Yes
Neil Spencer is an Observer music writer and former editor of the NME
I make a point of disagreeing with Tory leaders on just about everything, but I make a small exception for David Cameron's comments about hip hop, or rather, though Dodgy Dave didn't specify these terms, gangsta rap and its first cousin dancehall reggae.
'I say to Radio 1, do you realise that some of the stuff you play on Saturday night encourages people to carry guns and knives?' enquired Cameron.
Despite Radio 1's protestations, it would be remarkable if the station didn't realise just that since gangsta rap's attitudes long ago went mainstream, and someone there must by now have checked out the lyrics of a chart-topper like 50 Cent. Never mind Saturday night, when Tim Westwood's celebrated hip hop show airs. Gangsta values - the assorted delights of blowing away rivals, bossing 'hoes' and 'bitches' and burning 'batty boys' - have become sewn into popular culture.
To unpick them will take a lot more than Westwood minding the niceties of his playlist. The knife-toting, gun-happy, life-is-cheap mindset celebrated by gangsta rap and enacted daily on our streets and in our playgrounds is, for sure, a beast of complex origins. The emergence of a neo-criminal underclass - over which Cameron's party presided when in government - has plenty to do with it, as has the escalation of hard drug use, internet porn and a crisis in masculine identity.
Still, the music industry, from humble (ha) radio DJs to the executive class of multinational conglomerates, might like to question their part in the creation of gangsterism. The steady drip of poison into youthful ears over the last dozen or so years surely hasn't helped, whether it's the wearisome exaltation of 'thug life' amid an auto-fire of expletives, or the parade of videos showing women as dumb accoutrements in a bling-laden lifestyle, leading one industry insider to remark that 'the record companies have turned themselves into pimps'.
Gangsta rap's apologists usually retort that the music isn't creating attitudes but reflecting them, that these are despatches from the grim life of the ghetto, that they are just 'keeping it real'. The more sophisticated add that murder and mayhem have always been part of pop's discourse - witness the many old blues songs featuring gunplay or the gore-soaked 'murder ballads' of country and folk.
Some hardcore hip hop does fit into this lineage - Eminem's catalogue, for example, includes skilful narratives of life on the wrong side of the tracks - but there is a difference between a murder ballad and the preaching of hatred. One tells a tragic tale of human frailty, the other is little less than an incitement to violence.
It's a distinction that isn't lost on musicians themselves. One of gangsta rap's disservices to pop is to have all hip hop painted in its colours. It's ironic that while US hip hop has largely turned away from the social commentary of early hits like Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message', global hip hop is overwhelmingly the music of informed protest, from Cuba's Orishas to France's MC Solaar to the late South African rapper Mr Devious.
Within black America, too, there is a vigorous opposition to gangsta attitudes - 'conscious' hip hoppers like Philadelphia's the Roots and rap poets like Saul Williams and Ursula Rucker offer angry but eloquent critiques. And we know what director Spike Lee thinks about the 'N' word. Sadly, a movie like Williams's Slam, a wrenching portrait of what happens when yesterday's cocksure gangstas wind up in jail, will never get the budgets and airtime available to the latest corporate-cranked fool from 'the gangsta zone'.
Concerns that gangsta rap (or Marilyn Manson's creepy satanism or death metal bands) may be helping to twist the psyches of the young - specifically young men - are not confined to opportunist politicians grateful for a stick with which to beat the Beeb. In recent years other, better informed voices than Cameron have also had 'the courage to speak up' - Trevor Phillips of the Commission for Racial Equality and Lee Jasper, of the National Assembly Against Racism, for example. It's a conversation I have personally had with musicians, promoters, teachers, parents in the playground, my own kids. Let's not turn it into a moral panic, but also let's not just look the other way.
No
Patrick Neate wrote Where You're at: Notes from the Frontline of a Hip Hop Planet
From footballers' broken metatarsals to Big Brother breakdowns, some moments of cultural import are all too predictable. An opportunistic politician taking a swipe at hip hop as a prime source of social ills is just another (see Tipper Gore, George W Bush, David Blunkett and so forth). David Cameron's comments last week, therefore (that hip hop 'encourages people to carry guns and knives'), will provoke little among those that know but weary resignation and a sense of deja vu.
Big Brother breakdowns, some moments of cultural import are all too predictable. An opportunistic politician taking a swipe at hip hop as a prime source of social ills is just another (see Tipper Gore, George W Bush, David Blunkett and so forth). David Cameron's comments last week, therefore (that hip hop 'encourages people to carry guns and knives'), will provoke little among those that know but weary resignation and a sense of deja vu.
In some ways he's right; they're all right - hip hop frequently tells scary tales of violence and misogyny and all sorts of other nasty things. He is also, however, shooting fish in a barrel (as politicians so like to do) and deliberately missing the point. It's at moments like this that hip hop (or rather, let's face it, the circling media) wheels out producers or performers, aficionados or apologists to defend the form with hypotheses that are variously disingenuous, incomplete and contradictory. Sure, hip hop's violent, they say, but so are movies, video games, TV, even books. True, but distributing the buck is not the same as justifying the content.
But hip hop, they say, reflects the reality lived by its makers, and it's social documentary. Really? In some cases, perhaps. But most rappers are no more icons for a gun toting, gang-banging, mansion-dwelling lifestyle than the Spice Girls were for feminism. Indeed, hiring the requisite models and cars for the music video has been a running joke in hip hop for over a decade.
Right, they say, so hip hop is fantasy; no more gritty than Wrestlemania or The A-Team. OK, but key to rappers' identities is their claims of authenticity. And, from Scott La Rock to Proof via Tupac, Biggie and more, hip hop's history is littered with the corpses of stars murdered, more or less, in its name.
Well, the final argument goes, not all hip hop is violent; some is political and 'positive' - what about Dead Prez, Common or Mos Def? Again, true enough, but these so-called 'conscious' rappers are far outweighed by the would be 'gangstas'. Indeed, you might as well claim that, since David Cameron seems young and cuddly, all Tories are now the same. The majority of hip hop is aggressive, oversexualised and materialistic ad absurdum; but so is the culture that spawned it. This is not to say that hip hop artists bear no responsibility for recreating this culture; but their responsibility is no greater (and surely, indeed, much less) than that borne by, for example, politicians.
Over the years I've spent a lot of time in secondary schools teaching teenagers creative writing. Even as a lifelong hip hop fan, I never cease to be amazed by some kids' lazy adoption of its posturing, slang and, on occasion, aggression. But the frankly obvious truth is that the laziest, most alienated kids are always the ones from the most difficult circumstances who are the worst socialised, least educated and limited by the narrowest worldview. I don't necessarily blame politicians for these attributes. But I certainly don't blame hip hop.
A few years ago I interviewed a young rapper in Johannesburg, South Africa. He told me that the genre was special because growing up listening to Public Enemy had introduced him to all sorts of political, moral and cultural ideas he'd never previously encountered. I know exactly what he meant because I feel the same. For me, hip hop has been a point of access to all kinds of other information and, particularly as an adolescent, it was somewhat influential in my development. Later I went on to do a degree and Masters before becoming a journalist and author. I say this because hip hop has been important to me. But to claim it has affected my development more than my middle-class home, loving family and good schooling would be patently ridiculous. By the same token, therefore, it should go without saying that it's not hip hop's fault people carry guns and knives. Is it the politicians'?
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Rhyme or crime?
'Got a temper nigga, go ahead, lose your head/Turn your back on me, get clapped and lose your legs/I walk around gun on my waist, chip on my shoulder/Till I bust a clip in your face, pussy, this beef ain't over'
50 Cent: 'Many Men'
'Besides rap, I don't talk, but make plenty of moves/I'll murder ten of you fools, before you're ready to choose/You either win or you lose, and I love to win/Even if it means I got to shed blood again.'
DMX: 'Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood'
'Bitch you better take notes, 'fo you end up cut-throat/And ya on the ground bro', with your fuckin' shirt soaked/Eeny-Meeny-Miny-Mo, blow a nigga out his clothes/Come out the trench-coat with a Sawed-Off, and lay me down a hoe'
Three 6 Mafia: 'Testin' My Gangsta'
