![]() You have to ask yourself then, why is it such an effective or commonplace talking point for elected officials? What it tells us is that the calculus of voting and attracting media attention, and riling up moral panic to animate politics, that calculus is pretty much the same. This sense that somehow a single musical genre, rather than an entire sort of multi-century experimentation with Democratic self-governance that included most of the population being armed is somehow responsible for gun violence. ![]() Melissa: I'm laughing about it, because I feel like I have to laugh to not cry, but I feel like this moment really does feel reminiscent of a time I thought we had moved out of. Melissa: Of course, we know that beats per minute and social media are the underlying causes of gun violence. The style of production, when it comes to the vocals, is a little bit different but fundamentally, the material and the kinds of topics that they're talking about can be very similar to things we've heard in rap for a long, long time. The beats are a little bit different, when you talk about beats per minute. Tools of production have changed in hip hop all over the place, and this is just another example. Secondly, some of the production style is a little bit different from what traditional gangsta rap was. One is the combination of the music with social media and the ways that the songs that you hear on record are actually reflective of narratives and posts that we see on social media. I think when people try to distinguish it from what was around, then they point to a couple of things. If you go back to some of the earliest examples of gangster rap in the 1990s, certainly, the themes and the material in the songs isn't that different. Michael: Well, I think some of the content in drill rap has been around for a very long time. How would you describe drill rap to someone who thinks they've never heard it? Thanks so much for joining us again on The Takeaway, Michael. ![]() Melissa: Joining me now in what still feels like 1993 is Michael Jeffries, dean of academic affairs and professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, and also author of Thug Life: Race, Gender, and the Meaning of Hip-Hop. Special versions were recorded for broadcast but retained many of the sexually explicit and violent lyrics that led to public calls for change. News anchor: As hardcore rap became big business, radio began to cater to an audience growing into the mainstream. This type of criticism was nearly its own sub-genre back in the early 1990s, as this NBC news clip from 1993 reminds us. Melissa: It’s certainly not the first time public officials have singled out rap as a cultural boogeyman. Maino: There’s been a lot of talk about drill rap, drill music, New York City, connecting violence with the culture, and I just wanted conversation with the Mayor. Adams met with members of New York City's rap scene earlier this week, including Brooklyn rapper Maino. Melissa: Now, artists and fans in the drill scene have criticized Mayor Adams for focusing his rage on a musical genre rather than the broader systemic issues that lead to gun violence. Now, Adams is just learning about drill rap, but it's been around for more than 10 years and was first made popular by Chicago-based rappers like King Louie and Chief Keef in the early 2010s. Melissa: That was New York Mayor Eric Adams, who apparently got a lesson in pop culture earlier this month after two young New York hip hop artists were killed. Yet we are allowing music displaying of guns, violence, we’re allowing it to stay on these sites, because look at the victims. We pulled Trump off Twitter because of what he was spewing. ![]() We are going to pull together the social media companies and sit down with them, and state that you have a civic and corporate responsibility. Mayor Eric Adams: I had no idea what drill rapping was, but I called my son, and he sent me some videos. Melissa Harris-Perry: This is the takeaway with Melissa Harris-Perry.
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