Once hiphop’s leading lights, stars betray political roots
The water in certain parts of New Orleans was still about 25 feet deep on Sept. 2, 2005, when rapper Kanye West criticized the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina during a televised hurricane relief campaign.
Clearly going offscript in front of a national audience, Kanye spoke seven words that, as a kid who was living in Louisiana at the time, are burned into my memory: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.”
Kanye made the Black plight in Louisiana a national issue in that moment, and I’ll never forget it, especially because it was all around me. I saw mattresses and couches floating around homes that had the words “Please Help” spraypainted on the rooftops. When we felt hopeless, Kanye showed my generation of hiphop lovers just how much power, politically and socially, Black rappers can have in America. And how they can use that power in ways that truly helped folks who looked like me.
Hiphop shapes the political thinking of generations of Black youth. I learned to look closely at how government aid was sent to communities of color in Louisiana because of Kanye. So, it pains me to say the following: The politics that helped me fall in love with hiphop are making me fall out of love with it.
Go back a decade or two and it’s clear to see rappers were advocates for marginalized communities. Through their songs, they championed police reform and spoke poetically about the mistreatment of Black and brown bodies in this country. The music represented life in America for people who look like me. Kanye continued this tradition in my youth.
In 2004, in the song “All Falls Down,” he wrote about reparations: “We shine because they hate us, floss ’ cause they degrade us/ We tryna buy back our 40 acres”; and he talked about mass incarceration: “I say f— the police, that’s how I treat ’ em/ We buy our way out of jail, but we can’t buy freedom.” He introduced young folks to two issues that are still being discussed in America today, which have been given new life during the racial reckoning of 2020.
Now, it’s hard not to see Kanye for more than a symbol of internalized racism. Over the last two years, his Twitter account, which has more than 30 million followers, has served as a hellscape of confusing, irrational political opinions. I can’t listen to his mid2000s albums that once served as the soundtrack to my youth without thinking about him saying slavery was a choice and calling racism “an invisible wall,” despite it affecting so many Black and brown people in this country.
In Kanye’s ongoing bid for the presidency, he’s on the ballot as a candidate in 10 states, and is on the American Independent Party’s ticket in California.
The misguided social path hiphop’s luminaries are taking isn’t being walked by Kanye alone. We also have Los Angeles rapper Ice Cube. In the late 1980s, as a member of the rap group N. W. A., he often spoke on behalf of Black Americans against police brutality, including in the controversial song “F— Tha Police.” These days, he’s taking heat from Black Millennials for working with President Trump’s administration on a plan to help Black communities in America. The problem is he never spoke with the country’s leading Black activists on the details of the plan. He ignored the people who, at various points, adored him.
New York rapper 50 Cent, who had hit records in the mid2000s, recently told his 26 million Instagram followers to vote for Trump, after sharing a screenshot of data related to former Vice President Joe Biden’s tax plan. The post highlighted just how out-of-touch 50 Cent is with young Black people in America when it ended with this aside: “I don’t care Trump doesn’t like black people.”
When done right, the music of hiphop can make a Black kid like myself want to learn about politics. This happens over and over again until an entire generation of Black people, spurred by the music, become voices for positive change in their own communities.
We need this more than ever in 2020, but some of hiphop’s elder statesmen aren’t stepping up to the plate. These days, I can’t help but wonder if the role artists like Kanye and Ice Cube played in my youth has run its course. Their platforms, influence and wealth have grown over the years, putting a gap between how Black folks like me see the world and how they see it. Luckily, what they gave us when our views aligned were tools to navigate the world.
Maybe that’s what’s most important. My generation of hiphop lovers is already prepared to try to make the world a better place without the leadership of the artists we once celebrated. I’m falling out of love with the industry, sure, but like Kanye’s words after Hurricane Katrina, I’ll always appreciate what it taught me.