By Jacqueline Whatley, 16, Hollywood HS


Dear Hip-Hop Community,

I regret to inform you that rap music has lost its artistry. Today’s rappers no longer rap for the love of rap music, but to escape their economic hardships; they are hustlers.

No longer is enough thought or time put into the writing of rap songs. Rappers write lazily using juvenile word play, negative lingo about women, continual bragging about the material things that they own, how tough they and their posses are or how many semi-automatic pistols they carry.
As Toure put it, rappers whose lives were within inches of being lost, automatically obtained "street credibility up the a–." For example, 50 Cent: shot 9 times, 6 million-plus records sold.

Many of today’s rappers are egomaniacs and feel as if they are obligated to maintain a hard gangster rep, which explains why many rap beefs today end in violence.

As if this isn’t already enough, rappers instill false hope into the mindsets of their young cult followers. Southern rapper Baby grew up in a housing project in Louisiana. His young fans, who are from the same housing project, feel as though they can ONLY escape their economic hardships not by obtaining a college degree, but by rapping. Baby makes desirable to his young followers the idea that having a red Cadillac Escalade with "swine on the seats, and 24s on the feets" [leather interior with 24-inch rims] is more important than having a career in a profession requiring hard work, time and persistence at college.

Gone are the days of "feel-good" music. Gone is the creativity and the ability to manipulate words into funky-fresh classics.

Moreover, today’s premier radio DJs refuse to spin the records of influential, innovative, creative and politically conscious rappers like Meshell Ndegeocello, Common Sense, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, The Roots, Hieroglyphics, Bahamadia and Black Eyed Peas. Instead they put uncreative, overrated mainstream rappers like 50 Cent and G-Unit, Nelly, Cassidy, Bow Wow, St. Lunatics and Nick Cannon into heavy rotation.

As a fan of hip-hop music since the age of 5, I will not stand for the exploitation of this once-creative art form. The state of hip hop doesn’t look too bright; we need a hip-hop Renaissance. However, the only way for a revolution and revival of the classics to come about is to BOYCOTT, yes, BOYCOTT the commercial hip-hop artists and their boring, lazy, offensive, abominable, juvenile riff raff that they call rap music.

Unless and until you artists can own up to the fact that you have totally raped a once creative art form and begin to write lyrics with content under a phat bass line; you have blood on your hands.