Hey y'all, as you probably have guessed I am in the process of writing an album review for Kendrick Lamar's new album GNX. If you are new here, I highly recommend going back and reading my piece on the Kendrick and Drake rap battle that occurred earlier this year, as it gives a good idea of my approach to covering this story. For one, I am a Kendrick fan irrespective of Drake, and a major reason for that is that he is my favorite storyteller in hip-hop, a quality that has resulted in his art seeming to narrate its own journey. My coverage of the battle therefore, was focused on what it meant for Kendrick's story.
GNX is just the newest installment to this story, and as I worked on the review, I kept returning to The Heart Part 5 because it acts as such a harbinger for the cultural movement that this rap battle has become, not just because of Kendrick and Drake, but through the people that have attached themselves to each respective sides. This "culture" conversation that has spawned adjacently to the rap battle discussion is important for Kendrick because he is entering into a new phase of his career, and with his defeat of Drake in the rap battle, he has the opportunity to dictate the direction of hip-hop going forward.
I eventually may have to do a review of the entirety of the Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers album, because you can see a breadcrumb trail of how long Kendrick had been preparing for this moment and worked to bring it to fruition. I mention it in my piece covering the Drake and Kendrick battle, but there are numerous subs that Kendrick directs towards Drake around the time of this album, with multiple verses even referencing UMG.
I'm getting ahead of myself though. Ultimately I think that essay does a good job of highlighting Kendrick's focus as he heads into this new stage of his career, his ideas surrounding modern hip-hop culture which I think will be important to know when he releases his next album. Without futher ado:
The Heart of Hip-hop Culture - (November 14th, 2022)
In recent years, we have seen a seemingly high increase of popular hip-hop artists getting killed or making music surrounding real-life death and/or crimes. In this time, we have also seen significant pushes to have these songs used as evidence that can be used to prosecute these rapping individuals, as well as a large amount of both community pushback and support for these policies. Why is this issue so complicated? And why is a form of art and performance so closely related to incidents of death and violence?
“The Heart Part 5” was a single from Kendrick Lamar’s 2022 album Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers that signaled Kendrick’s return to the music scene for the first time in five years. A prominent theme throughout this album was the cycles of trauma, the toxic coping mechanisms that have been developed and promoted, and the need for healing, which is deeply wrapped within African-American culture, and through that, the culture of Hip-hop and rap that often tells the stories of the reality of African-American life. In one breath, it is both an appreciation and a condemnation of many toxic ideals that are promoted through rap.
Looking directly at “The Heart Part 5,” Kendrick is talking both about the culture of hip-hop, and the larger African-American culture, two entities that constantly influence each other and intersect in many places, and as a result of that, have often been conflated when people attempt to address the causes of violence among African-Americans. While I wish I could simply answer whether the rap genre is intrinsically violent or if it is primarily outside factors that exacerbate this aspect of it, I think that the answer as it stands in the current day is a blend of the two. With that said, I also believe that the factors of rap culture that have cultivated this focus on violence over the years are just as much a result of outside influences and that the artists that serve as the face of the genre are often treated as scapegoats for this violence.
Through my research and utilizing some of the insights into a culture that are provided to us in “The Heart Part 5,” I will illustrate the ways in which the promotion of violence frequently attributed to Hip-hop culture is much more deeply rooted in unresolved systemic social issues rather than in the content or energy of hip-hop music. This paper will also offer a clearer perspective on what makes the violence depicted in rap art transcend those boundaries to influence so many real-world situations.
First, it is essential to acknowledge that when rap began in the 1970s, it was a far cry from the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. Rap is a subsection of hip-hop culture which includes much more than just music, like breakdancing, graffiti art, and cyphers, and was a culture that existed as an anti-culture to the larger American culture.
Many of the activities of hip-hop culture were either criminal, like graffiti, or criminalized by American society as cops were frequently called for black people playing music loudly or gathering together in a way that was judged as “suspicious.” This is one of the aspects of hip-hop culture that is a direct result of its tie to African-American identity, which has existed on the border of criminality for as long as it has existed in American society. These ties reach all the way back to America’s past with slavery and the white power structure, making sure to disrupt any potential for slaves to gather and plan a way to escape from their enslavement.
As a result of its humble beginnings, the motivations of the individuals that carried rap culture forward in the beginning were much different from many of the prominent players in the rap game today.
In the current day, one doesn’t have to look far to find prominent rap artists that openly admit to having little to no interest in rap aside from earning money, from the insanely popular Cardi B to the more regional artists like Blueface (Ronse, 2018). Motivations like this wouldn’t have been possible at the start of rap because there was little to no money in the fledgling genre and no desire for acceptance from white American society. This is significant because it determines the type of people who are attracted to the genre and the type of people that the genre currently rewards for participating within it.
The type of artists that are incentivized to dominate rap culture is crucial because it determines what direction the genre will progress. Artists who prioritize commercial success over any other aspect of their music will cultivate a culture that follows and promotes messages that are considered lucrative rather than ideologically or sonically positive or beneficial.
When rap began, it wasn’t highly regarded by most outside of the hip-hop culture. Because it didn’t yield much money and originated from marginalized communities (the first being the South Bronx in New York), many from those communities viewed it as a waste of time. To those who did care, however, rap was regarded as the art of storytelling and served as a space for youths to express their creativity, experiences, and their stories that were often overlooked by American society. It’s this early focus on sharing stories that, though may not be nonfiction, maintained an element of authenticity in its depiction of the reality of blackness or was known as keeping it “real.” This will be important to remember because though this core tenet of rap is still very much alive today, its meaning has been misrepresented over the years.
While many songs covered controversial or violent topics, this was often a result of them reflecting on the realities of the environments they grew up in rather than being a commercial focus to market records. In fact, certain musical movements in rap started as a response to the violence experienced in poor black communities and aimed to promote a sense of a unified black identity. Groups like Black Star, De Le Soul, and Tribe Called Quest saw rap as a vehicle to promote black unity rather than a platform to get rich off of. During this time, these hip-hop acts were primarily working under independent, black-owned labels rather than large-scale major labels.
The shift in the messaging of hip-hop music occurred between the 80s and 90s with the growing popularity of a subgenre of rap known as “gangsta rap”. This rap style rapidly expanded rap’s notoriety as they discussed shocking and ear-catching subjects like gang culture and the realities of living in the ghetto, drawing the attention of many demographics outside of hip-hop culture.
Initially, songs were produced in this vein of rap because they derived from a culture of truth and storytelling at the time, and were often a blend of conscious commentary and gangsta rap. Songs like “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” by the Geto Boys and “Changes” by Tupac discussed harsh and violent realities balanced against thoughtful and poignant commentary about the people that existed in these margins.
During this period of hip-hop, we also begin to see white-owned labels begin to regard Hip-Hop as a valid and potentially lucrative genre and signing and promoting acts with content rooted in themes of casual violence, misogyny, the selling of drugs, and placing money above anything else.
When rap initially focused on being a “hustler” as a person who can find and make a way out of their dire circumstances, it evolved to promote the idea of “hustler” as a remorseless exploiter of people and communities for personal gain.
Brought forward to the current age, the music most popularly promoted in the rap genre is filled with content glorifying the worship of money, the commodification of women, violence within black communities, and the use or selling of drugs. In addition to this, a majority of popular rap artists are signed to either the three biggest major music labels: Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group, or one of the subsidiary labels that fall under the three.
This fact married with the reality of hip-hop being one the most profitable genres globally, and many artists are now being inspired by not only the potential money in rap but also decades of music in the genre of hip-hop promoting money as the most important aspect of life, provides insight as to how rap music has gained the focus that it is known for today.
These factors and this history demonstrate that the core of hip-hop culture is not entrenched in violence or its promotion as it is commonly thought of today. While the content of hip-hop has handled violent and difficult topics for a long time, music that glorifies the idea of violence for violence’s sake is a relatively new development.
In this musical landscape, “The Heart Part 5” emerges and attempts to address topics of culture, both music and African-American, and the messages promoted within it. The song's first verse starts off strong on this topic with the opening lines:
“I come from a generation of pain, where murder is minor
Rebellious and Margielas'll chip you for designer
Belt buckles and clout, overzealous if prone to violence
Make the wrong turn, be it will or the wheel alignment”
Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick comes from Compton, California, an area of America that was made famous for its harsh conditions and gang culture through popular media and rap artists that emerged from the area. By using these lines to start the song, Kendrick paints the sonic landscape of hip-hop and the reality of many people trapped within American ghettos, a demographic that makes up a large portion of rappers.
Two of the most popular subgenre’s currently exist today are known as “drill” and “trap” music. These two subgenres are reflections of the normalization of violence within rap music and the normalization of violence in black neighborhoods, highlighted in the song’s first line.
Trap music has undergone many interactions and sounds over the years but derives its name from a Southern slang term for a drug house, with content centered around the violence and drugs associated with that lifestyle.
Drill music is a much more recent phenomenon that spawned out of Chicago and represented one of the most explicitly violent subgenres of rap to spawn to date. What sets the culture of drill music apart from other styles of rap is that it is centered around street violence, hate, and the public disrespect and humiliation of one’s enemies, with lines frequently referencing members of enemy gangs that they claim to have killed or that died.
It is important to note, however, that drill music initially emerged as a creative outlet for young children experiencing the violence of inner-city Chicago rather than an attempt to gain popularity or stardom. As it is stated in the song “make the wrong turn, be it the will or the wheel alignment,” Kendrick acknowledges that the unsavory choices that many of these young rap artists make are often a result of the limited resources and opportunities available to them. Later in the song, he furthers this point by illustrating the circumstances that many people from ghettos are faced with, saying.
“Hair trigger, walk up closer, ain't no Photoshoppin'
Friends bipolar, grab you by your pockets
No option if you froze up, always play the offense
Niggas goin' to work and sellin' work, late for work
Workin' late, prayin' for work, but he on paperwork.”
Kendrick Lamar
This part of Kendrick’s verse focuses on the environment that many of these children grow up in, full of untrustworthy individuals, many at the edge due to the dangers of their surroundings, and always looking to take advantage or “play the offense” for fear of being taken advantage of. Beyond the social boundaries that are put on these individuals, Kendrick finishes by summarizing the financial circumstances that often restrict the lives of people living in these areas, either trapped to engage in crime or perpetually overworking themselves to survive and make ends meet.
The article “Thug Life: Drill Music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age” brings light to this aspect of drill, saying, “Money and consumerism mix with threats, mockery, and claims of violent potential. That is not all there is. As we will see, drill music is also a specific urban construct rooted in the experience of class and oppression”(Lynes et al., 2020).
Drill music wasn’t created to be a popular mode of music, though many of the pioneers of it are grateful for the attention that their art garnered. “Drill music offers young people a means of expression, a means of often mediating complex social relationships, and a means of achieving a degree of status relative to the social field.” (Lynes et al., 2020). Drill music was created as a war song, full of the braggadocio and glorification of violence that one would expect from a child trapped in a violent environment and attempting to project a sense of power and authority.
In a recent short documentary on the Parkway Gardens Projects, famously known by its nickname “O Block,” which was adopted after the death of a member of those projects named Odee Perry and then popularized through drill music, the host Andrew Callaghan interviewed the residents of the neighborhood and asked them the meaning of “drill” music as well as if they think it contributes to the violence of their neighborhood (Callaghan, 2022).
Across their responses, there is an acknowledgment of the violent energy that drill music inspires, but a unanimous sentiment was that it had no large-scale impact on the violence that occurs in the O Block neighborhood. One of the people interviewed is a former drill artist by the name of Boss Top, who replies, “I don’t think it’s drill music at all, I promise you. If we was to take drill music away right now…it’s still gonna be the same typa violence. Everybody wants to be a character now for the internet.”(Callaghan, 2022).
This statement is profound because it acknowledges another prominent influence on the violence within rap culture: the integration of the internet and social media. This shows up in one capacity through its interaction with misunderstood conceptions of traditional ideals of rap music, like “keeping it real.” This dynamic is highlighted in the article “Internet banging: New trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity, and hip hop,” which analyzes the ways in which gang culture, hip-hop culture, and internet culture overlap and the issues that frequently stem from it.
The article states, “Hip hop artists are expected to “keep it real,” and remain true to the realities of the ghetto. The alternative is selling out and toning down their music in order to increase the mainstream appeal and financial gain.” (Patton et al., 2013). As was clarified earlier, this perspective on “keeping it real” is a misrepresentation of traditional hip-hop principles, and ironically much of the needless death that occurs as a result of internet gangbanging derives from weightless boasts by people attempting to push an image on the internet that doesn’t match their realities.
Another aspect of internet culture that plays into the exacerbation of violence in hip-hop culture is that it essentially acts as a voyeuristic lens for people to look at the violence within black communities, frequently via hip-hop culture, from a safe and detached position.
This is also touched later in the documentary during an interview with DJ Akademiks, a popular internet personality and member of Hip-hop media that gained his notoriety by covering the gang war in Chicago in his Youtube series “War in Chiraq.” As can be witnessed in the documentary, Akademiks frequently referred to the subjects he covered as “animals,” “monsters,” “idiots,” “coons” and a number of other denigrative terms in his coverage of the gang disputes that occurred, dehumanizing the very group of people he was exploiting for fame.
Again, Kendrick provides insight into this reality, saying
“Dehumanized, insensitive
Scrutinize the way we live for you and I
Enemies shook my hand, I can promise I'll meet you
In the land where no equal is your equal
Never say I ain't told ya, nah
In the land where hurt people hurt more people
Fuck callin' it culture”
Kendrick Lamar
This verse highlights the ways in which hip-hop culture is exploited, with the subjects that produce and maintain the art created in the genre being neglected, judged, and dehumanized by the same entities that are making money off of their stories. The line “In the land where no equal is your equal” once again speaks to both the African-American community and the culture of hip-hop, which are intrinsically tied to one another. African-American people have struggled for the ability to be perceived as equal in the eyes of white American society from the moment slaves arrived in the Americas and continue to struggle for this same right today. Similarly, hip-hop is exploited for profit while frequently being judged as a lesser form of art, criminalized for aspects of its culture that other genres are free to express, and used as the scapegoat for a number of modern American problems.
The attention from the internet was a significant contributing factor in helping to push drill music into the spotlight, but it did so as a way of viewing black death and violence through the lens of entertainment. In the years that have followed, drill rap has spread all across America as well as foreign countries, and a new profession of “internet detectives” spawned all across the internet on websites like Reddit and Youtube, platforming individuals as well as entire communities that conduct independent research and offer commentary on these dangerous situations. The internet also enables random people to antagonize the individuals in these situations without fear of recourse or repercussions, creating a culture that judges and derives entertainment from the tragedies of inner-city violence.
This is evidenced in the fact that despite all the media coverage and awareness that has been spread regarding the violence in Chicago, with hip-hop playing a significant role in, and all the money that that attention has generated for new channels, internet detectives, media outlets, and record labels, the conditions of living in inner-city Chicago, as Boss Top pointed out, has remained relatively the same in the years since, regardless of the outrage and disbelief that is directed towards the people forced to survive in these environments.
This dynamic is reflected in the hip-hop scene of New York, where the city attempted to ban its culture of drill music under the assertion that it promoted much of the violence that was experienced in their poor urban areas. As is pointed out in the article “Rap lyrics as evidence. Race and Justice,” which explores hip-hop’s often criminalized past with the American justice system, “From its earliest days, hip-hop culture was resistive: Graffiti art was illegal, break dancing took place spontaneously in public spaces not designed for it, and rapping and DJing were the provenance of house and block parties of questionable legality.”(Stoia et al., 2017).
Hip-hop has a long and storied history of conflict with the law, from the forceful disbandment of hip-hop gatherings in the early days to battles over free speech exemplified in cases like 2 Live Crew’s 1989 album As Nasty as the Wanna Be, to the arrest of DJ Drama over copyright disputes associated with sampling, a now popular staple of modern music production.
Regardless of the different outcomes of these cases, the issue with them lies in the unbalanced perspective of rap that subjects it to greater scrutiny than any other genre of music and reflects the racist and exclusionary perspectives that marked popular opinion towards hip-hop in its early days. The Stoia article reaffirms this point, noting, “The disproportionate moral outrage engendered by rap and the exploitation of this sentiment by politicians mirrors other racial dog whistle issues like “welfare queens” and “urban crime” which rally those with racial biases while avoiding explicitly mentioning race”(Stoia et al., 2017).
Beyond the moral objections against hip-hop, the issue with using rap lyrics as evidence or criminalizing entire genres or subgenres of music lies in the reality that the content of those genres is inherently being denigrated and robbed of their identity as “art.” In the arena of law, which is supposed to rely upon fact and objective truth to build cases, having one-sided interpretations of art be represented as a solid piece of evidence violates these principles. As is pointed out at the beginning of the Stoia article, graphic violence, misogyny, and lewdness are not unique to the hip-hop genre and is featured prominently in musical genres from Rock&Roll to Opera Music.
The main reason that most rappers are viewed to be direct reflections of the art they create is due to the one-dimensional view of blackness that is common in America, which is then extended to the rap genre and robs it of its nuance. This essay has focused on the more violent aspects of the hip-hop genre in order to address the issues that plague it, but there are numerous genres and subgenres of rap that talk about subjects from Christian rap and gay pride to existentialist thought and mindless party tunes. Rap stands as one of the most sonically and lyrically diverse genres to date but is ascribed the image of one-dimensionality because that is what is promoted and pushed.
A great example of this dynamic is presented in the 2006 hip-hop documentary “Hip hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” wherein the documentary’s guide, Byron Hurt, attends a Hip-hop summit and spends some time outside of it talking to the aspiring rappers that surrounded the building outside. After asking some of the rappers to freestyle for him, he notes that all of their subject matter was similar, utilizing bars that featured violence, sexual prowess, misogyny, drugs, and braggadocio. When he asks them why that is their subject matter, they all answer that they were forced to change their subject matter in accordance with what was being demanded by the hip-hop labels.
The message in Kendrick’s “The Heart Part 5” is a beautiful critique of hip-hop culture because it celebrates the culture's positives while critically addressing the genre's more destructive and misguided elements. Hip-hop is not a culture of music that is defined by or entrenched in violence, but rather that African-American culture, the driving force behind hip-hop culture in America, is and always has been subject to intense violence.
Hip-hop culture could be said to help spread violent messages, but the violence itself is already a reality to many of the people that create that form of art, and the promotion of that violence is largely due to factors outside the control of both African-Americans and hip-hop culture. If the violence in hip-hop is to be addressed truly, it will have to occur first through the address of the chronic systemic issues and limitations that have been placed on the people living in ghettos and underdeveloped neighborhoods to create these violent realities rather than punishing those that are carrying the stories of what they’ve survived through.
Reference List
Callaghan, Andrew. “O Block.” YouTube, YouTube, 2 Sept. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPnQbKgotOw&t=214s.
Cochran, S. M. (2015). Hip-Hop Commercialism and the Destructive Exploitation of Young Black Males: In Search of Joseph. Spectrum: A Journal on Black Men, 3(2), 45–70. https://doi.org/10.2979/spectrum.3.2.45
Hurt, Byron. “Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes.” YouTube, YouTube, 3 Oct. 2006, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjxjZe3RhIo.
Lamar, Kendrick. “Kendrick Lamar – the Heart Part 5.” Genius, 2022, https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-the-heart-part-5-lyrics.
Lynes, A., Kelly, C., & Kelly, E. (2020). Thug Life: Drill Music as a periscope into urban violence in the consumer age. The British Journal of Criminology, 60(5), 1201–1219. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azaa011
Patton, D. U., Eschmann, R. D., & Butler, D. A. (2013). Internet banging: New trends in social media, gang violence, masculinity and hip hop. Computers in Human Behavior, 29(5). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.035
Ronse. “Cardi B Only Cares about the Money.” No Hipsters Allowed, 22 Oct. 2018, https://www.nohipstersallowed.com/music/cardi-b-only-cares-about-the-money/.
Stoia, N., Adams, K., & Drakulich, K. (2017). Rap lyrics as evidence. Race and Justice, 8(4), 330–365. https://doi.org/10.1177/2153368716688739
Travis, R. (2012). Rap music and the empowerment of today’s youth: Evidence in everyday music listening, music therapy, and commercial rap music. Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal, 30(2), 139–167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10560-012-0285-x
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