“i See Death around the Corner”: Nihilism in Rap Music

Rap is one of the most salient music genres of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Gangsta rap, in particular, with its focus on urban street life, has become a dominant means of expression within contemporary African American adolescent culture. As such, it speaks directly to issues of identity, culture, violence, and nihilism—themes that permeate recent research on inner-city black communities. Mostly ethnographic in nature, this work describes how structural disadvantage, social isolation, and despair create a black youth culture, or street code, that influences adolescent behavior. The current work builds on the community literature by exploring how the street code is present not only on “the street” but also in rap music. It addresses two important questions: (1) To what extent does rap music contain elements of the street code—and particularly nihilism—identified by Anderson (1999) and others? (2) How do rappers experience and interpret their lives, and how do they respond to conditions in their communities? These questions are explored in a content analysis of over four hundred songs on rap albums from 1992 to 2000. Rap is one of the most salient music genres of the late twentieth and early twentyfirst centuries. A form of hip-hop (Guevara 1996:50; Kelley 1996:117; Krims 2000: 12), rap music emerged from the streets of inner-city neighborhoods as a reflection of the hopes, concerns, and aspirations of urban black youth. When it first appeared, critics predicted a quick demise, but rap music flourished and is currently enjoying unprecedented success. Reactions to this success reflect the myriad opinions about what rap music is. Although critics denounce it as having “no place in our society” (Dan Quayle), rappers themselves portray their music as a blend of entertainment and education for the masses, the “CNN for black America” (Chuck D), “edutainment” (KRS-ONE), and “a creative outlet which can become like a newspaper that people read with their ears” (Queen Latifah). For some scholars, rappers represent black poets of the contemporary urban scene (Baker 1993:xi) who use music as a vehicle for telling the history of African American culture (Potter 1995:116). For others, rap music serves as an expressive artistic outlet for a marginalized urban social bloc (Smith 1997:345), a contemporary response to * Direct all correspondence to: Charis E. Kubrin, Department of Sociology, George Washington University, Phillips Hall 409, 801 22nd Street N.W., Washington, DC 20052; e-mail : [email protected]. 434 SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Volume 48, Number 4, 2005 joblessness, poverty, and disempowerment (Smitherman 1997:5), and an art form that reflects the nuances, pathology, and most importantly, the resilience of America’s black ghettos (Dawsey 1994). Still others see rap music as contradictory: it is at one and the same time a consciousness-raising, politically progressive, liberatory popular culture form and a commodified, exploited, sexist, and materialist popular culture form (Martinez 1997:273). Regardless of how it is understood, critics, rappers, and scholars agree that rap has undergone significant transformations over the last few decades—from the carefree images of the 1970s and early 1980s, to the Afrocentric stance in the late 1980s, to gangsta rap today. With each transformation, rap music has remained a dominant means of expression within contemporary African American adolescent culture (Austin 1992; Baker 1993; Boyd 1997:38; Martinez 1997; Rose 1994; Toop 1991). Then and now, it provides a form of informal education for adolescents, one that extends far beyond the confines of the classroom and into the peer group (Powell 1991:245). As far as influence in the black community, it is argued that no group has as extensive an influence as rap artists in terms of their ability to capture the listening ear of black youth—not the black athlete, entertainer, politician, teacher, nor minister (Kitwana 1994:59–60). As such, rap music speaks directly to issues of identity, culture, and violence, themes that permeate recent research on inner-city black communities (Anderson 1999; Bruce, Roscigno, and McCall 1998; Fagan and Wilkinson 1998; Krivo and Peterson 1996; Kubrin and Weitzer 2003; Sampson and Wilson 1995). Mostly ethnographic in nature, this work describes how structural disadvantage, social isolation, and despair have created a black youth culture or “street code” that influences adolescent behavior, particularly with respect to violence. This literature assumes that the street code is a product of neighborhood processes and has generally neglected additional sources such as rap music, which may reflect and reinforce street code norms. The current work builds on the existing community literature by incorporating rap music as a central aspect of popular culture in the inner city today and by exploring how the street code is present not only on “the street” but also in rap music. Through a content analysis of over four hundred songs on rap albums from 1992 to 2000, the study addresses a number of important questions. First, to what extent does gangsta rap contain elements of the street code identified by Anderson (1999) and others; that is, how is the street code manifested in the lyrics? Although elements such as respect, violence, and objectification of women, among others, are identified and briefly discussed, this article focuses on one key dimension of the code that has received little attention in the literature—nihilism. Second, how do rappers, many of whom come from inner-city neighborhoods, experience and interpret their lives, and how do they respond to the conditions in their communities? Before addressing these questions, I first discuss gangsta rap and describe the larger societal and community-level contexts in which the street code and this genre of music have emerged.