Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
As I've said more than once on this site, I'm a big fan of the 'Clipse. It gave me quite a shock when I was emailed a link the other day to an article that mentioned their ad campaign with McDonalds. Now I realize this travesty happened more than 2 years ago, but I somehow wasn't aware that they had sold their souls to the fast food devil. This isn't the first time a hardcore rap group has sold out (another one that comes immediately to mind is M.O.P. doing a song for boy band L.F.O.), but its been the most surprising case for me.
This leads me to the subject of today's post: Is there any "hardcore" rapper out there who actually stays true to his image? And does it even matter? The concept of "selling out" has been around in American music since the early days of Jazz, when rumors circulated that the great Robert Johnson quite literally sold his soul to the devil. In hip hop, accusations of selling out have been thrown around at least since Run DMC did a song with Aerosmith. So it shouldn't come as any great surprise that a rapper might fictionalize his biographical information just to sell some records. Yet I was stunned to see Malice and Pusha T cheesin' for the cameras with Ronald McDonald. Would a real gangster participate in a national ad campaign for a fast food company, even if the paper was right? And M.O.P. Anteing Up with L.F.O.? I know they've had some troubles getting their music out to the public, but if they were really true to the image that they've maintained through their lyrics, they would have been out jacking dudes for their jewelry instead of in the recording studio with a boy band.
I have to admit this whole issue poses a bit of a dilemma for me: on the one hand I certainly don't support the violence, drugs and general thuggery that hardcore rappers talk about in their lyrics. At the same time, I expect some authenticity in the music I listen to. If you drop lines about the Nation of Islam, I better not catch you with a ham sandwich in your hand. And if you're rapping about what you did on the street corner, I don't want to see your grill plastered on a billboard with a Coke and a smile.
Occasionally you'll hear a rapper make the claim that they're no different from actors, that they're just portraying a role through their lyrics. Unlike an actor, though, these rappers never switch up the roles they play. While you might see Al Pacino in an occasional romantic comedy, you won't see Young Jeezy deviate from his role as the "Snowman," a.k.a. the drug dealer with the logo that even little kids can enjoy. This creates a bit of a problem when you appear in a video with Christina Milian. Sure, Jeezy spent the entirety of his 16 bars fitting in as many references to The Snowman as he could, but ultimately this rapper who is allegedly devoted to the streets did a cameo on an R&B song. That ain't gangsta, that's commercial.
For a genre of music that has seen several of its artists (as well as their bodyguards and weed carriers) murdered or incarcerated, its hard to respect a gangsta rapper who hasn't lived what he is rapping about. And yet I find myself willing to overlook the McClipse incident, as long as they continue to put out good music. It will just require an even greater suspension of disbelief than what I already rely on when I hear a rapper describe in one sentence the dime bags he was selling on the block and in the next sentence discuss the latest Bentley he allegedly owns. Sure, I'd prefer there were more rappers talking about important stuff like Public Enemy, or even some inconsequential non-violent ish like A Tribe Called Quest, but there's not a whole lot of that out there right now. In the end, I guess my feeling is this: If you're going to rap about your gangster life, I don't care if you actually live it, just come correct on the mic.
4/25/2006 7:59:18 AM posted by Fresh