| Buying Into the Rap Myth Jay-Z is the latest casualty of hip hop hype masquerading as reality On some days, it seems that all hip hop roads lead to 100 Centre St. This is the criminal court building that serves Manhattan, an ominous pile of stone and concrete reeking of old felonies and ancient grief. The Tombs climbs high above it. The other night, after long hours in the airless places of the criminal justice system, the rapper known as Jay-Z was brought by the cops to Centre St. There he was, charged with sharing in the possession of a fully loaded semiautomatic Glock pistol. "I'm looking for the room where they're arraigning this rapper named Jay-Z," I said to a cop inside the courthouse doors. "Never heard of him," he said. "But go down the hall to the left, then make a right. All these dummies are arraigned in there." Poor Jay-Z is a star to many people, but to the cops he's just one more dummy in need of a bail bondsman, and they might be right. Another rapper with still another gun? Coming out of still another club at 3 o'clock in the morning? Does the sound level in these clubs destroy brain cells? Yes, Jay-Z is innocent until proven guilty. Yes, the evidence suggests that although the gun was somewhere in his 2001 Chevrolet Suburban, nobody saw him touch it (a bodyguard shoved it in his own belt). But after everything that has happened to rappers in the past five years — killings, stabbings, mayhem — it is truly stupid to go floating around in clubland at 3o'clock in the morning. What is it with these dodos? The arraignment of the 31-year-old Jay-Z did get some fleeting attention. He is, after all, a major star on the hip hop scene, with a huge hit CD called "In My Lifetime Vol. 1" and a second called "The Dynasty: Roc La Familia 2000." He's out of the Marcy Houses in Brooklyn, where he was known as Shawn Carter, and must have plenty of money and the security money can usually buy. Talent for Trouble Sadly, like too many rappers, he also has an exquisite talent for trouble. Later this week, he will be tried on charges that he stabbed one Lance (Un) Rivera in a nightclub in 1999, in a business argument. As the deaths of the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur demonstrated, business disagreements in the hip hop world can sometimes be fatal So, at the arraignment of Jay-Z, notes were made on the way he dressed (baggy pants, his own brand-name white shirt, floppy yellow hat) and what he said after posting $10,000 cash bond. ("That's my mom, and she can go anywhere in the world and hold her head up because her son is innocent.") He was photographed and left in a Mercedes. Some rap group should change its name to Central Booking. But before Jay-Z left, and after he was gone, the other accused master criminals kept coming. The charges against them were read in dark emphysemic mutters and sounded eerily like the stuff of rap lyrics. Possession of marijuana. Possession of a gun. Shoplifting. Spousal abuse. Fighting. The usual idiotic crimes and the usual parade of boneheads and losers, all protesting their innocence. One at a time, they walked in from the right to face the judge and the Legal Aid lawyer. All were men younger than 35, dressed like knapsacks. All performed The Walk, perfected over many years of watching rap videos: shoulders swaying, hips ratcheting, single little fingers jutting out of oversized jackets. The Walk was a major production for each of them, as if fragments of rap lyrics were thumping in their skulls. The Rap Soundtrack Alas, nobody was watching. Not the lawyers or prosecutors, the clerks or the cops; such people merely clerk the endless stupidity. The charges were read. Pleadings were offered. The judge made a swift decision. Next. Jay-Z was simultaneously one of the shambling regiment that arrived in handcuffs and not one of them. Like the others, he had blundered into the hands of the law. But he also had money for bail and a private lawyer and could sleep that night in a bed in New Jersey. But there was a sense in the courtroom that if the other wretched souls had soundtracks in their minds, Jay-Z was one of the men who supplied the words and music. The rap soundtrack is driven by two basic myths: the romance of the street and a weakness for cheap melodrama. None of the accused at 100 Centre St. resembled unemployed dot-commers driven criminally mad by the demise of Kozmo.com. They looked more like people who bought the rappers' myth that the street — the 'hood, the ghetto — has a wisdom far superior to anything that can be learned in school. This preposterous notion is insulting to all those people in the 'hood who work hard, learn something in school, master a sport or a musical instrument or physics or a language, house and raise families, and believe in tomorrow. No matter. The rappers sell the myth of the permanent victim of society. Petty criminals think this way. The kids buy it, too, including millions of white suburban kids who have never lived in poverty. Like Jay-Z, of course, the successful rappers move to New Jersey. Or anywhere except the 'hood. The instinct for melodrama is more dangerous. Most rappers sing about the same things: sex, jewelry, cars and mansions. Drugs are there, too, in subtler ways. But casual violence — of language and action — is all over the music. The so-called "urban poetry" in the lyrics is crude and brutally racist. I lost track after counting 150 uses of the N-word in Jay-Z's "In My Lifetime" and remembered men and women who were killed or beaten to remove that word from the American vocabulary. Better men and women than anyone in the rap world. Bring Back Old-School Sadly, the positive raw (nonracist) vitality of early hip hop music — when Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa were inventing it in the southwest Bronx in the 1970s — is gone. Today, big-time rap is a mayonnaise of stale mannerisms, used to sell cars, beer, clothes, sneakers and the NBA, along with CDs. But with so much money flowing, and all sorts of nonsense constantly retailed about "respect," the guns keep being pulled. There are so many guns floating around this world, rappers could apply to Charlton Heston for reduced dues in the National Rifle Association. So gun possession raps do matter in this world, and Jay-Z, if convicted, could do time on this charge if he walks in the stabbing case. In the meantime, if growing up seems like selling out, he and the other rappers at least should try to get home by midnight and stay out of any club that has a bald fat guy at the door guarding the rope. Original Publication Date: 4/16/01 New York Daily News |