Dopeman: The Decline Of The Drug Dealer Turned Rapper Archetype

[djchameleon]

Preferential disputes aside, the drug dealer turned rapper archetype has largely faded from existence among today's Top 40 Hip Hop artists.

“We treat this Rap **** just like, handlin’ weight / What they want we give it to ‘em, what they abandon we take / Hit a rapper with consignment, let him know what’s at stake / Put his ass in the studio, let him cook up a cake / When it's hot, get him a money spot in every state / Like the wiz in Camelot, the mom-and-pop’s is the gate…” –Jay Z, “Rap Game Crack Game.”

TIME magazine featured Jay Z on the cover of its “TIME 100” issue last April. It was Jay’s second appearance on the magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. Conveniently, the publication preceded the release of Magna Carta Holy Grail by just a few months. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned Jigga’s profile, a task executed by Russell Simons for Jay’s 2005 appearance on the revered list. The billionaire mayor kept his contempt for the Ed Koch-era Sean Carter concealed behind his words of praise for Jay Z. Perhaps oblivious to his own disingenuousness, Bloomberg displayed his innate plutocratic embracement of wealth, while his policies reflected disdain for low-income minority communities, which Jay might call “Where I’m From.” Although I’m not particularly fond of Hov’s recent material, his status continues to escalate beyond any clichéd conceptualization of the American Dream. Jay’s achievements far outsize those of his contemporaries with similar backgrounds of crack-laced Horatio Alger stories, most closely rivaled, perhaps, by 50 Cent. But among today’s contemporary emcees, that archetypal drug dealer turned rapper no longer holds the same relevance. If Jay was the Michael Jordan of drug dealers turned rappers, 50 Cent was Kobe Bryant. And for good or ill, no LeBron James of Crack Rap appears on the horizon.

Has the hustler/rapper image has lost its allure? Has Hip Hop simply matured? Has a common sense epidemic caused today’s decrease of former drug dealers in Hip Hop? Perhaps some causality lies in all of the above. But an indisputable causal relationship between societal conditions and Hip Hop’s musical content appears most evident in how drug dealing’s respective emergence and fading favorability as subject matter correlate with the respective emergence and subsiding of the 1980s crack epidemic.

I thought I would share this editorial that I read and get some thoughts on it.
I didn't want to quote the whole thing but you can read the rest of it here