[pepper_green]

Originally Posted by Severian

Mostly, I think it's about timing. Again, this is 2016. You're right, we talk about a lot of gangsta shit, and I've always been largely ok with it. But part of the reason I'm ok with, I think, is that almost all of it is in the past. The pretty distant past, in hip-hop years. It's like, 2pacalypse now and Me Against the World and Ready to Die and Life After Death, 36 Chambers, and so on... These albums are all part of history at this point. It was exciting and nervy and maybe even socially necessary for rappers to make hard, violent, scary music back then. Socially necessary because it had been a while since white America associated blackness with power or strength. It was novel, and it scared white folks, and that was excellent. But it didn't turn out all that well in the end, and despite the many classic records that fall under the gangsta sub-genre, it may have actually had a negative overall impact on hip-hop and cultural discourse alike....

what a smart and mature post! it's hard to be threating and hard anymore because most white people are jaded and used to it by now and don't care. old people could give a fuck and parents these days have heard it all. if art can't shock as it's aesthetic anymore, it has no purpose. it's old man blues. when I hear a republican talking about violence in hip hop these days I think of Ice T and Body Count. whatever old man. nice try old man.