One of the hardest parts of being a fan of hip-hop is being asked the following question: “how can you listen to music that revolves so much around the glorification of violence?” I usually deflect the question by saying something about how you can consume art without endorsing its message, but really that’s all that is, a deflection. Consuming art, or rather understanding it, is the act of extending one’s humanity and allowing the artistic expression to join with that humanity (paraphrasing Ralph Ellison there). Listening to rap music is a central part of my life, and my relationship with the art is too deep to pass off some CNN sounding B.S. about not “endorsing a message” to such a probing question. The real truth is, I’m not sure how to answer that question.
Part of the challenge is nailing down what is meant by violence. What kind of violence are we talking about? Is it Eminem’s maniacal “Kill You,” a veritable laundry list of fantasies ranging from chopping people up with chainsaws to developing pictures of the devil, or is it Bobby Shmurda’s “Hot N----,” the enormously popular summer anthem which describes Shmurda and his homies mowing down enemies with every kind of machine gun you can name and several you can’t? It may seem like a ridiculous question, but the kinds of violence described and celebrated in these two songs are extremely different and hold varying significance to the question at hand. While “Kill You” can be pretty chilling to listen to, it hits that level of crazy that pushes it nearly into abstraction. Eminem isn’t trying to make us think he’s actually done these things, he’s trying to convince us that he actually wants to. Beneath its brutal descriptions, the song’s real purpose is to ask us just how crazy we think he is.
Shmurda’s “Hot N----,” on the other hand, has its own element of fantasy, in the sense that it isn’t documentary. But the activities he’s describing, gunning down his enemies in the street and “selling crack since like the fifth grade,” reverberate with a violence that feels markedly more live-action than the cartoonish blood-splatter of “Kill You.” Shmurda’s lyrics remind one too much of what is actually happening in the collective hood of cities across the US. Chicago had over 500 murders in 2012, and police data indicated that somebody was shot in the city every 3.57 hours. In Bobby Shmurda’s hometown of New York, over 60 percent of 2012’s 419 murder victims were African American and were largely the result of gun violence. While Eminem’s serial killer persona threatens us with the idea of Saw come to life, Shmurda focuses on a wave of death that is terrifyingly real. As such, I find the kind of violence portrayed in “Hot N----”, and songs like it harder to rationalize.
But what makes this issue so difficult is that I don’t even feel comfortable with that previous sentence. I’m essentially saying that it feels more acceptable to listen to somebody rave about sadistic fantasies than it does to listen to another somebody turn the bloodshed of inner-city violence into a feel-good club banger. Doesn’t it seem weird that I find it harder to justify listening to a 20-year-old kid rap about what he’s seen all around him as he has grown up? If hip-hop is going to be used a venue to discuss violence, and it most certainly will, it seems wrong to pass judgment against expression of actual experiences.
I guess the part of me that shudders for a moment whenever I listen to “Hot N----” is responding to the overt celebration in Bobby’s words. Its his eagerness to embody this character that makes me ask myself, “is this wrong?” But as Rembert Browne of Grantland points out in his excellent piece on the song, that energy is what makes the song so infectious and irresistibly joyous when listened to with a bunch of people looking to forget about everything other than becoming one undulating blob mimicking Shmurda’s trademark Shmoney Dance. The most amazing thing about “Hot N----” is that for all the machine gunnery and descriptions of how victims “twirl then they drop,” the song is somehow uplifting. The part of me that squirms when I hear him and think about the hundreds of kids out there shooting at each other is swiftly shoved out of the way by the exuberant charisma of this dude.
Again, this is the challenge of discussing violence in hip-hop. I started by explaining how “Kill You” and “Hot N----” depict two different kinds of violence and in no time at all, this somehow devolved into a description of turning up on the dance floor. Maybe that’s the best way to explain it. Rap music provides a means to express and entertain violent ideas in a way that transforms them into something else. At least that’s the best way I can describe it. If you don’t agree, or if you’d rather not listen to music that uses violence and aggression in that fashion, I don’t blame you. But I can tell you in full confidence, you’re missing out.
