Rap Music Is NSFW

*it means Not Safe For Work, in case you're confused*

My generation is possibly the first (& only) generation to say that when we grew up, along with doctors, lawyers, & astronauts, we also wanted to be rappers. It was tangible & realistic. Fortunately, this was during a time when being a rapper meant more than shallow word schematic & pointless show boating. Of course there were exceptions. & when exceptions become the norm, then it's all bad, but this wasn't the case then. Gaudy jewelry was juxtaposed to cognizant thinking & actual points of view. Rappers were the dudes who one looked to for a sense of direction. Legitimate community voices who were just beyond our reach. Believe it, or not (young people), at one point in time, rappers were role models, to a reasonable extent. We all grow up & out of that, though.

Funny how a couple of decades can switch shit up.

Now, most rappers are nothing more than comical clones of the last musical mishap they witnessed (i.e. each other). Two dimensional caricatures of a distant memory. Plainly stated, these niggas are wack. Talent & skill have taken a back seat to bullet holes & felony charges. Really though. The ones that aren't ghetto jesters or soldiers of the coon calvary are still the furthest from positive influences that a person could be. There was a time when young people wanted to be rappers for the right reasons. Nowadays, I don't hear that much.

Seems to me that being a rapper is quickly ranking up there with cops, in terms of danger factor. This year alone, I can think of incidents where rap dudes have been:

shot
shot at
arrested
attacked
humiliated
robbed
murdered

These occurrences happen regularly, & have been for years. Call me old fashioned, but thats not worth groupie sex, costume jewelry, the mo' problems that come with the mo' money, or the immense hatred that goes along with it all. It's hard enough just being a regular Black guy in America, much less a moving target for the 35% of society that has nothing better to do than scheme, scam & pull all the other crabs in the barrel back down to the bottom.

I guess to a degree, a lot of rappers bring certain elements to themselves. There's nothing wrong with being successful, but it's how you go about displaying it to the public. Doctors & lawyers make crazy money, but you don't see them going to the salon with $35,000 worth of jewelry on. Or making videos of them, at home, burning piles of cash then uploading it to Youtube. Figuratively speaking, if you slather yourself in honey, expect the flies to gather on your flesh, if you get my point.

With all the hoopla about the rap game being reminiscent of the crack game, a lot of the danger level gets ignored. In no other genre of music has one artist sent a memo to the others stating that they cannot ever come [back] to his city. What part of artistic creativity does that fall under? Everybody has beef with everybody else, & if we leave it to a guy named Joe Budden, the beef game might have just stepped into the pay-per-view fight night arena. The hustle that became the [new] WWE is now a certifiable gang bang. Like the videos for "Bad" & "Beat It", except with more niggas & real weapons.

God bless these cats, though. Rapping is some dangerous shit.

Good luck with that fellas.