The Rap World Isn't Anti-Carceral Enough For Me
Rappers are the most prominent anti-police advocates in America, but they continuously demonstrate their convenient carcerality.
Last week, Boosie explained his reticence to speak on Megan Thee Stallion and Tory Lanez shooting in part because “that shit got police involved.” Apparently the code meant more to him than making the simple observation that Bun B, TI, and Maxo Kream did: that Tory was out of pocket if he actually shot Megan.
He said in the same interview that he wanted to do a song with her, but couldn’t find it in him to advocate for her in a moment she felt “unprotected.” It’s unlikely Boosie’s comments would move the meter in any police investigation that may be going on, but the optic alone deterred him.
In 2009 he and Webbie dropped “Fuck Tha Police,” a song about exactly what it sounds like. Consider the chorus:
Cities, fuck 'em, narcotics, fuck 'em
FEDS, fuck 'em, DAs, fuck 'em
We don't need you bitches on our street say with me
FUCK THE POLICE (fuck 'em) FUCK THE POLICE (fuck 'em)
The song is a rundown of ways in which the Baton Rouge Police Department violated Boosie and Webbie, from trying to bribe them to stealing $100K from Webbie. Louisiana has the second-highest incarceration rate in the country behind Oklahoma. In 2016, the SPI Center tabulated that black adults comprised only 30.6% of Louisiana’s adult population but 53.7% of adults who were arrested and 67.5% of adults in prison.
The system is so bad that Boosie left Baton Rouge after serving a four-year sentence for gun and drug charges. Despite his horrible experience with the carceral state, he, and so many other artists, are too comfortable with the justice system. Why? Is their adherence to the legal system a matter of institutionalization from years of traumatic interactions with jails and police? Is it mere centrism? Is it fear that lending their profile to carceral abolition advocacy would make them bigger targets? There are different reasons for different artists, but the reality is that as a collective, “Fuck Tha Police” hasn’t yet evolved into “abolish the police.”
One would think that rappers would be the main drivers of the police abolition conversation. They’re the most targeted figures in their cities. Buffalo rapper Conway was just harassed at a funeral in his hometown. New York City has a hip-hop task force specifically funded to surveil artists, and Miami, another rap hotspot, had one as well. In 2018, NYPD’s 72nd Precinct Deputy Inspector Emmanuel Gonzalez issued an edict for his officers to shoot 50 Cent on sight. Prodigy said in his My Infamous Life autobiography that cops detained him and asked him to plant guns or drugs in 50’s car.
For his part, 50 said in 2019, “I knew they were not going to do anything about [Gonzalez], so I stop talking about it. NYPD is hands down the toughest gang in New York.” 50 carries on his beefs with Ja Rule and Rick Ross to this day in the pettiest fashions, but relented to a gang even he didn’t want problems with.
The hip-hop cops wanted him and his peers in jail. Instead of condemning them, 50 is about to memorialize them. He’s producing a show about “hip-hop cop” Derrick Parker starring T.I, another artist with a shaky relationship with the legal system. T.I.’s served two stints in county jail for probation violations, and a year in federal prison after cops infamously found an array of assault weapons in his Georgia home. In 2010, he and his wife Tiny were arrested for drug possession after cops stopped them and found weed and pills. Their case exemplifies the needless meddling of the police. While it’s not right that they may have been operating a vehicle under the influence, who cares about the mere possession of weed and pills? That’s a victimless crime. But the cops thought otherwise, and T.I. had to do another 11 months on a probation violation.
Since his second prolonged jail stint, he’s become more socially active, advocating for various Black issues on social media and in interviews. He’s a fiery figure on some issues, but centrist on others — including police brutality. In June of 2020, after Atlanta was one of many cities where citizens looted in protest of George Floyd’s death, T.I. essentially spoke for the establishment by urging protesters to stop damaging the city he deemed “Wakanda.” He’s also an ally of Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms, who added him and Killer Mike to a 38-member “transition team” in 2018. In the wake of Floyd (and Breonna Taylor’s) death, nationwide demands to defund the police rose. But Bottoms is vying to give the Atlanta police a bigger budget.
It’s clear Bottoms, like T.I. and 50 Cent, see the police as entrenched police institutions. They’ve all criticized police departments in different ways, but at best, they seek a future with “reformed” policing instead of alternatives to police. Their belief in the permanence of policing is what makes T.I. comfortable enough to portray Parker, who has achieved notoriety as a go-to for commentary on rap-related investigations. T.I. and 50’s show is based on his Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from the NYPD’s First “Hip-Hop Cop book.
In a previous interview, Parker has said “I had to earn the respect of the rappers, “not to go out there and treat them all like criminals; you can’t do that in the rap community. I earned their respect and that’s why they could come to me and I can go to the people that other cops couldn’t approach.” That quote alone frames himself as a so-called “cool cop,” but he’s also admitted to actively criminalizing artists. This show will only serve to combat cries for alternatives to police.
A 2020 study conducted by Color Of Change and USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center found that the TV crime genre drama “glorifies, justifies and normalizes the systematic violence and injustice meted out by police, making heroes out of police and prosecutors.” They also found that 60%, or 21 of 34 2018 prime-time dramas, were law and order oriented — especially Law And Order.
One of the richest ironies of modern pop culture is that Ice Cube and Ice T have shifted from anti-police icons to copaganda proponents. To some, they’re both at once. Ice Cube has always had the cops in his crosshairs from N.W.A.’s “Fuck Tha Police” to his own solo catalog, where he condemns policing to this day. Ice T released the inflammatory, anti-police “Cop Killer” with his Body Count band. Yet both Ices have played cops multiple times on TV and Film.
Ice T’s played a cop in New Jack City and Law and Order: SVU (since 2000). Ice Cube has played a cop in the Ride Along, 21 Jump Street series’ and a bounty hunter in All About The Benjamins. Cube said in 2014 that, “I don't like bad cops, I don't like abusive cops. I definitely don't like crooked cops. I like cops that do their job, that care, that give a damn. Those views haven't changed. Playing a cop is kind of cool.”
The two Ices have played a range of relatively endearing characters that appear to “give a damn,” normalizing the good cop trope. But even a cop with the sharpest moral compass is but a cog in an institution intent on preying and warehousing poor (Black) people. We have to get rid of all policing — including the good ones. Carceral abolition is a future oriented concept that requires intense unlearning. But heroizing crime dramas like Law and Order and trivializing buddy cop movies like Ride Along are obstacles in the way of that grand vision. Artists who participate in copaganda are supporting the very system they’ve so viciously condemned.
Another example of rappers’ convenient carceral politics is their reaction to abuse involving their peers. We see it this summer with the way artists are reticent to condemn Tory Lanez. They’re essentially content to “let all the facts come out” before choosing to believe Megan. But Black people especially know that the system’s machinations aren’t invested in actual culpability. There are too many racial politics at the root of arrests, indictments, and convictions to take them at face value. George Zimmerman got off for killing Trayvon Martin; Ronnie Long was wrongfully convicted of rape (and served 44 years) because of withheld evidence.
When ordinarily anti-police people mention due process in discussions of abuse and assault, they’re often looking to shield the aggressor from accountability, therefore maintaining their friendship or support in “good conscience.” “Believe women” should come with an asterisk: *unless someone I like is involved. That’s why Russell Simmons was invited to speak on a Drink Champs panel earlier this summer despite numerous accusations of sexual assault. The convenient carcerality was also apparent with supporters of XXXTentacion, who repeatedly looked the other way on grisly abuse, that the late rapper admitted to, because he hadn’t been found guilty for it.
R. Kelly worked with artists for years after his 2002 child pornography acquittal. The not guilty verdict trumped a sex tape (the one we knew about at the time), his marriage to 15-year-old Aaliyah, and years worth of rumors that he had sexual relations with underage girls. The Surviving R. Kelly docuseries exposed that although jurors believed it was him in the tape, the singer used his riches to deter key witnesses. “Not guilty” had nothing to do with innocence. In America, power dynamics skew justice. Whether it’s a rich defendant or a racist/sexist jury, the entity with the least amount of power faces the harder time in the court of law. Most Black people acknowledge this, but conveniently lean on the scales of justice when it’s time to defend a beloved abuser. In so many ways, “waiting for the facts to come out” is an anti-Black stance that so often works against Black women.
Rappers are the most prominent anti-police advocates in America, but they continuously demonstrate their convenient carcerality. They make money from copaganda. They evoke the justice system to shirk accountability. They advocate for reform instead of abolition. They adhere to the idea of “good cops.” So many rappers craft stories about operating below the legal system’s sight, but they can’t see beyond it.
Their limited scope is in part a testament to the efficacy of white supremacy. The communities that artists rhyme about are manifestations of police containment — not just of body but mind. Artists like 50, Boosie, and Ice T have publicly talked about their life in an underworld that relies on ingenious ways to evade the law and stay free. Notorious B.I.G. rhymed about being an untouchable drug kingpin throughout his music, but still rapped, “only the feds I fear.” As the hip-hop task forces and FBI files on Wu-Tang demonstrate, artists are in the crosshairs of cops in a similar manner. To most cops, rappers’ music might as well make them criminals, which makes them willing to frame certain artists just to put them away. No matter how tough, savvy, or wealthy a kingpin or rapper is, the right charges can rip them from a powerful figure to another veritable slave of the state. There’s no crew that can go against “the biggest gang in America.”
That fear leaves artists wary of challenging the police’s existence even when it's in their best interest. They can’t conceptualize a world without the carceral state when it’s so deeply ingrained in their inner constitution to see cops as their number one adversary, and jail as their biggest fear. No matter how much rappers hate cops, institutionalization has instilled it as a fact of life for many of them.
The artists who don’t hold that fear are still battling their own centrism. Celebrities, as cogs of consumerism, are a spoke on the wheel of capitalism. Anti-carceral advocates also call to eradicate other exploitative dynamics as they work in tandem to prey upon poor people. Defunding the police and abolishing prisons would start the momentum for uprooting economic inequality, and these celebrities’ riches, and lofty pedestals, would be next. They don’t want their proximity to whiteness threatened too much. As unabashed capitalists, celebrities may resent the police but have ascended a system where they’re a necessary evil.
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Venmo: Andre-Gee
"get rid of all policing" LOL good luck with that, it ain't likely to happen in this lifetime.
WHOOO. U really letting these folx have it, thank u.
A couple questions, because I must continue the trend:
1 - why has rap remained so resistant to more left leaning political stances for years? Is it because it’s an inherently capitalist art or because most artists are ultimately capitalists?
2 - has the continued harassment of Noname caught your attention and if so, how can it be combatted?
3 - why is anarchy the worst political system?
4 - What up to Bigg Jus!