There Is No Hip-Hop Violence Epidemic aka The State of Online Hip-Hop Media

I've read many discussions around the flood of rap related violence this year, starting with the attempted murder of Obie Trice on New Year's Eve, and continuing with the murder of T.I. and Busta Rhymes' weed carriers. The Source even chose this topic as their cover story this month, which makes sense, because it's such a huge problem in hip-hop.

Only it's not.

I don't believe that people in hip-hop are shooting or getting shot this year more than last year, or ten, or thirty years ago. What has increased though is the news coverage of these events.

It wasn't that long ago where you could be an obscure mixtape rapper, get shot 9 times, get one write-up, then be forgotten about. Now, any dude with a demo or connection to a rapper gets full coverage of his shooting in dozens of hip-hop news sites, with daily updates on his recovery or death.

This cluster bomb of news coverage for every shooting creates a sick illusion that there's more gun violence in hip-hop than ever before. The reality is that gun violence is not a hip-hop thing, or even a Black thing. It's an American thing, word to "Bowling for Columbine".

And violent crime has declined for the past decade all around the country. So in reality, there's probably less people getting shot in hip-hop. But you wouldn't know that from reading Allhiphop, SOHH, HiphopDX, and XXL.

Back in the day, you had to wait to read the R.I.P. section of an album's credits to find out which entourage member died recently. Now names like Philant Johnson and Izreal Ramirez are propped up as major news stories, deserving days of coverage.

Rafi Kam chin-checked the hip-hop media yesterday with a devastating blog post that examined the negative skew being pushed by our favorite sites, which exposes the low brow opinion they have of their readers. Because he's a good blogger, he did some research and found that a third of SOHH's pages that are indexed by Google have the word "beef" in it.

I'm sure their defense will be, "negativity sells", but as I've said before, if a reporter only knows how to use sex and violence to make a story pop, then they aren't much of a writer to begin with. And maybe that's the problem.

Now, let me boost Vibe.com for a minute. We have not, nor will we ever over cover violence as a way to boost our traffic. A shooting is a valid story, for sure, but we'll strive to place it in proper perspective.  Our goal is to become one of the most popular sites on the web, period. And if that ever happens, let it be the biggest lesson to ambulance chasing rap sites that violence scares away ten times the number of people it attracts.

Comments

[Bol]

You are aware that Vibe practically invented all of this hip-hop beef bullshit, right?

[R.H.S.]

"if a reporter only knows how to use sex and violence to make a story pop, then they aren't much of a writer to begin with."

Indeed. Now replace "reporter" with "rapper" and your statement is even truer.

[Billy Sunday]

If they didn't invent it they surely got paid off it. As well as the R & Beef that Mary J. had with Vibe editors.

Why do people think that Hip-Hop is so fucking important? It's not that serious and it doesn't have any other voice outside of consumerism. Hip-Hop is nothing more than a Dr. Pepper commercial.

This is a good post for the fact that someone recognizes that Black males were getting shot by other Black males long before there were mixtapes to sell.

[Cashflow]

No violence here in Japan!!
check it out www.hip-hopper.jp

[Conscious]

Agreed...! But using this blog and various sources to shed light on issues that aren't covered is a possibilty. The more we are of action and progress the better. Most complain. less do something about it.

KEEP The BLOGs Goin Strong!

On another note...
Can we get a link on here. Or is it just for other blogs. if that's the case freehiphow does have a blog as well.

Conscious
www.freehiphopnow.com

[Clyde Smith]

"After years in which violent crime fell or was stable, the FBI in June reported a 2.5 percent rise last year in violent crimes, the largest percentage increase since 1991."

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2398006