Why is keeping it real in rap so treacherous?

One recent Paramount Plus documentary, “Rap on Trial,” featuring Bronx-based hip-hop artist Kemba, explores the very hot topic of rappers being prosecuted by using their literal lyrics as evidence of crimes. This is a topic I also covered in “The next crime I write” mini-series of articles featured on the counterbalance and covered in even more depth by the NPR podcast series “Louder than a Riot.” The common thread and throughline to all of our work is obvious: Why are certain artists in one specific genre of music held to a higher standard and greater scrutiny than others? The easy short answer is racism, and on some level that’s where this article could begin and end. However, there is so much more happening and at stake. 

In a recent interview, the artist Russ broke things down and revealed the driving tension and difference that exists within hip-hop — and by extension, Black music — as opposed to other art and artists who create. In a clip from the larger interview, Russ discusses how the authenticity of what rap artists speak about is what Black and Brown listeners look for and expect. It’s the shared experience that resonates with the community of fans. In contrast, Russ states that white audiences are voyeurs looking to vicariously live the experience “through” Black artists, with the experience representing a source of fantasy rather than catharsis for them. Because of this, it is almost out of necessity that rap artists specifically to process their pain through sharing and exploring that experience.The expectation is that what is spoken about has to be from a real place. Conversely, white consumers get to try on the pain, trauma and adrenaline rush guilt-free, literally. The rub is, at what point is someone supposedly incriminating themselves, and if they are simply “making up a story” as a means to create a false connection with fans and the community, what does that mean for the power of the genre? Where is the line drawn? How dangerous is it, on a deeper and larger scale, that our “realities” become further and further reduced to only one “truth"?

What’s interesting for me, as someone who formally grew up listening to rap music from the mid-’80s (and still listens now), even in those formative years I could tell the difference between Kool G. Rap spinning a tall tale of being on the run from mafia assassins or double-crossing a dealer and Eazy-E of N.W.A. or Ice-T recounting a drug deal or ducking the cops with names changed or omitted to protect the guilty. Further, the semi-biographical accounts were created and processed in a way that either exposed the injustices of a system or provoked introspection for the listener. There was literally more to it than glorifying or legitimizing actions that were violent or dangerous. This isn’t to say that no rap at that time would be considered problematic, or if the rules, laws and sensibilities were the same (and in some sense they were) we wouldn’t be dealing with and creating the same consequences, but it speaks more of the expanse and range of topics, and the nuance and craft that were more pervasive and commonplace when we talk about the art of rap as a whole. 

As the industry completed its co-option of rap music and solidified its gatekeeping of what stories would be told, and who would be rewarded for telling them, the lines between fact, fiction, truth and lies became more and more blurred. The need, or intent, to blur the lines between reality and rap as a way to market, promote and sell the music strengthened with every succeeding generation post Biggie and Tupac. Further still, what experiences and realities that the Black community faced were more expansive in a time when the music industry was still naive when it came to the power, influence, reach and wealth potential of the genre. As more money was spent, invested, and then earned from rap music, the industry itself consciously chose to control, change and perpetuate the narratives that were the most lucrative to them — be damned the consequences to the artist or the community. Also, individuals who valued access to material wealth, popularity and the soft power that comes with it were all too happy to oblige. The narrative and the power shifted to hold up the work that was more advantageous to the oppressor than the oppressed.

Rap music and hip-hop culture can’t be separated from the traditions and larger communities that spawned it. It is a continuum of the function of what so many Black and Brown Americans created for survival. Our art has ingrained within it the responsibility to inform, educate, call out and process our experiences — both traumatic and triumphant. It is the vehicle and means by which we have always subversively and objectively critiqued and deconstructed the toxic and oppressive forces and environments we were forced into, or circumstances that were forced upon us. How does that look, and what then is the result when the poisons of capitalism and consumption are allowed to mix with those ideals? As the value and worth of our expression have been reduced to decimals of a stream, and pennies on the dollar, our reality being up for sale has meant less and less nuance has gone into the craft and more and more derivatives of actual experience have left little to no room in the larger mass consumption of rap music, but art in general. It’s this shift that has created the very real consequences, however unjust they are, that rap has been facing almost since its inception, and it has been by design. For some, they might even say it was inevitable the moment our expression was given over to the larger commercial consumer complex that’s driven by a racial prejudice and unethical drive to amass wealth without restraint for a very small cadre of individuals insulated from the violence and consequences of “keeping it real.”