Is Corporate America to Blame for Hip-Hop Violence?
April 22, 2005 — From Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Alice Cooper, musicians have long tried to project a “bad boy” image, often to help pique public interest in their music. But what’s going on these days in the world of rap music — and its surrounding culture, known as hip-hop — is really something else. The very first rap record — 1979’s “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang — was a revelatory paean to fun and equality — with even a dash of patriotism. But here’s the new message of rap and hip-hop, courtesy of the top-selling artist Curtis Jackson, also known as 50 Cent: “I put a hole in a n—— for f—-ing with me / Better watch how you talk, when you talk about me / ’cause I’ll come and take your life away.” It’s telling that Jackson chose the moniker 50 Cent to pay homage to Kelvin Martin — a legendary Brooklyn stick-up kid from the 1980s, who is believed to have committed more than 30 murders and was also known as “50 Cent.” This outlaw quality is not just an image from a music vid
