The Secret Sauce In Trap Rap is Toxicity
By: Bonsu Thompson
Tags: Jeezy, Hip Hop, Toxic Masculinity, Rap, Gucci Mane

Bypassing hip hop’s blackest eye (’Pac and Biggie), there have been countless rap beefs that flirted with violent endings. Nas and Jay escaped tragedy by a hair trigger. Common was once a marked man on Ice Cube’s West Coast. Then there were those who couldn’t avoid the violence. Some years ago, Raekwon delivered pre-podcast Joe Budden a quick message via an associate’s fist. 50 Cent was stabbed by affiliates of Murder Inc. leaders Irv Gotti and Ja Rule. Hip-hop has and will hopefully forever remain a reflection of the Black community. Black people often have to fight. Black people are traumatically conditioned to fight by default. In the sphere of rap music, it’s sadly par for the course. So we lose young comets like Pop Smoke and King Von before they reach stardom. We are robbed of the West Coast’s Stokley Carmichael reincarnate Nipsey Hussle.

My issue with corporate hip-hop is that it only felt a truce between Jeezy and Gucci Mane was worth a communal effort when it became lucrative. While a potential peace treaty was certainly baked into the consumer allure, Apple cared less about whether the rappers reconciled their differences. Moreover, while many rap fans were hopeful for a peaceful Verzuz and even praised the discarding of dated beef, there was a collective of carnivores that yearned for an altercation — a fist fight, entourage brawl or worse. In the illest areas of Black America, especially where toxic masculinity is a generational fixture, backing down from confrontation is considered taboo. This is because poor, frustrated people have little that is both tangible and valuable. Then those with the absolute least — the young — begin to appraise personal stock against how cavalier one is toward the lives and death of others; how effortlessly they would endanger or extinguish another person. The soundtrack to this dysfunction has great contributions from Jeezy and Gucci. It’s why both have clung so tightly to their street past and credibility since sharing a rookie season. They had to first be embraced by nationwide street toxicity before being accepted as music artists. It’s almost as if the trauma is the aspiration. Psychological oppression is a powerful drug.

For the past 15 years, although lesser over the last seven, Jeezy and Gucci were on the brink of doing the other grave harm. Yet, again, hip-hop remains a mirror for living while Black in the United States. To exist under that cloud of danger is a routine day for any person who resides in a manmade ghetto. They are disenfranchised and conditioned to reflect America’s devaluing of their lives and deaths. This is how and why poor men and women of color die so easily; so voluminous; so silent. (Please don’t leap into this post’s comments section capping about Black death in other countries) Yet, in America, if a Black person’s death can boost album sales or an endangered life can earn Apple millions of streams, the drama isn’t senseless. The lives aren’t completely worthless. Lest we forget that before any Black body is perceived as valuable by the United States, its toe must first wear a price tag.