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Well, I'm not even having a real fit about it. I just think it's distasteful for a rapper, in 2016, to choose to market himself this way. What's funny is that most of my bitching is just a direct response to your pushing.
Yeah, there's a lot I don't know about gangs, but I do know gang culture is inexorably linked to violence. I don't have a problem with every rapper who's ever gang-banged, though, obviously. And a lot of rappers I love have gang references peppered throughout their lyrics that I don't even pick up on. I do think gangs are an objectively negative, destructive phenomenon, but I have no problem with people telling their stories.
I have a specific problem with this YG album. Partly because it feels less like he's processing his experiences through art, and more like he (again, YG specifically) is glorifying the lifestyle.
Seems painfully immature at best, and potentially harmful at worst. Most of it has to do with timing. Like, we've been there, done that in hip-hop. Does this asshole really need to "bring gangsta back" in this specific way? It's marketing. It's a young, dumb kid who still thinks like an adolescent. It gets to me, seeing that plastered on over record store walls and iTunes. What a child.
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