Rappers are victims of an epidemic of gun violence – similar to all of America

(THE CONVERSATION) Add the title of Takeoff, a member of the favored rap trio Migos, to the ever-growing listing of rappers, current and previous, tragically and violently killed.

The preliminary response to the Nov. 1, 2022, capturing loss of life of Takeoff, born Kirsnick Ball, was in charge rap music and hip hop tradition. Individuals who engaged in this type of scapegoating argue that the violence and despairing hopelessness within the music are the reason for so many rappers dying.

Even inside hip hop tradition, the continued violent tragedies have led some artists, like Jim Jones and Fats Joe, to go as far as to assert that rap is essentially the most harmful occupation and rappers are an endangered species.

It’s troubling. As Lupe Fiasco raps in “On Fake Nem,” “Rappers die an excessive amount of.”

However as a rap artist and scholar, I all the time really feel compelled to push again on the notion that the plague of American gun violence is exclusive to hip hop tradition or rap music. As a professor on the College of Virginia, I reside in Charlottesville, a spot that has just lately been besieged by gun violence.

Like many locations throughout the nation, the town has seen a rise in shootings, and on the evening of Nov. 13, 2022, the college campus was locked down for 12 hours, with college students, college and neighborhood members sheltering in place as police looked for a gunman who shot 5 folks, killing three.

Through the lockdown and for days afterward, I endlessly scrolled social media for updates. My telephone incessantly chirped from textual content messages and the college’s emergency notifications.

I discovered myself frantically participating in a ritual too acquainted to far too many People of studying the texts and alerts and scrolling my telephone for information. A part of this ritual, too, was sending college students a message to allow them to know I’m obtainable to speak or hear or attempt to reply questions. I shared the numbers and hyperlinks of the skilled counseling providers supplied by the college.

The lockdown was lifted Nov. 14, shortly after police arrested the suspect within the campus shootings. On the identical day, one other man was arrested in Charlottesville for “regarding and threatening social media posts” towards the college. The person, a convicted felon, was arrested on a number of weapons fees and possession of a managed substance.

All-American sufferer blaming

Violence is the American pastime.

Gun violence is all over the place, on a regular basis, and as unpredictable as it’s predictable. We People anyplace, together with on the College of Virginia, shouldn’t be stunned that it occurs right here so usually. But when we’re stunned, it’s solely as a result of we haven’t been paying consideration. In keeping with the latest statistics, the U.S. murder fee in 2020 was over seven occasions better than these of different industrialized economies, and weapons accounted for 80% of these homicides.

However when gun violence occurs to rappers, it’s as if folks consider they will’t be victims, too.

After every of the current deadly shootings of rappers, the dialog has predictably veered into blaming the sufferer.

Some mentioned 30-year-old Rakim Hasheem Allen, professionally referred to as PnB Rock, mustn’t have been carrying his jewellery within the Los Angeles restaurant the place he was robbed and killed in 2022.

Apparently, Adolph Thornton, Jr., 36, whose stage title was Younger Dolph, ought to have identified higher than to return to his hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, which had 346 killings in 2021, a document quantity.

Some believed the 2020 killing of 20-year-old Brooklyn drill rapper Pop Smoke, whose authorized title was Bashar Jackson, was a product of him by chance divulging an excessive amount of info on social media.

Some thought Nipsey Hussle, born Ermias Asghedom, who was 33 on the time of his loss of life, was lax on taking enough safety measures, which led to his being shot and killed in entrance of his Los Angeles clothes retailer in 2019.

Even after the horrific capturing of 27-year-old Megan Pete, professionally referred to as Megan Thee Stallion, who survived the incident, the informal condemnation of her – the sufferer – has clouded public dialog.

On Twitter, she took rappers to activity for utilizing her violent assault for consideration. She implored them to cease utilizing her capturing “for clout.”

Particularly, on his new album, “Her Loss,” Drake insinuates that she lied in regards to the incident, rapping, “This b–ch lie ‘bout getting photographs however she nonetheless a stallion.”

An American plague

No matter their social environments or felony backgrounds, all of those younger rappers, 28-year-old Takeoff included, had been victims of a standard American destiny – gunfire.

Within the days earlier than Takeoff was killed, there have been 9 mass shootings within the U.S.. A kind of incidents in the course of the Halloween weekend was a drive-by capturing close to a Chicago park the place kids had been trick-or-treating.

Blaming the violence that happens on rap musicians depends on a round logic: rap is in charge as a result of the one that was shot or murdered was a rapper.

The fact in America

All of America resides with the normalization of gun violence.

That doesn’t cease politicians from making an attempt to tie occasions like the varsity capturing in Uvalde, Texas, or the mass capturing in Highland Park, Illinois, to rap.

You possibly can’t escape gun violence in America regardless of your occupation or the place you hang around. You possibly can’t escape it at school. You possibly can’t escape it in church. You possibly can’t escape it in a synagogue.

You possibly can’t escape it in a park. You possibly can’t escape it in a grocery retailer. And even on the nation’s Capitol constructing. Wherever you go in America, even on campuses just like the College of Virginia, you could be a sufferer of gun violence.

Gun violence casts a perpetual shadow over the U.S., just like the star-spangled banner flying excessive within the sky. It needs to be a reminder that the victims of those tragedies, together with rappers whose lives are taken, are additionally threaded into the material of America.

This text is republished from The Dialog beneath a Artistic Commons license. Learn the unique article right here: https://theconversation.com/rappers-are-victims-of-an-epidemic-of-gun-violence-just-like-all-of-america-194429.