Since I recently posted on Slate's erroneous statistics as to the levels of justice system involvement black folks have (and I don't mean as lawyers for the defense), let me take it back to the 1990's. See what a lot of people don't realize is that music is a means of programming people to do bad things.
Even as a child, due to the training I received and what I consider my general affinity for decency, I didn't quite get into what we can refer to as gangster rap. I like(d) rap but I was more on the conscious raising type (which, looking back contained a lot of erroneous messages themselves). But other artists had some content that could be quite dangerous to those with less affinity to decency and morals and lesser impulse control. For example let me share some of the lyrics of Black Moon's "Reality (Killing Every Nigga)":
I represent the original head
Killing the original dead
Let me stop here for a minute. "original" in AA black vernacular is usually a reference to "original man" which is a common reference to black men. However in this case we have a dual layer message. "Dead" is a common reference to those on a "dead level", a Masonic reference to those who are unenlightened. Thus an "original dead" can mean not only a "dead original man" or dead black man, but also a black man who is unenlightened. Thus the "killing" in this reference can be seen as a "conscious" reference to killing 'sellout black men" who are "Original dead".
Check my dialect from my diaphragm
You got your nine by your waistline and
Me and my niggas don't give a damn
We got the Bucktown Boot Camp attitude kill a man
Timberland make me general
Here we start with the obligatory gun talk. The obligatory kill talk. The obligatory beat down "Timberland make me general" talk.
That's light at night puffin' the L by the grip and now
I smoke so much Li I hallucinate
Ill visions in my head
Everybody must dead
[Hook: repeat 4X]
Killing every nigga in sight
Killing every nigga in sight
Killing every nigga in...
Self explanatory.
I wake up in the morning..(we puff Li)
I wake up in the evening...(we puff Li)
Check the blahzay blah
Get up and get ready to work? PShaw....Do homework? Study? Pshawwww.....weed man...weeeed.
Don't you hate niggas who make records for bitches
It's all about the blunts
Fuck them stunts
Now, what ya want is what ya get
Like biggety bitch bend over blow me
Here is a shining example of how to be a man.
Original crooks never get dissed
If we get dissed
Niggas get that to the back
Five where he at?...(right here!)
Another mission to be dissing
Now who do I be dissing bitches
God, fuck the intermission
It's about killing the nigga
The one playing the bigger
The one playing the sucka ducks with my trigger
Feel the buck coming on in the set
One thing that's very important here is the admission that they are being crooks. See it's not that they don't know any better. They just think that they can get away with it all.
All over America there are black parents who are playing shit like this to their children. They are singing these lyrics in front of their children. They are teaching their children not only the lyrics but the attitude promoted in these songs. And they don't have a problem with any of it.
And when their kid gets 3 shots center mass by the police they have a problem. They never thought for a minute that they had programmed their kids for destruction with lyrics like the above.
