Gangster Rap and Its Social Cost: Exploiting Hip Hop and Using Ra ...

up with a new drug for the post-heroin generation. Of course, the new drug turned out to be crack cocaine, the distribution of which had far worse consequences than those of heroin. Hip hop was born in the lull separating these drug epidemics, a time when gangs were successfully taking control of the streets. Unfortunately, the gangs soon confronted each other in turf wars. Hip hop was one positive force that was born of these confrontations.

Hip hop remained open and flexible for another local reason. Apart from its poverty, the South Bronx was characterized by extraordinary ethnic diversity compared to most U.S. ghettos. Neighbors could be from Nigeria, India, China, Vietnam, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, and 20 other islands in the Caribbean, each with distinct histories and cultures. Despite its vast problems, the South Bronx was not a psychological ghetto to these immigrant residents. In their countries of origins, so many South Bronx residents had survived wars, persecution, caste restrictions, corrupt governments, and arbitrary imprisonment––given this, the South Bronx was a land of opportunity for them.

There was resilience among this first generation of immigrants who had known worse conditions and who still had hope for their children. Their spirit reduced the hopelessness of second- and third-generation immigrant children, as well as that of long-term residents who knew nothing worse than the conditions in which they had grown up. Neighbors from vastly different backgrounds necessarily mingled and interacted with one another. The extensive diversity produced different views on virtually everything; any new social philosophy or movement that originated in this milieu would have to be inclusive and adaptable.

Community Background

In the South Bronx, high-rise public housing developments were islands of positive community, in contrast to the situation in most high-rise public housing in the United States. Most often, high-rises become ghettos within a ghetto, communities so dysfunctional that they are torn down by the federal government and partly replaced with lower scale housing called