(Todd A. Smith)
An epidemic exists in Black America, and many of us know what it is.
There is a strange fascination with negativity, poverty, drug dealing, violence, and miscegenation, and much of it comes from hip-hop music and crime TV shows.
On a podcast, the father of hip-hop legend Jadakiss, from the rap group The Lox, revealed that his son attended private school.
And although all three members of The Lox grew up in the hoods of Yonkers, N.Y., Jadakiss admitted that his groupmates Styles P and Sheek Louch attended the same private school.
Jadakiss’ father has made media appearances in recent years, revealing that he actively participated in The Lox’s contract negotiations because he wanted to prevent his son and his friends from being exploited by unscrupulous record label executives.
In the podcast episode, Jadakiss’ father admitted that his son grew up in a stable, two-parent home, something that is not often promoted in rap songs.
Many rappers talk about the struggle, even though many of them did not struggle financially growing up.
As Joe Budden said in the podcast, the streets just looked appealing to many of them, even though they did not need the streets to survive.
Budden revealed that his mother was upset when he rapped about experiencing poverty because he did not go without during his childhood.
Back in the early 1990s, when Voletta Wallace heard her son The Notorious B.I.G., rapping about eating sardines for dinner, she got upset because they never had it that bad where they had to eat sardines for a meal.
In reality, Biggie’s mother faced some hardships raising a son as a single parent in a neighborhood that had its problems with drugs and violence.
However, Biggie, too, attended private school, while his mother eventually earned her master’s degree.
Like many others, Biggie was fascinated by the drug dealers and street cats with the freshest clothes and fly rides.
Therefore, he chose the street life and later rapped about it.
My writing this article could come across as hypocritical if people close to me read it because I, too, am fascinated with street culture to an extent.
My current favorite television shows are “Mobland,” “Godfather of Harlem,” “BMF” and “Raising Kanan.”
One of my favorite movies of all time is “The Godfather.”
My CD collection contains just as much Tupac as it does conscious rappers like Common, The Roots and Black Star.
Like many people of a certain age, I am eagerly anticipating the Clipse reunion album, although their raps are almost exclusively about drug dealing.
But hypocrisy aside, the Black community needs to end its weird fascination with the underworld.
Growing up in an upper-middle-class neighborhood in northwest Houston was not seen as cool back in my day.
Our next-door neighbors in Acres Homes had all the street cred, and we were considered lame in Inwood Forest.
Even when I went off to Southern University, students who had two parents were maligned by students who came from rougher backgrounds.
If your parents graduated from college or could at least complete a sentence, you were truly ostracized.
But if you had a family member in jail, you were admired.
If you sold dope on campus, you were the man.
And if your dad had multiple families in your hometown, he was a stand-up guy, and the man who stayed loyal to his wife had a problem.
While some of us eventually outgrew that asinine way of thinking, many people never outgrew that childish and destructive mentality.
As a result, generation after generation of Black Americans continues making the same mistakes decade after decade.
America, not just Black America, has always had a fascination with crime and the underworld.
In the early 1900s, Bonnie and Clyde became legends for robbing banks before Hollywood immortalized the criminal couple in film and on television.
Therefore, Black Hollywood and hip-hop are not alone in glamorizing the gangster lifestyle.
But back in the day, there seemed to be more diversity from Black entertainers.
Although groups like N.W.A and Geto Boys talked about street culture, just as many Black stars focused on things that the current generation would consider lame, like social issues, political movements and romance.
Even many female rappers have become just as gangsta as the men and even raunchier with their sexually explicit themes.
While violence and sexual immorality are realities across the globe, it seems no other culture promotes negativity as much as the Black community.
Forgive me if I am wrong with this assessment, but I do not know any Italian singer, such as Damiano David, who only talks about the Mafia in their music, even though organized crime is something stereotypically associated with Italian American culture.
Even in movies like “The Godfather,” the gangster lifestyle was not something that real gangsters wanted their children to emulate.
Don Vito Corleone wanted his son Michael Corleone to become a lawyer.
Circumstances just led to him taking over “the thing of theirs.”
The trilogy also showed how organized crime could destroy the lives of civilians associated with the gangster.
However, hip-hop and other aspects of urban culture seem to make criminality the “in” thing to do, instead of the positive.
So much so that people who came from good and stable families feel the need to pretend poverty just to find acceptance from a community that seemingly shuns stability and positivity.
