What Happened to Hip-Hop?

Call me old-fashioned or crazy. I don’t care, but ya’ll, what happened to Hip Hop? I am sitting here watching the BET Tribute to Hip Hop feeling nostalgic and sad for today’s youth. When I compare the hip hop of my youth to the music of today, I notice a significant shift. Much of today’s music is pure garbage.

I suppose it is normal for old people to lament the young people’s music. I recall my parents saying the same thing about R&B. However, in my case, I think it’s actually true. Something happened to Hip Hop, and it isn’t good. These lyrics are unnecessarily ignorant…promoting everything wrong with the world.

I am not a fan of censorship for adults. I think artists should be allowed to speak from their personal narratives, and sometimes those stories aren’t righteous, beautiful, good, or pure. However, there is a lack of balance in these stories, and I am calling foul.

It’s mostly gang bangin, smoking weed, having sex, and worshipping money and material things, ideas that are deadly to our beautiful black culture. This isn’t who we are. This isn’t the culture I love and grew up in. We are a people with dignity and class. These lyrics are degrading.

Art may not always be pretty or righteous, but it should always be truthful and authentic. Some of these rappers are happily married with families, but they never rap about love or real relationships or about being a responsible and active father or mother.

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They talk about sex like it is a fight. Look at the words they use: bangin, screwing, smashing, beat it up. Really? Where is the romance in that? Where is the passion or love? They talk about women like we are objects to be used and consumed instead of people to be loved, protected, and cherished.

And don’t get me started on these new women rappers. WTH? They aren’t fit to share the stage with a Queen Latifah, Lauren Hill, or McLyte. They do not carry themselves like Queens. They objectify themselves, and consequently, they objectify me.

The lyrics use hypersexual language, leveraging their sexual performance for material gain. They rap about using their bodies to manipulate men for money, a form of prostitution. The lyrics are degrading and demoralizing, not the kind of images and ideas I want my nieces, students, and mentees to glorify or associate with womanhood.

What Their Lyrics Reinforce

Transactional Identity: My value is my body – pay to access it.

Status by Sexual Power: If I can control men through sex, I win.

Disrespect as Empowerment: If I degrade myself first, no one else can.

Hypermaterialism: Money is the ultimate validation.

While these artists are talented and have the right to express themselves, I find their artistic choices strange. Out of all of the things they could say about life, relationships, and themselves, why is this the kind of message they choose to promote?

Who benefits from these messages being pushed as the face of Black womanhood in mainstream media? Why is it necessary to be so vulgar and ratchet? Where are the ladies? Where are the queens?

Hip Hop is a year older than me. I remember when it used to be silly and fun, mostly rap battles about who was the best MC, doing some silly dance, talking about your favorite pair of sneakers, or telling stories about every day life: our history, pain, struggles, hope, love, spirituality, and faith.

Tupac, one of the best rappers to ever live, was considered a gangsta rapper, and some of his music wasn’t holy or righteous, but it was honest and authentic. He rapped about his share of thuggery, but he also rapped about black culture, his struggle, love, and pain. He celebrated black women through songs like Dear Mama and Keep Your Head Up.

Tupac, whether he was right or wrong, was real. He told the truth, the gory and glory of his life and life in the hood. I will never forget Brenda Got a Baby or Changes, songs that encouraged social change. What happened to balanced and honest artists like him? He was proof that quality rap lyrics that tell our stories and uplift our culture could sell and make award-winning hits.

And yes, there were always the bad boys, but they didn’t define the industry. There was always a balance. And we knew what was bad and what was good. We knew right from wrong and didn’t let music inform our reality.

We had Uncle Luke. saying. he wanted p****, but we also had LL saying, “I Need Love.” We had Easy E, Snoop, and Dr. Dre and nem talking about smoking chronic, and I blasted it and bopped to it, but I also blasted the DOC (KRS-One), Arrested Development, The Fugees, Special K, Slick Rick, and Public Enemy, artists who wanted to raise consciousness and advance our culture. Why is it that the conscious-building rappers aren’t bigger and more well-known? Why is it that so many of them have disbanded and haven’t made a record in years?

What happened to Hip Hop?

It had the potential to educate, inspire, and uplift our community. All that is required is a good beat and catchy chorus, and anything will sell. So why are we being fed a steady stream of mental poison? Why not use the music to educate, elevate, and inspire people?

Music is powerful. Music is magical! It gets deep in your subconscious mind. It inspires people to dance, move, and act. It is a catalyst for creativity, unity, productivity, and upward mobility. Music feeds the spirit and ignites the soul! But it can also promote a culture of death.

Lucifer was the head of the music ministry in heaven, and today he is the head of the music industry on Earth.

We have a corrupt for-profit prison industry, people who have a financial interest in the destruction of our culture, families, and community. They build prisons based on the reading scores of 4th graders, and they have a bed quota they are trying to meet. It seems like hip hop should be encouraging our youth to read and learn more, not go to prison.

Don’t think it is beneath these folks to have a direct influence on what artists, messages, and music become mainstream. I looked and couldn’t find any solid evidence, just speculation and rumors, but I imagine there have been numerous back-door meetings about how to utilize music to influence the way we think and live.

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A widely shared anonymous letter claims major record labels met in the 1990s with prison profiteers to strategically promote gangster rap – and profit by keeping prisons full. The letter has been widely debunked, but the suspicions are valid, given rap’s obsession with violence and illegal activities.

Rapper Ice Cube suggested in an interview that:

“The same people who own the labels own private prisons. Record labels influence music content – not by dictating lyrics, but by steering promotional narratives to support a prison‑filled status quo.”

He called it “social engineering” and tied it to broader financial agendas. As rap’s visibility grew, media and political elites:

Used violent lyrics and imagery to demonize Black youth.
Treated rap as evidence of criminal intent in court cases.
Fueled moral panic that justified aggressive policing and harsh sentencing.

So while rap was born as a response to oppression, the dominant portrayal of Black men in mainstream rap – often curated by white-owned labels – began to feed the public’s fear and reinforce racist ideas.

Are they promoting and producing this garbage because they believe this is the only stuff that will generate profits or is this what they want us listening to and believing about ourselves? Even if there is no actual collusion with the for-profit prison industry, the artists and record companies show no regard for the impact their music and media have on an already vulnerable community. They prioritize their profits over our community’s well-being.

Labels chased profit, and violence sold.

After N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton became a breakout success, major labels realized “gangsta” rap sells big, especially with rebellious white suburban teens buying the records looking for what they believed to be “authentic blackness” and “coolness” reinforcing negative stereotypes of black people.

This led to heavy promotion of artists who rapped about violence, drugs, sex, and street life – even if they weren’t the most talented or thoughtful lyricists. Meanwhile, conscious artists were dropped, shelved, or under-promoted, not because they weren’t good – but because:

Black pride and anti-establishment messaging wasn’t profitable – or maybe it was threatening.
Media and radio gatekeepers chose what to amplify.
In the late ’90s and 2000s, corporate consolidation of radio led to tighter playlists. DJs had less freedom to play conscious or local music.
Music video shows (BET, MTV) increasingly featured hypersexual, violent, or materialistic content because that is what advertisers and execs thought people wanted.
Some DJs and insiders reported being told not to play “too much positive rap” or to push gangsta-themed artists instead.

The result was psychological and social harm.

Black youth began to internalize narrow images of masculinity: toughness, hypersexuality, emotional suppression, materialism, and violence. Record deals and media exposure became more likely if you rapped about trauma than if you rapped about triumph. A new generation of artists like Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, The Roots, Mos Def (Yasiin Bey), and even Lauryn Hill were undercelebrated despite critical acclaim.

Was this by design to hurt the Black community?

I don’t know what’s in these people’s hearts or even if they have hearts. No, there’s no proven plan where execs sat down with prison owners and said, “Let’s use rap to destroy Black America.”

But yes – the decision to promote destructive content and ignore uplifting voices was deliberate, based on financial incentives and a lack of concern for the consequences. Money. It’s always about money, regardless of who gets hurt.

That indifference is a form of systemic racism.

I know I sound crazy, but real woke people always do. Our continuous struggle to move past slavery and Jim Crow laws has been deliberate, often orchestrated by people who claim to be allies.

It is not a coincidence that after Civil Rights laws were passed, finally giving the black community full access to opportunities to pursue upward mobility, that crack just showed up in our community with it the so-called war on drugs and heavier policing and higher sentences for crack then cocaine, welfare policies that discourage marriage and fathers in the home, and easy to access eugenics-inspired planned parenthood and other abortion clinics.

Where did all of the drugs and guns come from? People in the hood don’t have boats and planes to bring that stuff in the community. Why are Check-cashing, lottery ticket places, and liquor stores on every corner in the hood, but you see no libraries or grocery stores with fresh produce?

Things that are marketed to “help” us are really killing us. What’s in the water and food and the chemicals we put in our hair? Would you like a fibroid and infertility with those relaxers? The enemy comes after your fertility and your productivity…your love life, your marriage, your babies, your self-esteem, the family structure, and community unity.

What happened to hip hop? What have we allowed to happen to hip hop? And why do we continue to cooperate with systems that are made for our destruction?

Why This Matters

These lyrics aren’t simply art — they’re part of a larger system where:

Black trauma is being exploited for profit.

Violence and criminal behavior are normalized.

Success is defined by material possessions, even if obtained through illegal means.

Women are reduced to objects or conquests.

Darkness is promoted as light. Wrong is promoted as right.

Stop buying it! Stop playing it! Use your dollars in a way to promote ideas and art that celebrate life, productivity, peace, joy, love, unity and happiness. I am calling our community to arms, not guns but to arms…arms that are linked and united, knees that are bended in prayer for our marriages, children, families, and culture, minds that read books and study history, mouths that speak the truth, all of it.

Create art that reflects the truth of our culture, not art that poisons our young people and makes them think that material things, money, and pleasure are gods. “To teach the each is what rap intended.” Reclaim our beautiful black culture! Reclaim hip hop!