“Death gotta be easy, cuz life is hard.”

Hip-hop is arguably the most popular genre of music in the world. Hip-hop is largely composed of Black male artists, therefore, some of the most popular musicians in the world are Black males. In 2018, according to Business Insider, the hip-hop/R&B genre ended as the largest genre of the year in terms of “total consumption”, which includes album sales and album-equivalent streaming figures. Seven of the top ten most-consumed albums of the year came from the hip-hop/R&B genre. It is also Black males that experience the highest rates of homicide victimization, the highest age adjusted all-cause mortality rate, and are the most incarcerated and least educated population in the united states. To put it simply, the commercial success generated by hip-hop is; 1) reaped by a miniscule number of Black males; 2) not significantly transferred to the overall socioeconomic well being of Black males in society.

I would like to situate hip-hop as an entity that extracts, packages, and mass distributes Black male trauma, breaking off a small percentage to the artists who express it while record labels, their executives, and corporations reap the much larger yields generated by the “product”; while also reinforcing anti-Black misandry by perpetuating stereotypes of Black men as violent (“savage”) and hypersexual, among other racist caricatures. The perpetuation of these stereotypes further pathologizes Black men and assures the public that Black men “simply are the way they are” and “they like being in the conditions they are in”, which prevents any critical thought from being applied to study the unique vulnerabilities of Black men and boys due to both their Blackness and maleness.

Since its inception, hip-hop has been an avenue for Black people to express themselves. Telling stories of pain and violence is a part of this self-expression. As the listener of the music, more often than not, we are unaware of the real pain and emotion being vividly expressed to us. This is possibly due to the music’s unique melodies, thundering beats, or some other form in which it is presented. However, what is thought of less critically is the societal tendency to not perceive Black males as vulnerable, as susceptible to feeling pain or depression. The mass commercial consumption of Black male trauma presented in the form of hip-hop is a manifestation of anti-Black misandry and the racist theories that pathologize Black men and boys. They are not viewed as vulnerable in their music because Black men are void of emotion (other than anger). Because Black men are hypersexual beasts and brutes who do not have the ability to self-reflect. Because Black men are not subjects of-or in- theories emanating from their own experience, they are often conceptualized as the threats others fear them to be. It is because of these racist and misandric notions of Black masculinity and manhood that Black male trauma is commercially viable.

Within hip-hop is a vast reserve of complex and vivid stories told by Black men. These stories need to be framed as pictures painted that critically reflect their material conditions and lived experiences. Black men and boys are human beings deserving of intentional care and rigorous study in order to derive solutions that center their experiences and work to transform their conditions. Black men experience unimaginable pain and trauma and they constantly express it to the world through their music. To be young and black in urban areas of the United States is to be subjected to all the harshest elements of oppression at the most vulnerable period of one’s life. I believe that by critically studying the music, by going beyond merely listening to the music and instead concentrating on hearing the voices that make the music, we can identify and understand the “harshest elements” and their effects on young Black men in amerikan society.

For my analysis here, I’ve utilized the “25 Warning Signs Someone May Be Suicidal” put together by The Depression Project. View the list of signs closely:

1. Increased use of alcohol or drugs
2. Talking about wanting to die
3. Talking about existential things- e.g. “what’s the point of life?”
4. Talking as if others would be better off without them
5. They’ve socially withdrawn all of a sudden
6. They appear in “survival mode”
7. “Pushing themselves” in a self-destructive way
8. Displaying extreme mood swings
9. They’ve talked about ways to die/kill themselves
10. Talking about being a burden to others
11. They have said they don’t know how much longer they can go on
12. They’ve expressed a concerning amount of grief/suffering whilst going through a difficult life transition
13. They’ve said they don’t see a way out of a difficult experience they’re having
14. Behaving recklessly
15. Struggling to find meaning in life
16. Talking hopelessly about the future
17. They have practiced “self-harm”
18. They are experiencing a lot of distress reliving trauma
19. Talking about feeling trapped
20. They keep saying how much they want to stop suffering
21. Expressing strong amounts of self-hatred
22. They have stated life is pointless
23. They can’t envision a future they want to live in
24. They feel as if no one cares what happens to them
25. Expressing extreme loneliness and isolation

Now, keeping these warning signs in mind, let’s examine hip-hop great Tupac Shakur:

Lord Knows by Tupac Shakur (1995)

I smoke a blunt to take the pain out

And if I wasn’t high, I’d probably try to blow my brains out

I’m hopeless, they shoulda killed me as a baby

And now they got me trapped in the storm, I’m goin’ crazy

Forgive me; they wanna see me in my casket

And if I don’t blast I’ll be the victim of them bastards

I’m losin’ hope, they got me stressin’, can the Lord forgive me

Got the spirit of a thug in me

My memories bring me misery, and life is hard

In the ghetto, it’s insanity, I can’t breathe

Got me thinkin’, what do Hell got?

Cause I done suffered so much, I’m feelin’ shell-shocked

Only God Can Judge Me by Tupac Shakur (1996)

I’d rather die like a man than live like a coward

There’s a ghetto up in Heaven and it’s ours, Black Power

Is what we scream as we dream in a paranoid state

And our fate, is a lifetime of hate

Dear Mama, can you save me? And f*ck peace

’Cause the streets got our babies, we gotta eat

No more hesitation each and every black male’s trapped

And they wonder why we suicidal runnin’ round strapped

Can you identify any particular warning signs?

#1, #2, #3, #4, #15, #16, and #19 are some of the signs Tupac displays within these bars. This then begs the question: during his life, was Tupac ever treated with the care and consideration of someone who may be suicidal and/or mentally unhealthy? Tupac Shakur was shot & killed in 1996, at the age of 25. In his lifetime, he recalled vivid and graphic stories of pain and feelings of suicidal ideation. Tupac expressed tremendous vulnerability, yet, one would need to look extremely hard in order to find any account, other than his own music, of him being a vulnerable, self-reflective, and growing young man. This is an example of the societal neglect to perceive the Black male as vulnerable, as human. The failure to perceive Tupac this way is explained brilliantly by Dr. Tommy J. Curry:

As a subject of study, the Black male is persona non grata. Young racialized males repeatedly have been shown to be at the greatest risk for witnessing and becoming victim to violence, facts that make them more likely than other groups in similar environments to suffer anxiety, depression, or aggression as response.

The vulnerability of this group is often ignored by race scholars and gender theorists because of the overwhelming societal stigmas attached to Black males. As the Social Policy Report “The Development of Boys and Young Men of Color” recently explained, the vulnerability of young men of color to death and violence “often goes unnoticed or is dismissed because their victimization is seen as caused by their own criminal behavior and violence.”

To offer a more contemporary case study of Black male vulnerability expressed in hip-hop, we turn to young up-and-coming Chicago rapper Polo G:

XXL Freestyle by Polo G (2020)

Summertime, out there slavin’, we exhausted from the heat

Better get a ride home, ’cause ain’t no walkin’ when it’s beef

They only wanna know his story when they chalk him in the street

Burials you die inside when that coffin gettin’ deep

Twenty-five, that’s just an age that we often don’t get to see

Told bro to stay on point, ’cause they’ll knock him off to get to me

Stuck in my gangsta ways, I’m living lawless and discrete

Ain’t go to see a therapist, I just start talkin’ to them beats

No Matter What by Polo G (2020)

We was taught to fight no matter what, it ain’t no givin’ up

Never really know when it’s your time, you gotta live it up

Standin’ on that corner like a rush and we can’t get enough

War zone, I’m on my way to school, got my blicker tucked

Prayed to the Lord for better days, felt like He skippin’ us

You gon’ either die or see the system, ain’t no slippin’ up

In these streets, they’ll take your life and they don’t give a f*ck

Ain’t worried bout the opps, I’m just tryna run my digits up

#6, #12, #14, and #24 are some of the signs demonstrated here. Polo G and I are the same age, 21 years old. From this incredibly young age, he expresses various critical feelings and thoughts that cannot go unnoticed. As mentioned, Polo G is an emerging new hip-hop artist, experiencing great commercial success and gaining nationwide, even global popularity. Critical questions must be raised, with the intention of humanizing these young Black men who carry unimaginably heavy and painful burdens. Does this growing popularity contribute to Polo G’s wellness? Or does it contribute to his commercial viability to masses of people that see him as entertainment and not human?

It must be constantly reinforced that Black men and boys are human beings deserving of critical and intentional care and study, in order to derive solutions that center their experiences and work to transform their conditions. Studying hip-hop and the artists that contribute to it is a constructive step to be taken in this direction of humanizing Black men and boys. I’d urge you to regularly revisit the 25 Warning Signs Someone May Be Suicidal. Black male hip-hop artists & rappers display virtually all of these warning signs in their music. Do we consider them suicidal? Mentally ill? At-risk? Do we critically assess the mental health of Black men when they express trauma in their music? Are resources directed to this vulnerable population? Or are their material realities extracted and turned into commercial prosperity for record labels, multimedia corporations, and the entertainment industry?

What does it say about the expendability of Black male life when the racial-and gender-specific trauma they experience is converted into one of the most commercially viable and profitable forms of entertainment in modern society?

REFERENCES

Banks, Andrea, and Robert Motley. “Black Males, Trauma, and Mental Health Service Use- A Systematic Review.” Perspectives in Social Work, December 13, 2018, 4–19. Accessed August 23, 2020.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Health Statistics. Underlying Cause of Death 1999–2018 on CDC WONDER Online Database, released in 2020.

Curry, Tommy J. The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2017.

Lynch, John. “For the First Time in History, Hip-Hop Has Surpassed Rock to Become the Most Popular Music Genre, According to Nielsen.” Business Insider. Business Insider, January 4, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/hip-hop-passes-rock-most-popular-music-genre-nielsen-2018-1

Moore, Antonio. “The Black Male Incarceration Problem Is Real and It’s Catastrophic.” HuffPost. December 07, 2017. Accessed September 06, 2020. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/black-mass-incarceration-statistics_b_6682564?guccounter=1.

“The Gender Gap in African American Educational Attainment.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. March 14, 2019. Accessed September 06, 2020. https://www.jbhe.com/2019/03/the-gender-gap-in-african-american-educational-attainment-2/.

Staples, Robert. Black Masculinity: The Black Male’s Role in American Society. 1982.