"And they say it's the WHITE man I should fear/but it's my OWN KIND doing all the killing here"-Tupac-Only God Can Judge Me
Sadly, racism and hate will exist until the end of days. It's a harsh reality that our grandchildren will have to endure. The twisted thing about racism and hate is that they don't discriminate- they believe in spreading to all races to every race (a perverted version of "unity"). One of the scariest things about racism and hate within the African American culture is that we don't need any help from other outside races-we do a good job of hating each other on our own.
In hip hop, we HEAR how the "white man" is holding us back, but we SEE how "blacks" bring each other down every chance they get. All of the major "beefs" in hip hop have always been black against black. Now, let's address the elephant in the room-Eminem. Many of his "beefs" were actually him coming back for retaliation. Eminem was a battle rapper and a equal opportunist-meaning he would diss any and everyone regardless of color, gender, religious background,etc. As a matter of fact, Eminem usually poked fun at people who were mainly in pop culture (mainly white people). So, we can say that Eminem can be removed from this lesson. All of the hateful attacks on black rappers or emcees have come from other black artists and emcees. One minute the message is "Stop black on black crime" and the next is "we murking anybody that is hating or trying to stop us". There was once upon a time in the golden era of hip hop, when beefing was all fun. Now, not only are they attacking physically and below the belt-but even attack family members and friends of the artists. I have even seen/heard some holy hip hop artists that actually "beef" with other artists or with pastors....what part of the game is that? How do we expect people to see us as mature, when we're continue doing childish things?
We have to come out of this "crab in a bucket" mentality! I got a reality check for some artists-the reason why you are still in the hood isn't because of the white man. Rather then investing in yourself and career, you spend your money on useless things and when you see someone make it out your hood..you hate on them. Many artists feel as though the white man doesn't like to see black people make money-but a lot of black people don't like to see black people make money/success! How come we see so many black owned companies fail, while so many white companies thrive? Because, we don't like to support each other. If there are 15 artists in your area and you drop a CD-then within your first day sales, you should have at least 14 sales. Fact-70 percent of hip hop is purchased (not bootlegged) by whites. Some whites are putting more into hip hop to support it, then some of it's own black artists. As soon as a artist gets big, we bring them down and back into the bucket.
I know this is a tough subject to cover and one lesson can't even truly scratch the surface(trust me, this subject will be covered again). However, the lesson to be learned from this bar, is to stop living in the past of hate and racism and focus what you can do within your hip hop community to progress it. We don't need any extra excuses of why we are not advancing. Just think-what if all black artists supported each other...fade to black.
Written By C.H.I.C.A.N. George
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