I got intrigued by a tweet addressed to Public Enemy’s Chuck D, even retweeted by him and saying the following: ‘Depressing= a mega-corp owns a record label to push violent-msg rap to help its prison-mgmt co it owns 2 grow new inmates’. So I did a bit of research. I am very probably late on the subject, it’s an old story which apparently surfaced around 2012, but this is still a story running around many rap blogs. Many will say it is a conspiracy theory, but these facts are troubling and would need to be investigated more thoroughly.
First of all, the US prison system is the largest in the world, and of course a large percentage of the jail population is black, in fact 5% of African American men who live in the US are in prison. Secondly, the incarceration rate increased tremendously in the 80s after Nixon declared the War on Drugs, going from 500,000 to an impressive 2,500,000 after 2006! And this despite the fact that crime has been in decline these past years.
The 80s also coincide with the privatization of prison system, and today the Correctional Corporation of America (CCA) and the GEO Group own most of it. And here is the problem, private corporations benefit from keeping the prisons at full capacity. This is not a conspiracy theory, the Salon had an article about it in 2013, and mentioned a report from the In The Public Interest, revealing that private prison companies make deals with 48 states to guarantee high prison occupancy rates. CCA offered to operate state prisons and states signed a contract to guarantee a 90% occupancy rate!
But how can this be accomplished? Just these facts are already outrageous, but this is where rap music comes into play. In 2012, various members of the music industry received this anonymous letter sent by a ‘decision maker’, at the head of an unnamed music company in the 80-90s. The email stipulated that, during a secret meeting in 1991, it was revealed that music companies had invested in private prisons and that it was the interest of these companies that these prisons remain full: The more inmates, the more money the government would give. And the solution proposed was to push the marketing of music which promotes criminal behavior… in another words gangsta rap! The letter noted that rap music effectively changed direction after this, pushing away political criticism and replacing it by the form of rap which promotes violence and crime.
If any of this is a conspiracy, it’s only this dramatic letter reposted on several rap blogs, because the rest can easily be verified. Of course, I don’t say it is true, it could be a complete hoax, but it is a fact that private prisons make lots of money, that a handful of corporations run the country and that the popularization of gangster rap totally coincides with prison privatization and a considerable increase in the number of incarcerations among the African American population. Of course, correlation doesn’t mean causation, but it is troubling to say the least. Gangster rap could just be a reaction against this ever-growing black population in jails that started in the 80-90s. There are probably more than one factor that came into play and reality may be a little more blurry than a bunch of big heads deciding the future of music in a room in the suburbs of Los Angeles. Plus there is something quite frustrating into this: Could the success of hip hop only be attributed to the white (very probably although the letter doesn’t tell) establishment? Why not blaming De Palma’s Scarface when they are at it?
I am not surprised Chuck D buys this theory, as gangster rap basically made social-conscious rap invisible in the 90s and it’s always satisfying to find an explanation to something you can’t control. I just wonder who is behind today’s rap? Clothing and headphones companies or Beyonce and Kim Kardashian?