Where Rap Meets Race
Hip-Hop and Humanitarianism
In addition to its ability to provide entertainment and its irreplaceable value as a medium for conveying information, discontent, and praise, rap’s financial payoff puts many successful artists in a position to give back to their communities and help minorities in need. Artists often seize this opportunity. Chance the Rapper founded Social Works, a charity that seeks to support Chicago youth through education, arts, and community leadership; Jay-Z established the Shawn Carter Foundation, which provides scholarships for economically underprivileged youth, and often financially supports the Black Lives Matter movement; Pusha-T famously rapped about how he sent water to those with contaminated water sources in Flint, Michigan; and Akon is well known for his Akon Lighting Africa project, for which he has planned to provide hundreds of communities in multiple African countries with electricity. An abundance of other rap and hip-hop artists have performed comparable charitable actions, instituting a pattern of positive behavior into rap’s culture.
Many up-and-coming rappers have similar benevolent aspirations. One such artist, Travis Karter, whose legal name is Kristofer Madu, is making waves through his philanthropic pursuits. Although just a freshman at Johns Hopkins University, Karter has started a non-profit organization in addition to dropping tracks and touring cities in the U.S. His charity, Water is the Answer, has served to raise nearly $10,000 for the construction of a sanitary well in Arondizuogu, Nigeria, and Karter maintains that this is only the beginning. He aims to expand the reach of his charity to other communities, and though he is of Nigerian descent, he doesn’t wish to limit himself to helping those with whom he shares a common background. “There is no reason on earth why Water is the Answer should stick to the confines of Arondizuogu, the confines of Nigeria, or the confines of Africa, when poverty and water poverty does not… In the long term, my goal for ‘Water is the Answer’ is to expand it into all continents, save for Antarctica, of course,” Karter said.
A Flawed Perception of Hip-Hop
“This is why I say that hip-hop has done more damage to young African Americans than racism in recent years.” - Fox News Analyst Geraldo Rivera.
This sentiment appears to be a relatively popular one. According to a poll published by the Pew Research Center in 2008, more than 70 percent of Americans believed that rap had an overall negative impact on society. Some rap and hip-hop songs do indeed glamorize destructive behavior like substance abuse and violence.But artists like 21 Savage and Meek Mill, whose music sometimes lionizes illegal activity, also lament these very crimes, and the fact that they occur disproportionately in low-income, predominantly black neighborhoods. When rappers do decide to celebrate these crimes, it is often simply because that is the type of music that sells.
Why We Must #FreeMeekMill
It seems that every time a prominent rapper is arrested, social media sites are inundated with hashtags advocating for that artist’s freedom. Recently,Twitter and Instagram users have begun to post demands such as, “#freetayk,” or “freeherbo,” or “freeyoungboy.” But all of these rappers were arrested for serious crimes—ranging from kidnapping and sexual assault, to the unlawful possession of unlicensed, loaded, firearms—for which there was an abundance of evidence. The fact that these individuals are famous artists does not and should not give them free reign to break the law as they see fit.
One recently popularized hashtag, however, remains distinct from the others. On Nov. 6, 2017, a judge sentenced Meek Mill to two to four years of prison time, with two years without the possibility of parole. Soon, the hashtag #freemeekmill began to appear on various social media platforms. Meek Mill was arrested on two separate occasions in 2017, once for fighting and once for “popping wheelies”—recklessly riding an illegal bike. He has been unfairly penalized for both crimes—especially considering that both charges were later dropped. To be fair, the reasoning behind the harsh sentence was that these crimes violated his probation, which he received as a consequence of an earlier arrest. But this earlier arrest occurred over a decade ago in 2007, when Meek Mill was just 19 years old. The artist is now 30, and since serving eights months of prison time for his crime in 2007, he has continued to suffer for his offense in the form of an exorbitantly lengthy probation, a situation that would likely not be the case were he not black.
Alleviating the Effects of Misogyny in Rap and Hip Hop Music
In 2017, for the first time in history, hip hop/R&B officially became the most consumed music genre in America. Consumption of rap music increased by 25 percent from 2016, recording the second-largest growth of any music category. In fact, the past few years have marked groundbreaking success for the rap and hip-hop industries, as the genre has progressed from taboo to widely accepted.
Moreover, the average age of hip hop listeners is the lowest of all major music genres in the United States. Because of this impressionable demographic, the content of hip hop and rap music has particular potential for impact. Hip hop and rap music effectively convey significant and powerful messages, from expressing grievances in the black community to illustrating the vision that even the poorest black Americans from the most dangerous neighborhoods can achieve wealth and fame—a potent image for young black people in those very situations.
Why Non-Blacks Rapping the “N-Word” Is Cultural Appropriation
Many white individuals do not understand why the use of the n-word, even in the absence of the hard “r,” is still considered very offensive and inappropriate by the majority of the black community. At almost every party at Harvard, whoever is managing the music will inevitably play a song that contains the n-word, and at almost every party at Harvard, jubilant, tipsy non-black individuals will loudly yell along to each phrase, failing to omit the n-word when it comes up. The issue is not that most of these students are malicious or blatantly racist. The issue is that most of these students are ignorant to the weight that the word holds, even without the hard “r.” While most college students are aware of the basic history of the n-word, many are unaware that this history still continues. Even in spheres as liberal as college campuses, black individuals occasionally remain the target of this racial slur, a remnant of the long-ago era of slavery.
Over time, black people have taken ownership of the slur, dropping the hard “r” to form a related word that refers to black community, in an effort to counteract the original word’s spiteful history. But that word does not hold the same meaning when said by anybody who is not black. When non-black individuals vocalize the n-word, a reminder of the malice associated with its roots remains, and elicits a strong sense of unease from many black persons who witness its expression. The n-word with no hard “r” (hereafter referred to as the “soft n-word”) should still be reserved for only black individuals, especially because racial prejudice still exists in 2018. (There is some debate as to whether or not anybody—even black people—should casually vocalize the soft n-word, but that is beyond the scope of this article).