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By Minister Paul Scott
The story was supposed to end like this: having changed their wicked ways and repented for their transgressions against the Black nation the gangsta rappers became a mighty black liberation army and chased the bad guys away. Exit stage right; none the worst for their hair raising adventure. But as they say, the best made plans of mice and men.
More than 10 years after so called "gangsta rap" burst unto the scene the black community has been left with broken promises'' to do the right thingî and the shattered dreams of a heroic recapturing of our music/culture and the utilization of it to liberate our people.
Sure it made perfect sense in the early 90's to see the ugly side of Hip Hop as a fad or a storm that would soon pass. But who could have predicted that a brief sun shower would last much longer than 40 days and 40 nights and flood the world with negative images of black people. Surely, no matter how "bad" rap music had become the reality of the condition of Afrikan people, world wide, would eventually slap us back into reality or as the old folks say "knock some sense into our heads" But as of this writing this has not happened.
I remember back in 1992 after the LA Rebellion when brothers threatened to burn this country down( No Jusice! No Peace!) I thought that the beating of Rodney King would serve as a catalyst to cause reform within the rap music industry. More encouraging, were the many Gang Truce summits in which gangsters and rappers swore to stop the violence and work for the betterment of black people at numerous press conferences. I did not know that while smiling into the cameras, the rappers had their fingers crossed behind their backs.
Then came the Million Man and the many subsequent marches where millions of Black men and women came together to call for an end to self destructive behavior and pledged to go back into their communities "born again" and on a mission to make all the crooked places straight. No more would we abuse our women and call them the "B" word' Once again the rappers were placed in the forefront and the same rappers that displayed the sheepish grins three years prior again swore to change their wicked ways only to renig on that promise when their white slave owners reminded them that they were still under a 10 year, 10 album recording contract and the two nice "cribs" and five "beemers" that they rapped about had not been paid for.
The East Coast/West Coast feud which resulted, in some form or fashion, to the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace (Biggie Smalls) spawned many Hip Hop forums which, again produced the same empty rhetoric. What the Black community failed to do was to deputize members of the Black nationalist community to create a Hip Hop Enforcement organization to insure that the agreement was carried out and to deal with those who broke the covenant.
So that leads us to where we are today with Tupac still calling for the death of his (black) enemies from the grave, through the posthumous releases of albums and videos. In a time when there are weekly reports of some sort of police brutality or the killing of an unarmed black man or woman, racial profiling and voter discrimination, as far as the gangsta rappers are concerned; the beat goes on. This leaves the black community in a state of perpetual disappointment. But being black in America has always been about dealing with lost hopes and making the best out of a bad situation. (look how long it took JJ and the Evans family from Good Times to get out of the projects)
To keep our sanity we have leaned to rationalize our short comings, especially so with "gangsta rap" Like an abstract painting, even the worst "gangsta jam" was to us in "the struggle" reinterpreted as a call for the black man to rise up against a racist white system that has been responsible for the deaths of over 100 million. But a rap CD is not a painting and the instructions were very specific; kill every black man who crosses your path. But we kept on hoping and praying that our young people would see the light and one morning we would turn on the radio and hear that Snoop Dog and Puff Daddy had defected from the Hip Hop Nation to join the black liberation struggle along with their legion of fans and resources. Kind of like the faith you have in that child on crack who always promises to get off the pipe but leaves you waking up to find yet another VCR gone.
We have to stop this madness, we can know longer sit dazed and confused between two opinions; whether "gangsta rap" is a harmless youthful freedom of expression or whether it is a well thought out diabolical plan orchestrated by the white power structure to destroy Afrikan people.
The reason why gangsta rap has such a hold on us is because the white power structure knows black folks well as we are the most studied people on the planet. They know how to appeal to our lowest nature and exploit our weaknesses. What man, even the most mature, would not at least glance at a half naked sister in a video, who's got it going on; Even though the subject of the video is MURDER! Also, there is subconscious need in all of us to be accepted by our peers and no one wants to be held up for ridicule of being out of touch, paranoid or conspiracy minded. They also know about our love for "the drum." When asked about the negative lyrics many young people say, " I don't listen to the words, I just like the beat.:" Would a Dr. Dre produced beat be any less funky if it talked about rebelling against a racist system instead of smoking a brother?
We must stop this merry go round of madness by first admitting that we can not divorce "gangsta rap" from the genocidal plot to destroy black men by the status quo/white supremacist/white power structure. Only in this context does the uncanny resilience of "gangsta" rap begin to make sense. We must also not send our people on a wild goose chase to find some eternally, elusive "answer" to a problem that we already have instilled within our African psyche. In TRUTH it is not the answer that alludes us but the courage to even raise the question.
Min. Paul Scott is the founder of the New Righteous Movement in Durham NC. He can be reached at operationmedia@yahoo.com
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