Staying On Message

You'll admire all the number book takers
Thugs, pimps, pushers and the big money makers
Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens
And you wanna grow up to be just like them, huh,
Smugglers, scrambles, burglars, gamblers
Pickpockets, peddlers even panhandlers
You say: "I'm cool, I'm no fool!"
But then you wind up dropping out of high school
Now you're unemployed, all non-void
Walking 'round like you're Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stickup kid, look what you've done did
Got sent up for a eight year bid

Grand Master Flash's The Message

Ever since its rise in the early 90s, the folks behind of the so-called gangster strain of hip hop music have defended their money-making tales of urban mayhem not by claiming artistic license, but by insisting their songs and videos only reflect the reality on the streets. This is the "CNN of the Black community" theory of hip hop, and no rapper - from Chuck D to "Fitty" - seems able to resist labeling themselves as a kind of journalist, a citizen reporter bringing you do-it-yourself audio diaries long before the first blogger ever darkened a monitor or web-page

In the aftermath of the Imus debacle the hip hop=street truth equation has taken something of a beating, leading folks to reevaluate whether or not the music is reflecting reality or distorting it. Public radio, of course, has a slightly different mandate from, say, Def Jam, which might be why few rap records have the straight-forward eloquence of Omar Leech, who contributed his story of getting into (and then out of) gangs for the StoryCorps Griot Initiative. Leech shared his story without expectation of fame and fortune and that might be why he so neatly sums up the emptiness and loneliness behind the facade of urban bravado:

All this time I did in prison, didn't a person from my gang ever write me one letter, send me one penny. And right then it just dawned on me. That's not family, those aren't friends. And when I come home, what? They want me to hold a pistol? Or they want me to punch this guy for running his mouth? I'm a grown man. [So] me coming to Atlanta from Toledo was like running for my life. That's exactly what it was. [more]

Still, though, the "CNN of the streets" argument still has its partisans. Can you name a hip hop lyric that conveys a so-called truth about the black urban experience, something you'd expect to see on an urban cable news channel? This should be something recent (sorry, we already used the Grandmaster Flash lyric up top) and something that depicts the often harsh reality of street-life without sugar coating it in testosterone and bling. If we like what you send, we'll use it on air during the forthcoming Hip Hop music series that we have scheduled to begin in a few days in June.

Gary Dauphin

7:23 PM ET | 05-29-2007 | permalink

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