'98 The Year Of The Hip Hop Criminal

I hope '99 doesn't continue what seems to be a sad trend within hip hop... That trend is some of our biggest and brightest stars being arrested for weapons possession. For one thing, it adds to the sad statistic about 1/4th of African American males being under some sort of control by the US Justice system. It also sends a strong message to young impressionable fans that their actions are ok.

Earlier this year Coolio was arrested for having a loaded gun in the back seat of his car. He was also found to have a 'roach' [butt to a joint of marijuana]. Incidently Coolio will be performing at the Inauguration Ball for California Governor Gray Davis.. I wonder if he knows about Coolio smoking weed? Last week Mystikal was arrested in Louisiana for having a gun and smoking weed in his car. The latest artist to join this elite group is Mr. Busta Rhymes.

The other day he was pulled over in his Mercedes by NYC police for 'driving erratically. After being pulled police searched the car and found a loaded 45 caliber semi automatic along with some weed. Busta and his business partner were arrested and released on bail. He's scheduled to go to court on January 28th for weapons charges.

Busta's situation has seemingly become so commonplace within hip hop that people don't even think twice when hearing such reports.. That's what makes it so sad. Some say what happened to Busta goes on everyday in Black America.. So why trip? If some of our stars come from the hood, we can't honestly expect them to drop their ghetto ways overnight.. Others say that with all the drama surrounding hip hop artists.. It's extremely important for them to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves. One of them is to carry a gun.

Say what you will, but the effects of such high profile stars being arrested and going off to jail sends a strong signal to everyone. It tells young fans who wanna emulate these guys that being in trouble is part of the routine. Rap stars being arrested reinforce what kids see going on in their everyday lives and hence they wind up not having any incentive or even a vision to move forward and improve upon what appears to be a bad situation. On the flip side it sends a strong message to mainstream society that Black folks no matter how visible and how famous are still prone to be criminals. Even sadder these rappers being arrested seem to bring about a certain authenticity in people's minds.. The arrested artist is just a kid from the hood who is keepin' it real..

This year the list of artists getting into trouble is a long one.. In fact one would think that after the untimely deaths of 2Pac and Biggie things would've improved. Instead the thug mentality and Big Don-for life personas have increased. Here's a small sampling of some high profile cases...

Old Dirty Bastard was arrested too many times to count. He is now going to court for two different charges in Southern Cali.. One includes him making terrorist threats.. The other has to do with him scaling a fence to attack his girlfriend. He still has a warrant out for his arrest for shoplifting in Virginia. If convicted of the charges he faces in Southern Cali, he could get 3 years.

DMX was arrested earlier this year and accussed of raping a stripper in the Bronx. He was eventually acquitted of charges.. But the image of the out of control rapper has been forever etched in people's mind. Shortly after DMX's arrest people began comparing him to 2Pac. DMX's case was interesting because people looked at his lyrics and wondered out loud if this was another case of art imitating life...

Mase was arrested back in April for disorderly conduct and patronizing a prostitute. Mase maintains that things were blown out of hand.. He was driving in his Mercedes.. when cops pulled him over and arrested him... The charges were reduced and Mase wound up paying a fine.

Method Man was arrested in September at the Sports and Music Festival in Memphis, Tennessee. He was accussed of resisting arrest and obstructing traffic after an impromptu autograph signing section got too rowdy.

C-BO, a Bay Area rap star was arrested and accussed of violating his parole when he released an album entitled 'Til My Casket Drops'. C-Bo was released on the condition that he not engaged in any gangster related criminal activities. On his album was a song called 'Deadly Game' in which he talks about shooting a cop in the face to avoid going back to jail. It was this track that sounded the alarm and led to C-Bo being arrested.. The case looked to be a major show down about Freedom Of Speech issues.. when the California Corrections department dropped charges. However, C-Bo had to serve additional time for weed possession.

Mac Dre, another Bay Area artist and his Romper Room Posse ran into similar problems earlier this year when Vallejo police listened to songs off Dre's Rompilation compilation album and heard a song that chronicled a robbery that had taken place earlier that year. This lead to over 30 members of Dre's Romper Room crew being arrested. Ironically Dre was actually in jail at the time for parole violations.. This took place in April. Dre's mother and veteran music producer Jay King [Club Nouveau] held a press conference to talk about the whole incident.

Keith Murray made headlines this year when he was convicted and sentenced to 3 years in prison for assault. His problems stemmed from a night club incident in 1995 in which a young patron was beaten down by Murray.. Keith maintained his innocence and said he was set up because of his high visibility. His case took a turn for the worse after all his appeals were denied and Keith went on the run. He stayed away from authorities for about a month and then he turned himself in. He claimed he had personal business to tend to which is why he went into hiding. After Murray was sentenced he recorded 2-3 albums and filmed a bunch of videos so that he would remain a viable icon in the rap game.

Noreaga found himself in hot water in Harrisburg, Pa after he showed up to a show 4 hours late. He performed one song and went off stage while an angry crowd followed in pursuit. One young patron became enraged and threw his bicycle at Nore's car at which point, Nore and his body guard beat the kid down.. A warrant was issued and Noreaga eventually turned himself in.. Like Keith Murray if the charges stick, Noreaga could find himself behind bars for up to 20 years.. He had already served time for manslaughter.. His partner Capone is currently doing time in upstate New York for weapons charges..

Bushwick Bill formerly of the Geto Boys was arrested back in January at the Holiday Inn in Alabama. Hotel officials complained to police about marijuana fumes coming from his hotel room. When police came to investigate they found 2 grams of weed and a 12 gauge shot gun. Bushwick's problems got worse when he found himself being severely beaten at a night club by people associated with his record label. He later put forth a lawsuit for 20 million dollars.. Things are still pending..

Ghost Face Killer of the Wu-Tang Clan was released from jail in early January of this year. He had been inside for almost a month after he was pulled over by NYC police and arrested for carrying a gun and wearing a bullet proof vest which is illegal in NY. Upon his arrest it was discovered that Ghostface had yet to serve time for '95 attempted robbery conviction.. The court proceedings allowed him to turn himself in May of '98 and serve two months.. I'm not sure if he followed up and did that or went the route of his band mate ODB and just skipped town.

Foxy Brown although not arrested found herself involved in a couple of high profile incidents. The first took place in May at the Impact convention.. She and fellow rap star Queen Pen exchanged blows in a hotel lobby... The incident supposedly stemmed from unsettling words being stated on a mix tape.. The incident was quickly broken up.. Recently Foxy made news when she had a hair pulling altercation with Vibe editor Danyel Smith. It supposedly had something to do with Ms Brown not being happy with an article that was written about her...

Speaking of the whole journalist being attacked by rap artists.. Jesse Washington of Blaze Magazine found himself at the center of two storms. The first involved Wyclef who he accussed of pulling a gun on him because he wasn't happy with an album review the magazine had penned about Wyclef's protege Canibus. Later on this year Jesse Washington found himself in the hospital when the Mad Rapper [D-Dot Angeletti] and a crew of four stormed the Blaze offices and jumped Mr. Washington. Apparently Angeletti was upset about the identity of his alter ego the Mad Rapper being revealed to the public. The first incident involving Wyclef was squashed and no charges were brought forth.. Jesse explained he doesn't like the police intervening in conflicts between Black folks.. After the Mad Rapper beating, Jesse announced that he would be pressing charges... I guess enough is enough.

Again this is just a sampling of some of the incidents that occurred in hip hop this past year. It makes you wonder what in the world is going on.. In a number of cases the scenario of a young rap artist driving a nice car and then being pulled over has raised some eye brows.. Such was the case with Busta Rhymes, Mystikal, Ghost Face Killer and Mase. Now granted these individuals should not have been positioning themselves to be arrested by having loaded weapons and illegal substances on them.. However, that scenario reflects another disturbing trend this past year which finally came under investigation.. Driving While Black. This is where law enforcement profiles an individual and then pulls him over.. In an overwhelming amount of times the driver happened to be African American..

Another disturbing trend which has kind of been swept under the rug involves the cases surrounding Mac Dre and C-B0.. Here you had law enforcement listening to rap lyrics and going after artists.. Now granted the case surrounding C-Bo was dismissed, but the lack of response from the hip hop community was deafening. It was like no one raised a finger and no one stepped forth to say anything.. That's sad when you have such blatant attacks on this music.. My question was where were all the shot callers, big ballers, pimps, playas and hustlas on this whole deal...?

Remember while the C-Bo incident was dismissed the case surrounding Mac Dre wasn't.. Vallejo PD listened to rap lyrics and made a substantial amount of arrests as a result.. I wrote a pretty lengthy article earlier this year which spoke on this whole deal... One of the points that was made was the fact that Mac Dre's problems began 5 years ago when he poked fun of the police in a record called 'Punk Police'. It was after that he found himself a target... He eventually went to jail for bank robbery.. To this he steadfastly maintains his innocence.. It seemed like in '98 a warning was issued.. 'Watch what you say son'.. I'm not sure if a lot of us caught the vapors on that one...

Related to all this... are the recent reactions to the MP3 music files and the RIAA and the record industry.. Public Enemy found themselves being threatened with lawsuits from their label should they continue to release music via MP3 on their website http://www.public-enemy.com. Chuck spoke pretty extensively about this... His situation was proceeded by the RIAA getting a temporary court injunction against the Diamond Rio player which allows one to play MP3 files away from their computer. The record industry was concerned that MP3 would lead to piracy which would result in potential billions of dollars in lost revenue. What people kinda slept on was the moves that were being made all year long by the RIAA to stop music being distributed via the internet. I recall during the World or Global Music Award show some suited up record rep promising to come after all those who were illegally distributing music on the internet.

While this was going on.. the FCC was mounting a huge crack down on pirate radio stations all across the country.. Over 300 were shut down.. here in the Bay Area... Free Radio Berkeley was shut down, They have since gone back up in total defiance to any court order injunction.. The pirate stations in neighboring Richmond and Vallejo were also shut down after unannounced visits from the FCC.. There were plans to have an all rap Pirate radio station in Oakland.. Those plans were scrapped for the time being. My guess is that the FCC's sudden aggressiveness was prompted by powerful commercial radio conglomerates who did not want to see their over inflated properties shrivel up due to dissatisfied listeners turning their attention to pirate stations that were filling a void.. In the meantime.. Hip Hop headz kinda slept on that whole trend in '98..

Shortly after the PE incident, the record industry most powerful heads got together and held a joint press conference to talk about the internet and MP3. They were seeing about some sort of across the board standard they could develop which would hold off this threat of mass piracy.. The most recent casualty to this concern was the Beastie Boys who were forced to remove their MP3 files from their website. Here the Beastie were releasing files of their live performances during the Tibetan Fest concerts. These recordings were not going to made available on their label Capitol Records.. Nevertheless the concern about the Beasties releasing CD quality free music over the net prompted them to try and shut 'em down..

So while this battle wages on.. headz are sleeping on local phone companies lobbying attempts to charge ISPs for using their phone lines. They want to have a charging system similar to the ones used for long distance companies.. I'm not sure if that's gonna ever amount to people having to pay for email... But it don't sound right... My overall point is that right now there seems to be a lot of moves on behalf of big corporations to limit what we say and at the very least limit our ability to put forth information..

Even on the net this happening.. You got companies like AOL [American On Line] who have put up filtering systems so that news letters like this one can't be mailed in mass unless I go through some elaborate configuration process. The same with MSN... I know that 2 months ago when I went through my list I was getting up to 2000 AOL addresses of people who subscribed to FNV being bounced back.. However, when I went inside AOL and mailed the newsletter.. those same bounced back addresses could suddenly accept the mail.. You go figure...

I'm out for now.. This is just food for thought.. Don't Sleep in '99.. there's a lot coming down the pipe and we need everyone to be alert... Check for the FNV which will detail site updates.. and brief news pieces... and of course our annual end of the year survey/poll..

Until then Peace For Now..
Happy New Year Davey D
kingdave@sirius.com
c 1999