WE MUST BE CONSCIOUS OF WHAT WE MAKE COOL
Its no secret that hip hop is the most influential genre/culture in the world. It impacts every aspect of living from fashion to the automobile industry and everything in between. I was watching the video for Jeezy’s “Almighty Black Dollar ft Rick Ross” and he had some bars slamming non-black owned lyrics. After seeing that it made me think about the connection of alcohol and hip hop and what made certain spirits so cool.
I. I’LL BE DAMNED IF I DRINK BELVEDERE WHILE PUFF GOT CÎROC
HOV said these lyrics from the standout track “Family Feud” from the 2017 release “4:44”. Its crazy to see Hov get to this point, if you know the history with him and the world of spirits. During the earlier days of his career, you could hear and see a constant unofficial endorsement of Cristal. It was Cristal this Cristal that, until the owner of Cristal said some disparaging racist remarks. After that HOV made a declaration to not support Cristal again.
Other people followed suit yet you still see some artists drink Cristal…to this day. The question is why? Especially if most of them is privy to the racist remarks made.
II. ARTISTS HAVE TO LIVE OUT WHAT THEY LOOKED UP TO
As I stated earlier, hip hop is the most influential thing in the world. So of course the influence permeates in upcoming hip hop acts. From the Lyrics to the Image, part of an artist come up is being to live out things they saw growing up. So it made me realized the new artists are gonna live out what they aspired to at least once.
The first thing I thought about was lyrics by local Detroit cult classic rap group, Doughboyz Cashout. Its no secret they were inspired by the even more classic rap group, Streetlordz and the streetlordz had hella lyrics referencing Cristal so its no surprise that DBC would pop up in their videos with Cristal as well.
To Bring it to a more national level, I even remember when Rocky first came out in 2011, I was seeing him in his video with Cristal and it was clear he had an extreme 90s influence on his music.
You can’t fault artists for promoting the Cristal image because it was associated with legendary moments in life. However once those moments are felt you do notice the artists quickly abandon that aspiration they had and move on to something different. You don’t see Rocky or DBC talking about no damn Cristal anymore. Its just don’t hit as hard once you already did it.
III. WHY WE MUST BE CONSCIOUS
A person can’t get over something they put on a pedestal until they experience what they put on a pedestal and realize that its not as hype as they thought it was. We have to be conscious of what we make cool from the beginning so we won’t start a cycle of b.s. Older experienced+respected street dudes can tell the youngins the streets isn’t worth it, but the youngins still want to have their own experiences and its hard to listen when the OG made the street life seems so appealing and worth the risk.
So if we start in the beginning to be conscious of what we elevate in the culture we can alleviate the dumb stuff at a much rapid rate and we can focus on elevating instead of waiting each generation to grow up and then proceed with the growth.
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