of a 1960s-70s music group called “The Last Poets.” Known as the godfather of hip-hop, The Last Poets were recruited by the Black Panther Party due to the fact they “combined the militant spirit of avant-garde jazz musicians,” in their music something that greatly appealed to the party. (Lynskey) According to Lynskey, The Last Poets would go on to become the soundtrack for the Black Panther Party, releasing songs such as “When The Revolution Comes,” the same song that was used as a sonic template for Gil Scott-Heron’s definitive recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” But, unfortunately, like many Black Panther Party leaders, most of The Last Poets met their fate at the hand of the FBI due to their association with the “radical” and “gangsta” group: terms used nowadays to describe hip-hop.
This history of racial oppression by government agencies explains why despite the “socially conscious” nature of hip-hop, many hip-hop artists often feel the need to glorify the “gangsta” aspect of it, for the sake of resisting oppression. It is a form of protest, because to some members of the Black and brown community, it makes no difference whether they glorify violence and gangsta nature in their lyrics, because their music will always be associated with criminality.
The Nixon administration is one of the most controversial White House administrations in U.S. History. But out of all the things that history remembers the Nixon administration for, both the good and the bad, its war on drugs was by far its most infamous highlight. It is best explained by Nixon’s own top aide, John Daniel Ehrlichman, who stated:
“You want to know what this was all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. Do you understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”
Ehrlichman’s explanation of the war on drugs is one embedded in the abuse of racism in political campaigns and it was wielded to win seats in the American political climate of the 1970’s. But the “war on drugs” continued well into the ’80s with President Reagan, as well as the ’90s with President Clinton. By associating the blacks with heroin, the Nixon administration opened the door for the association of hip-hop with drugs by various political candidates and officials, as a way to portray the “predatory” nature of Black men that, in the administration’s view, had to be stopped. The war on drugs and the war on hip-hop are the same wars, just with two different names. Both seek to push the same narrative that characterizes Black men as predators who must be stopped at all cost. Historically, that process is done through the criminalization of drugs and hip-hop that has greatly contributed to the mass incarceration crisis that we see in America.
In her Harvard Journal of Sports & Entertainment Law article titled “Chopped & Screwed: Hip Hop from Cultural Expression to a Means of Criminal Enforcement,” Taifha Natalee Alexander explains that the “war on drugs” was a racialized war that produced racist “…policies and implicit racial biases and inequities in socioeconomic distribution amongst racial groups that have caused legislatures, police officers, and other decisionmakers within the criminal justice system to disproportionately target Black people, specifically Black men, for incarceration.” (Alexander, 216) By criminalizing hip-hop, the US criminal justice system took away a tool that black and brown communities use to call out the injustice inflicted on them. But in an attempt to suppress their voice, that tool has been constantly associated with criminalization, demonization, and the discretization of their livelihoods in the form of the lyrics that they sing.
As a means to fight back, rappers have done a great job in calling out how Black and brown communities continue to be overly policed and incarcerated due to their music. Rappers such as 2Pac, rap group NWA, and Ice T are iconic for this. For example, in their 1988 album titled Straight Outta Compton, NWA wrote a song famously titled “Fuck Tha Police.” In that song, NWA sang:
“You have the emergence in human society
of this thing that’s called the State
What is the State? The State is this organized bureaucracy
It is the po-lice department. It is the Army, the Navy
It is the prison system, the courts, and what have you
This is the State — it is a repressive organization”
Like many of the rappers of their generation, members of NWA also agree, in the words of Professor Cummings, that the United States system of crime and punishment is inequitable, unfairly administered, and purposely aimed to disempower people of color along with the voiceless, and it must be called out for that. But this is where the trouble begins.
The criminalization of hip-hop continues well into its actual lyrics. Such disparity of continual oppression can be seen in the “Rap on Trial” movement that has long fought to keep the criminal justice system from justifying the imprisonment of rappers using their lyrics. Earlier this year, megastar artist Jay-Z made the news as he teamed up with Philadelphia-based artist Meek, in an attempt to block rap music from being used in court to sue rappers who are in many ways using their voice to call out police brutality and mass incarceration. This came in the wake of a New York state legislature bill titled “Rap Music on trial” which aims to push Jay-Z and Meek Mill’s initiative, which made headlines.
When Michael Brown died in 2014, the media tried everything to spin a story of how he was no angel losing his humanity at the hands of police brutality. Newspapers and television accomplished this by bringing up Brown’s interest in rap music, stating that Brown was known to be a rap enthusiast who “produced lyrics that were by turns contemplative and vulgar.”
Hip-hop is quite a controversial art form, for the wrong reasons. While people will constantly try to justify its demonization, this process does not help anyone. While there’s a case to be made about hip-hop’s sexist, violent, and often lawless nature, have people ever wondered why these images are so prevalent? Have people ever stopped and asked why despite the constant blaming, does hip-hop continues to retain its popularity? Hip-hop is not a perfect art form, but its impact on Black and brown rappers who have found a voice in calling out the injustices that have long invaded their communities in the form of mass incarceration cannot be denied. From the war on drugs to the death of Michael Brown, rappers have been the real journalists reporting what’s going on in their communities, rather than the morphed narratives that serve the interests of media companies.