Within the black community, there is a threshold of standards and customs that are questionable, to say the least. But most of these customs are dated and traditional and sacred in a way, so change is unlikely, and we combat our doubt with disapproving head shakes. An age-old correlation in the Black music industry is the strange appraisal for rappers who have served jail time at some point in their lives. There’s this image that you are not a real rapper unless you have committed a felony; an image that deems real bars can only originate from behind bars. This epidemic spread from OG rappers like Tupac and DMX to more recent artists like 2 Chainz and Desiigner. This toxic stigma that relates masculinity to prison time is one that is taking a detrimental toll on not only the men that are being locked up but the youth that look up to them.
We live in a society where our jails are packed to the brim with black youth in particular, who have so much potential but instead become just another statistic. Studies show that black men have a 32% chance of serving time in prison at least once in their lifetime. 32% of black men who fall victim to the justice system and yet we are still not satisfied. We still parade our time in prison like certificates of masculinity, practically begging for this statistic to increase. Our justice system is all too eager to lock up as many black bodies as they can, and when youth are told that jail makes you ‘cool’ and ‘tough’, its a lot harder to keep young black men and women from being incarcerated.
Acts to inform youth about the harsh reality of prison become counter-effective when artists on the radio are glorifying their jail time. There’s still this standard of rappers that are cold hard ‘thugs’ and a lot of times, to reach this standard means that you must get in trouble with the law. I will admit that as the times change, so have the standards of rappers and artists. We’ve seen rappers like Nicki Minaj beg her young supporters to stay in school , and I’m sure there are rappers who have done their time and expressed their regret. However, this ‘thug’ image remains and we see it in the way that our rap culture pertains drugs, violence, and jail time. We confess our ‘love for the cocoa’ and we sing about our ‘trap queens’ when in reality, a lot of these catchy tunes that youth are naively repeating and buying into, involve criminal actions and crimes that can lead to real jail time.
No one is perfect, and artists should not be held up to a golden standard. Everyone makes mistakes, and some mistakes are bigger than others. However, instead of bragging about how you ran your cell block, how about next time you start telling our youth that jail is not something that anyone should look forward to. Rap can be poetic and beautiful and self-aware, and something that is worthy of admiration. But to admire and appreciate something you have to also recognize its flaws. There’s already enough people in this country who are more than happy to see black bodies in jail, and it doesn’t help when people in our own community are doing the same.
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