Hip Hop Music and Ghetto Culture

General
1

Don’t get me wrong l have loved rap and the whole hip-hop culture since l was a little boy. The beats, storytelling, badass attitude, rhymes schemes, dressing, music videos etc just captivated me tangu kitambo. I had two much elder bros who’d always play akina 2 PAC, Biggie, Fugees by the time l was in class four l could rap along to most of them . Nakumbuka high school l was that guy who would spend entire weekend at the TV room watching channel O and channel 5 ile ya Tz. Good times those mid 2000s

But as I’ve grown up and got exposure to more genres nimekuja kuona hip hop glorifies ghetto culture. Even dancehall which is a derivative of hip hop now. You will notice the artists that get airplay and clout sing and glorify violence, reckless sex, drugs, materialism and macho culture. This thing is quite dangerous considering how popular it is. I used to look at those stats and think this thing must be great if sooo many people like it. The Grammy awards, crazy concerts, record sales in the millions - Tupac sold 100 million CDs same na akina DMX , Eminem etc,. Internet streams in the billions to me was proof of its greatness

You have to peel back the layers and find out how the artists are presented to the public. Who owns them record labels that these artists work under and you realise it’s all serious psychological warfare at play. The record labels are owned by some of the most anti black of people. They will promote any clown that can talk fast over electronic beats whatever he’s saying flies -artistic licence they call it- so akina Lil Uzi Vert can talk about murdering fellow young black men M15 rifles and all and the company will gleefully pour him millions of dollars to spread such hateful messages under a backdrop of fun party atmosphere . They are like, ooh there you go again typical nigga behaviour. This is why it’s wildly popular amongst teenagers-20 somethings. Because it’s activity marketed to them on TV, fashion, social media, movies. At those Ages someone is still developing and is highly impressionable and susceptible to such powerful messages

Stories of making it out the hood no matter what it takes sell drugs kill ‘enemies’ . Whatever it takes to get out of the hood. And the aftermath is so glamorous. Money women cars , flying across the globe partying. This message is highly amplified by social media and appeals greatly to poor black men. So they grow up wanting to be like those glamorous thugs on TV , kumbuka wengi hawana father figures in their lives juu ni watoto wa single mothers so they quickly idolise these ‘stars’ miscreants . In no time they’ve dropped out of school and start peddling drugs while rapping try to ‘to break into the industry’ . Kidogo kidogo criminal record which if you know how the US injustice system works is grave business. Soon the poor chap is locked up for about a century in supermax na hivo ndio maisha ya many young black men end up stateside. This is the hood-hio hop- prison cycle for many a poor black kid. And the young mothers are left to fend for themselves on the mean cold streets of North America as they raise another round of broken rootless men. Men be there for your son’s.

In all this racket the white man gets paid

Mimi in future insha’Allah l will actively monitor the kinds of media my kids are exposed to. Siwezi kubali my kids watch/listen to that American trash.

2

Nonsense. White mainstream America tried to keep rap under wraps but guess what, their suburban kids were busy blasting that shyet and it was in fact more popular than billboard tried to whitewash it. American trash? Their kids longed for what they didn’t know, and perceive, nay, was dangerous. Relax, your kids will just listen to the watered down stuff from studio thugs.

How lame to be such a kind of parent, let them know things and rock off your pseudo bougie seat

3

Ama you’re giving your offspring such little credit that you think they’ll ape it to the very end? Says something about the genes you gave them

4

Relax bana…its just entertainment.

5

Its funny you think you can influence what your kids listen to during adolescence especially in this digital era where you can play whatever media on your smartphone. Hip hop might not even be that popular when your kids become teenagers.

6

The article started good… The part where you think you can limit the content your kid gets access to is not as easy as you think. It’s part of growth and development you should know. Unanyima mtoi hizo content ndo atazidi kupata hio curiosity. The best is to advise accordingly. This article in fact is good for the young boys and girls, it’s an eye opener per se

7

Was following keenly till i came across the predictable and unnecessary attack on single moms ati " most ni watoto wa single mother" most wicked humans have had a father and mother including Adolf Hitler.
and thats how your argument was rendered weak

8

Good article, psychological warfare is subtle that’s why a bunch of elders up there have a problem grasping your point.
Having said that, mainstream hiphop is garbage but hiphop remains the truth.

9

at least nowadays TZ, Naija and SA music have largely pushed that black American trash off the Kenyan airwaves

10

for real esp naija beat hushika sana more than amapiano naija has longevity

11

Maybe l was in a rush to give my prognosis alafu the article was getting rather lengthy short attention span span niggas wangeanza wapi summary

What am saying is the music was noble and authentic initially back in the 70s and 80s time ya the sugar hill gang, cool d Moore, African bambatta, Queen Latifa it was really dope juu it waxed poetic about the urban black experience. Na ukiskia a lot of those records were positive black masculinity content. It was still in it’s infancy when the big record labels stated noticing it’s growing popularity and decided to go in it fully. They noticed you only needed to fling a few hundred thousand dollars at the small black owned record labels and they’d give you a slew of hits talking about crime and degeneracy. In turn you’d make so many millions , talk about killing two birds with one stone

Nawaashow the psychological manipulation is very subtle hard to understand kama you still harbor fantasies about America being the land of the free whatever. When Deathrow Records came on the scene early 90s is when hip hop property blew up in mainstream America. Same with akina cash money records, Master P etc. That’s when the powers that be realised that they had the ears of young black men when they were shunning rock n roll, disco etc. The small record labels were in turn owned by larger media corporation s akina Arista , Columbia, Interscope et al.

The reason mnasema ati it was white kids pushing it is also true coz rap had the rebel factor and you know kids and rebellion. Kisha blacks make up about 15% Vs whites at maybe 60% so of course the record sales would show a larger white consumption. But for them it was just voyeurism as they left their sheltered suburban enclaves to party to black music glorifying death, rape , crime then quickly go back home. Whole nother story for black teenagers who have to live that life that you are glorifying in thos songs. This is how imagery is created. Why do you think so many young black men are being killed daily by police huko for minor things like traffic violations , coz huh it’s those thugs again

Si there was a time Hadi Bob Dole the US vice president went hard against rap coz of its whole culture. And this only fuelled further chart toppers. Artists kama akina Tupac was always on the evening news and not for any good reason. Tupac was charged with rape at 23 and spent a year in Rickers Island Prison one of the cruelest in the US. And when he came out that experience is what he was singing about.

my 44 make sure your kids don’t grow .

Notorious Big goes

you ain’t gotta explain shiet. I been robbing mathafackz since the slave ships

Do you niggaz listen to this music or do you just skim through it

He had so many court cases that he would get of concert stages and head straight to court to stand Yet another trial. Yet he was the number one artist in the country idolised by millions of fans . And he was just one artist l want to challenge you to find out how many young artists have spent time in prison . This seeps into their music and it’s almost a rite of passage for them. Get a record deal , get arrested, sing about it and blow up

This coincided nicely with other anti black strategies by the white supremacy there. You have to study American history ndio uelewe all the undercurrents that have been taking place in the 70s and 80 s that gave birth to the music form. Laws were passed in Congress that were debilitating to black communities that were suffering from poverty and joblessness and drugs due to slow down of American industrialization.

That 3 strikes law ensured that if you were arrest three times even for minor things infractions you would be locked up for life. That’s when Bill Clinton got elected to office and promised mainstream America to end drug and crime being fuelled by those black thugs and that’s how hip hop became their focus. Hillary Clinton as the first lady was put in charge of this excersise called black men ‘apex predators’ who needed to be stopped. That’s where the prison industrial complex comes in.

America has the highest per capita incarceration in the world more than any shithole third world country. Na majority of those inmates are young black men arrested for doing a lot o the things being glorified in rap. This is how the black community was destroyed and families left broken. When I say majority of those men are from single mothers family it’s because statistics bear me out. Which demographic between whites, Hispanics, blacks, Asians have the highest% of absentee fathers and broken families??

This great art form was hijacked by white supremacy and weaponised against Africans worldwide that’s why we are still victims of racism in the 21 at century. I may not be able to control what my kids will be exposed to but I’ll do best to educate them to be discerning and know bullshiet when they see one. Today’s rap is total low IQ bollocks l just shake my head when l hear what akina Cardi B are singing about. It’s only an idiot who just lies on the road to be rolled over by a bus juu ati you can’t control what your kids are exposed to. Nasema hii music ni stupid ghetto culture juu rich people understand that the mind is the most important tool that once captured you got a willing slave for life. You will never hear kids from Runda listening to that garbage wao ni world music and enlightened art forms sasa the majority phlebs ndo wamebaki na hii ujinga

Today something like 70% of black children are born to single mother families through no fault of their own. Black women are strong Queens and l got nothing but love for them but do you see how they’ve become victims of this psychological terrorism in the name of music. Do you see how that works? I know many of you here are young in your 20s that’s why this simple logic flies over your heads. But stay calm study and stay off tiktok mujue how the world really works

12

Wewe umezeeka. Now what was once appealing to you is no longer tasty. All rap from late 1980s has glorified a rebellious and gun culture. And it didn’t start with Death Row records. But it’s all entertainment. You haven’t typed a tirade against Arnold Schwarzenegger killing dudes.
Kama Cardi B is no longer in your taste buds, I suggest listening to Soul Music, or old hiphop. Times have changed. People are more expressive. And more importantly is that hiphop is an expression of the streets.

13

White man used the system to break Black man and hold him down. To extent of Black people not caring any more. The only way to fully integrate and achieve freedom is to give Black peoples access to capital. I told @captain obvious reparations are simply not enough if a Black man can’t get past a supervisor position in most corporations. How many Black people are on the boards of Fortune 500 companies where the capital is controlled. Why can’t laws be passed to mandate a +15% representation of Black people to such boards, reflective of population? Try such moves and you will trully witness Blacks upward mobility.

14

Anything mainstream huwa guilty with hiyo argument ya having some subliminal psychological effects. Many rappers who started off with “street cred” sold out to those major labels and started rapping about crap. It was about the cheddar to most of those cats wenye walikuwa initially trapped in the poverty of the projects. But besides the seling out, hiphop as a culture was mostly about the struggle and hyping black culture to an otherwise white supremacist behemoth that is the large American society. And the art those guys inked was ill, and the grim raw imagery they depict in their music was what they were actually going through in the hood.

So akina jigga, dre, 50, diddy and the likes blew by owning their own labels (and some assortment of products to go with the popularity they enjoyed from the music scene like owning apparel) proved that hip hop was a force that could take all those hopeless kids off the streets to earn a living na artistry yenye ilikuwa pro-black!

15

Toa ujinga hapa Nameberry1. Single motherhood among blacks is a serious disaster in US and it needs all the attention it can be accorded, not your stupid foolish childlish imbecile theatrics

16

Globally too

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Everybody is getting tired of the same shit over and over. Rap’s last glory days was in the 2015. After the influx of drug addicts kina Future and Young Thug, shit went to trash. There is a reason why Drake’s latest offering embraced Deep House Music. Watu kama kina Xxxtentacion waliembrace a new sound. Aya at the moment Bad Bunny has been on top of US charts for more than 5 weeks consecutively, selling each week more than 100k, last time that happened was with the release of Views. Usisahau kuna wale Koreans wanajiita BTS. Usisahau pia kina Burna Boy making serious inroads in US. Msee, shinda hapo endelea kukataa but people are tired of the same old sound. Wanatafta unique content. Siku izi a rap album cannot last more than a week on top of billboard 200 na ata inakuanga miracle ikisell more than 200k first week.

Personally, I was the biggest rap fan in my area during my teenage years. I would print lyrics ya kina Rick Ross, Juicy J, Lil Wayne, Kanye and Jay and many other artists napeleka shuleni tunadisucss na wadhii. I would burn lots of hip hop songs on DVD tunashinda nayo term mzima. At that time, dancehall riddim was seriously popular yet my love for hip hop was soo on top. Shule mzima ilinijua juu ya my rap lingo. Saa izi I only listen to deep house, progressive, future and trance music, the last generation of rapstars who truly appealed to me was Lil Uzi, 21 Savage and Pop Smoke. Awa depressed junkies can suck themselves, rap is dead.

18

Hii rant yako yote is about pop shit. Ukisema rap is dead na umetoka kutaja akina Lil Wayne hapo ndio unajua nyinyi si true hiphop heads.

As we speak bado true heads wanabump into akina Talib, Common, CunninLynguists, Blue & Exile Madvillainy, Immortal, etc

19

I wouldnt expect anything tangible about hiphop coming from anyone calling themselves Nasty Nas. Old heads huwanga wanadhani wanajua kila kitu. Kijana. Skiza kimakini. I resonate more with kina Lil Wayne and even 21 Savage because they are from my era, though the gap is evident. Even then, I took my time and still got acwuanted with the OGs kina Nas, Pac na Biggie, Coolio, Talib, Consequence, Luda and many other 90s rappers. The creativity they embodied back then, punchlines, flow, sick beats and everything is not in today’s rap. In short, today’s rap is very bland, very boring beats, one line paraphrased over hundred times and repeated over and over. It is always about fucking niggas bitches, shoot niggas, spending a thousand on jewelry and shit.

Hebu compare izi songs mbili uku chini

20

Nikisema rap is dead I mean that the mainstream no longer appreciates true rap. Akuna kitu nilikua napenda kama cleverly intertwined Wayne’s lines. Kitu yenye ukiskiza unajiuliza is that even possible? How did he come up with that? Ongezea iyo na Jay’s story telling. Unaona amepaint the whole picture na ata hujastep US. Na akianza kubrag unasema fuck it am not doing anything with my life lemme chase the paper. It was cool to be a drug dealer. Lakini washienzi wa siku izi wanaglorify drug usage mbaya sana. Of course old heads bado wako but their songs is just on the low low.alafu shit yao clearly anybody can come up with such. Niggas no longer take their time to sharpen their pen game. Thats why I thank God for niggas like King Push still doing it perfectly eons later

Lil Wayne alimaliza iyo kesi apa sijui tunaargue nini ata