In April of this year Two Chainz released his fifth studio album, titled Rap or Go to the League. The cover art an image of a milk crate nailed to a rickety hoops backboard, symbolizing the disenfranchised, devoid of opportunity, poor place he will rap about and make reference to in this album.
A few month’s prior to this release, ICE revealed that when 21 Savage was twelve or something his mom moved them to a part of Atlanta called Zone 6 (Was this their only option?), from a perhaps inhospitable neighborhood in the UK, in which his experiences of gun fights, abuse and neglect would premise his rap personality, and presumably, his original personality. As listeners we interpret rap tales from the hood like 21’s as raw testimony to pains of life in environments many of us have and will never feel, but “knowing” about makes us feel cool.
If the hastiest timeline for rap music in America begins at some point in the late seventies (Celebrating 40 years of hip-hop going “mainstream” under #hiphopis), shortly after the last of our Vietnam veterans returned state side, then it’s torch has been passed and carried by the originators’ kids, their kids, and soon, their kids’ kids, those close behind 6ix9ine — He was born in 1996.
Within each of these generations of rap, there is escapist party music, some pop music even, commonly to escape from socio-economic struggle. And so drugs, guns, and joblessness still prevail — as themes, references, life experiences; as causes for expressed pain and trouble, in both youth and adulthood.
And so this observation predicates the sociological question: What has happened over the course of forty years in these neighborhoods in which rap tales occur? Musically, songs of the genre are revered as much for their raw poeticism as their slap, but what of the communities they draw on lyrically?
Have we or are we gathering neighborhood level performance data like this: School achievement levels, employment levels (as rate of employable people), business creation volumes and performance based on tax records, overlaying statistics on violent and property crimes, and ultimately GDP per capita. I imagine this data exists, is poured over and discussed in municipal offices. It would be interesting to understand the rate of progress, upward or downward, so as to confirm that these rap themes are in title only, honorary verbal theatrics with the intention of passing on the history of struggle and brutality, economic and societal, that may in fact no longer be as rampant and virulent as they once were.
