Hake on the Crucible: Rap/Culture Debate @The_Crucil3le
Saturday, December 18, 2021 — Live 6 PM PST (8 CT / 9 ET) — James Hake joins a debate panel on the Crucible (a channel hosted by Andrew Wilson and Pedro Lebron Guzman III), to discuss rap and “culture” alongside Night Nation versus NOT Devin Reviews (note: Devin Reviews had to cancel, and so the great Low End Theory filled in in his place, and added great liveliness to the debate!) and the Scotsman Earthmanbrick.
MY EXPERIENCE / THOUGHTS WITH RAP (BEFORE THE DEBATE)
When Christians and whites (the only older people I knew) started criticizing rap music, I didn’t quite know what they were talking about. When I was 5, my oldest brother bought me a Christian rap tape by Stephen Wiley (“Rappin’ for Jesus” and maybe “Bible Break”). My older sister had early DC Talk tapes, and I later got a compilation cassette of various Christian rappers. (I still get lyrics in my head to this day from that.)
Going into 9th grade, I listened to Power 106 FM in Los Angeles before bed. I heard Tupac’s “Dear Mama,” Warren G’s “Summertime in the LBC,” that one song “I Got 5 On It,” and Bone Thugs’ “Foe tha Love of $.” In high school and afterward, my Mexican and Asian cross country friends would play rap even though they didn’t seem to know or like blacks. Some played Snoop Dogg early on, Biggie, a lot of Bone Thugs, a lot of Tupac to this day, and Eminem. One friend liked some of T.I.’s stuff.
SIDE NOTE: In college and after, I personally listened to a little underground stuff like Cannibal Ox, “positive” stuff like Blackalicious and Jurassic 5. And of course Christian underground weird rap (Soul-Junk!). I also caught up with older degenerate rap like N.W.A. (“F— tha Police” and “A B— Iz a B—”) and Public Enemy (“911 a Joke,” and the line “Farrakhan’s a prophet that I think you oughtta listen to…” PLEASE!).
OBSERVATIONS AND JUDGMENTS ON THE RAP I HEARD
VIOLENCE AND ANGER: I remember being surprised at “Thug Luv (feat. Tupac)” by Bone Thugs, and the famous “Hit ’Em Up” by Tupac (which at one point I speculated got him killed).
HYPER-SEXUALITY: One track “Ain’t No Fun” by Snoop Dogg with the late Nate Dogg is just disgustingly vulgar and explicit (“and you even ____ed my [bleep]s.”). Just shocking!
Snoop Dogg and Dre in “Gin and Juice” rapped about women at a house party: “they ain’t leavin’ til 6 in the morning.”
Tupac in “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted” (with dirty Snoop) said something like “break out the champagne glasses and the M—F— condoms.” So wrong.
NOTE: For me it was sort of funny because I never lived that way. But for them they lived that way, and encouraged others to do the same.
FAKE FEEL-GOOD REDEEMING SONGS: “Dear Mama” at first I thought was sweet, but now I see is a sign of the problem in the black community. Tupac was an angry “mama’s boy” who rejected his father.
Biggie in “Notorious Thugs” (by Bone Thugs) said he’s “trying to win, trying not to sin…” aren’t we all! — and it does no good!
OBSERVATIONS TODAY
Now I see rappers — including blacks! …and many others — getting into New Age and other weird stuff. Talking about “keep your chakras open”...
That Jewish young rapper who dated Ariana Grande overdosed on drugs and died at like 26. Obama’s daughter(s) like these weird guys who are talented but totally misguided.
We all saw that weird crap from that Travis Scott Astroworld Houston rap show where people died.
They’ve gone from being violent, pro-sex, anti-woman, perverted but anti-gay to being effeminate, pro-LGBTIQ, feminist, and soft. Soft, female evil is still evil, and it will still be devastating.
I also see grown men (and boys) acting like they wanna be rappers. The “gentle giant” Mike Brown had a dumb rap SoundCloud. The Waukesha Christmas parade terrorist who targeted old white ladies and little white girls and presumably males(?) — didn’t he have a rapper name on Facebook?
I see the negative influence of rap in black culture as being a result of their degeneracy — that encourages more degeneracy and spiraling and decline.