Of people charged by the federal government with selling crack cocaine in 2016, 83% were African American. Of people charged by the federal government with selling powder cocaine in 2016, 30% were black, 62% were Latinx, and only 7% were white. Even though all races use drugs at the same rate, 57% of those incarcerated for a drug offense in state prisons are black or Latinx (both minority groups comprise 31.1% of the population). The United States spends over $50 billion annually on the War on Drugs. Median white wealth is 1,217% higher than median black wealth. The average wealth of a white American is 713% more than that of a black American. Instead, politicians packaged Jim Crow’s spirit into a more politically palatable vehicle: the War on Drugs.īefore we get into the greatest political hip-hop songs, here are some inescapable figures which provide context to the anger and alienation underlying this music genre. It was launched by Richard Nixon seven years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act that was supposed to stamp out the legacy of explicitly racist Jim Crow laws. The rise of hip-hop in the 1980s and 1990s coincides with the escalation of the War on Drugs.

Now, if you’re not familiar with the pure, unadulterated evil of the War on Drugs, listen to Jay-Z quickly highlight decades of inherently discriminatory policies. I have always loved the sound of hip-hop, but I never got into the message until I studied political science in college and really dug into our nation’s racist past and present. Translation: “I liked hip-hop because they ‘reported’ on the economic and human strife placed upon a marginalized community by the mechanisms of the American state and ignored by major American media, but my political training won’t allow me to say that’s political.” area, and the-they were reporting, you know, what life was like, in that…and that’s really what you found in hip hop back then.”

machinery take over around 50 seconds as he drops his voice and sheepishly says “I don’t listen to music for the politics of it,” then immediately snaps back into genuine Rubio and riffs about how rappers are “reporters” reporting on “what life was like in South Central, and the L.A.

Rap songs about trust issues