“It’s only right I hijack your car keys and run,
spent all of my advancement on weed and
guns” - Bizarre of D12 (Shit on You) Words are stronger than we can imagine. If
someone we can’t trust owes us money and on the
date he was supposed to pay we can’t find him
we’ll have hope if the MTN operator says his number is “not reachable” but we’ll feel conned the
moment the AIRTEL operator says “the number is switched off”. A different sentence gives a different idea; even a
different word does the same. This explains why
the Americans survived the period of recession in
their economy: simply because they made sure they
never called it recession. The moment that word is
used, there would have been panic that may have crumbled the economy. So powerful are words and so important is what we
say that we became believers in our faith by a
testimony of words and we may leave it by a single
utterance. While words are so powerful in terms of
orientation, there is an equally, if not more
powerful, controller of emotions: musical instruments. So when words and musical instruments are put together your emotion is
captured while an orientation is given. Now the question becomes: what orientation is given? It’s often said that Hip Hop started as a struggle, it
began in response to the suffering of the black
people under slavery and oppression in America.
Another way to look at it is that Hip Hop started as
hate for the white man, whether this hate is justified
is not the issue under discussion. It started when the black man needed to drive home his point that
the white man is the devil. This hate culture is part
and parcel of Hip hop and this is why there is the
concept of ‘Battle’ and ‘Beef’. Battle is an act in the street corners, or wherever, whereby two supposedly grown up adults, under
no provocation, stand face to face and engage in
verbal humiliation of one another. And the subject
of this humiliation is most times based on how ‘I slept with your mama’ and ‘how I slept with your sister’. Nobody battles another and says ‘your brother is an armed robber’ because in Hip
hop armed robbery is a good reputation. Yo Momma was an American reality television game
show on MTV So sad is the situation that there is/was a Battle
programme on MTV called “Yo Momma ” And someone gets paid for winning. In other words, he
is rewarded because he insults people’s mama
better. And the ladies should understand this: when the
Hip hop artist talks of a bitch he is referring to ALL
women, that’s why they say good bitch and bad
bitch, but all bitches have one thing in common;
check your dictionary. Tupac makes the point that all women, according to them, are bitched clear: “ I learnt not to trust a bitch from the prostitutes…” (Hell Razor) “money bring bitches…” (Another useless cut whose name I’ve gladly forgot) Not only is the battle about humiliating women, no
one will be polite enough to say “slept with”, you
know the word they’ll use: four letters. The same
four letter word you find all over these hip hop
songs so much so that when it is edited sometimes
the chorus is left with just instrumentals. The Battles they say are not personal, yet
“impersonally”, they insult each other’s mothers
and sisters. What’s personal is when it’s a beef Beef, on its part, is an extension of a Battle. Beef is when two persons in the culture have a quarrel
and they do not only Battle, sometimes, guns are
drawn. The guns are so part of Hip hop that gun
cracking forms part of the instrumental sometimes. So what effect do all of these and those I purposely have not mentioned for want of space have on the listeners? • Hip hop puts a good reputation to crime by
presenting someone you love in that light and
giving it a good name. E.g. Snoop Dogg wants you to believe he is a love-vendor, Olu Maintain claims Yahoo
(Fraudsters ), another artist calls himself Bone Born Crusher , another calls himself Sticky Fingaz (i.e. a thief), and one even called himself Ol’ Dirty Bastard of the Wu Tang Clan (died from drug overdose in 2004), others are called Bizarre , Gang Starr , Outlawz, e.t.c. • If it doesn’t make you commit what they pride
themselves of committing, it makes you forget the
severity of success crimes. How many ladies today,
some of them even relatively decent, are into M.I yet, the man says “I’m a girl teaser, big booty squeezer,….” and they sing along. I also was unfortunate to always hear people singing a song
that was just about saying “I like that booty,… ” over and over again. But guess what, it was from a
female classmate that I first heard one of the lines
from the song “I like that over load… ”, when I asked if she heard herself she said “well, well..” • It creates the illusion that life should be all about
enjoyment hence people oriented by it will never
have true peace of mind and will constantly run
after pleasures just like they say life is too short so
enjoy yourself whereas the orientation should be
that since life is too short leave like a passerby and prepare for the next and everlasting life • It flaunts imaginary resources like Jay-Z once rhyme about how he “ships a meal…” (Money Ain’t
a Thing) i.e. he imports his every single meal!
Ridiculous claims like this coupled with show of
flashy cars only creates the burning desire to be
rich by any means necessary. Any means necessary
includes robbing your neighbour. Rick Ross • Creates a thug mentality where the criminal is the
deal and the one who reports to the police is the
snitch deserving death. A thug mentality that settles
issues by the gun, a thug mentality that means if
you have a car stereo it needs to be loud so that
you can tell those without a car that you are the man, a thug mentality that makes people put their
trousers in their buttocks even when it clearly
doesn’t make sense and is not even convenient to
do so, a thug mentality that creates worthless
individuals whose only relationship with society is
parasitic in that they compete for air and space with productive individuals. This thug mentality puts
pride in people and makes them look down on
others, hear the artist Guru of the Hip hop group
Gangstars as an example of what I’m saying: “My shit is rugged like the New York streets, disrespect me, stupid you loss your teeth ” – Gang Starr (Nice Girl in the Wrong Place) • It humiliates and gives our women a bad
reputation. Ever wondered why the first thing the
man who quarrels with you call you is Ashewo
(prostitute)? Yes because even when he smiled
with you and act as if he respects you, he always
saw you as ashewo (a prostitute). Your colleague in school or work may not call you that because they
are enlightened: enlightened enough to not call
you even when they think you are. Hip hop is part
of those things that make every woman seem bad • Needless to say it promotes drugs, alcoholism,
and prostitution, just make your list. What about the “good Hip hop”? Like we used to
call it; Deep Rap, Spitting Jewels, Dropping
Knowledge. It’s all a deception because at the end
of the day it draws you into a circle that draws you
to the same vices earlier stated. An example is seen
of Scarface who drops deep lines but in the same album the 11th track he goes “Hotel, Motel,….” I can’t afford to continue .
Hip hop is a culture: A Bad Culture

Lol.....why stereotype hip-hop? There are many rappers that rap about living a peaceful life. Some are even poetic. You use gangsta rappers to stereotype all rappers.



I could do the same s.tupid thing to Islam. The dangers of Islam. Stoning, terrorism and flogging. Stereotyping is wrong.


Ironically, I'm an atheist and my favourite rapper is a muslim that raps about life; Lupe Fiasco