Remember several years ago when street credentials actually superceded talent? It didn’t matter that your wordplay was slick if your gunplay racked up more toe tags than the Vietnam war. Why dodge bullets when you could actually catch them with your chest and sell a few hundred thousand more copies of your latest gangster rap album/paraphernalia?

Your story > Your skills. Not that it was ever a good thing but I digress.

The fact was that being a “G” was what it was all about. Your actual skill set could be crap, but just as long as your street cred was intact, it was all good in the music industry. Labels started picking up artists simply because their rep sounded more menacing than their feeble ditties on wax. We, as consumers, bought into the façade hook, line and sinker.  

At one point, it seemed like every CD and cassette on the sales rack was chock full of gangster content. You had Compton’s Most Wanted, NWA, Bloods & Crips (remember Bangin’ On Wax?), Hi-C, 2^nd II None, South Central Cartel, etc. Even the females got into the picture.

Remember female rapper Bo$$? Her small frame would pose with automatic weapons that would make T.I. blush. She spit rhymes littered with cop killing and street hustling. But when she was exposed as a woman who was raised by church deacon parents in a Detroit middle-class household, it all went downhill. Here was a woman who attended Catholic schools and took ballet lessons but ironically titled her album Born Gangstaz. Studio gangster? Absolutely. Credibility shot to hell? Positively! 

Telling lies about your past was the equivalent to career suicide. The mere notion that you weren’t who you really said you were was quite destructive.

DJ Quik aired out MC Eiht with the line “You left out the G cause the G ain’t in you” on the venomous diss track “Dollaz & Sense.” Ice Cube ripped Eazy E a new one with a “I never have dinner with the President!” on “No Vaseline.”  The simple thought that you were a phony, a snitch, a tom or even working for “The Man” could bury your future in rap. And this is without photographic evidence.   

How things have changed.

Now a new Bawse has entered the picture with entertaining tails of being a gangster. He blew onto the scene with the massive anthem just for the streets “Hustlin’” Makes music for the maybachs and the mafia. Forget about whether he’s a good rapper or not, for Ross it was all about the big imposing looking figure with the thick beard.  

In July of 2008, Ross  was exposed by The Smoking Gun as being a corrections officer in his past. This conflicted heavily with Ross’ tales of slangin’ and thuggin.’ Although Ross initially denied that the photos provided were actually him, The Smoking Gun continued to post more and more information linking Ross to the corrections officer history.

The situation could have been easily diffused if Ross stepped up and said something like “Yes. That was me in those photos. But I was infiltrating the system while boosting my connections to the drug cartel – all while sticking it to ‘The Man!’” 

And just like that, everyone would have nodded their heads in collective approval and left him alone. Hell, he might have been even more gangster than ever before. Instead, Ross clung to those claims tighter than his satin jackets cling to his massive frame. But now, after months of lies and more evidence popping up, Ross has finally decided to step up and admit that he was a corrections officer.

This is all happening in the midst of a feud with 50 Cent where the G-Unit leader has attacked Ross’ credibility in true Fif fashion.  

Oh, what an interesting predicament we’re in. We have those who have cried “keep it real” finding out that one of their heroes was blatantly telling fibs about his past while we have others who have always been against talking about street life so freely finding a catalyst for their stance. But here’s the funny thing…

Apparently nobody cares! 

And that’s where I’m confused.

The Hip-Hop community and its consumers have been steadfast in its position of “keeping it real.” Faking jacks is the epitome of career suicide – no matter what field you are in. If you lie on your resume about being a senior VP at a marketing firm when the only marketing you’ve done was promoting your rapping friends show, as soon as you are figured out, you’re fired.

If you are in a relationship and you tell your significant other that you do not have any children out of wedlock but pictures reveal that you have seven, chances are your relationship is over.

Barry Bonds is at risk of being the biggest baseball fraud we’ve ever seen because of his claims of never knowingly taking performance enhancing drugs. If photographic evidence is ever revealed, say so long to Bonds being the greatest baseball player of our generation.

Go ahead and say somebody is “fake” and see how they react. In this community, you can call somebody anything in the good book. But as soon as you imply that they aren’t who they say they are, I guarantee that you’re claims will be met with ire and possible fisticuffs.

But in Hip-Hop, it’s the exact opposite of what it claims to be.

“Embellishment” is an understatement.

But let’s not act like Rick Ross is the only rapper whose past simply doesn’t match up with what he represents. Maybe Rick Ross was really huslin’ cocaine during his off time as a corrections officer. But the bottom line is that he did not want to reveal that he was a corrections officer for a reason – it would be damaging to his career.

Somewhere along the way, Ross decided that he could no longer hang on to this fib. Maybe he realized that it really wouldn’t matter and his fans would still be his fans whether he was a corrections officer or a part of CSI. We’ll never know.

So who is at fault for all of this?

We are.

We don’t really want reality rap. We just want rap that sounds better than our boring lives. If we as fans stop fronting, perhaps the rappers will too.

We want rap that is real to us. A “true” story of some sort right? So Rick Ross weaves tales of “Noreaga owing him one hundred favors” but his web of lies find him on the other side of the law. He lies, and lies, and lies. Then, he finally reveals that it was really him in the picture with the C.O. diploma. Tall tales should equal fake rapper to the public.

Asher Roth is a white kid from suburbia who spits rhymes about being in college and partying like there’s no tomorrow. Somehow I find that rap realer than Ross’ but Rick Ross has all the street cred. Meanwhile, the kids who buy Ross’ music are more than likely living a life that is closer to Roth’s than Ross’. And they want reality rap?

Now I’m really confused.  

Can someone explain to me the allure of being a drug dealer who happens to rap please? I honestly don’t get it. If you rap, stop dealing drugs. Makes sense right? Doing drugs, I get. Slangin’ them? Nah.

It isn’t Rick Ross kids. This is us and what we demand our rappers to be. We don’t want boring rappers without a checkered history. We ask for the thugging, stunting and hustling rappers that we are presented to us.

Separating fact from fiction isn’t part of our equation.

Is Hip-Hop just entertainment? If so, we shouldn’t care about a rapper’s background. He’s just an actor. Reality rap? Who cares! But that’s the interesting paradox that Hip-Hop finds itself in day in and day out.

It really is Deeper Than Rap.

–ANDREAS HALE

It’s Hollywood. It’s the director’s guild. That’s the question you gotta ask those people. What we’re doing, is we created a way to eat. If they don’t like it, f**k them.  We eating. We’re communicating with our people. That cracker Don Imus, he said what he said and now when I come to New York, they got five billboards of this racist cracker blowing up everywhere. He’s bigger now than he was last year. For all you geniuses, they need to be addressing that shit. We’re addressing the struggle. And now, they try to turn it around hip-hop. Yeah, it’s cool. We can take it though. They on the outside. We decide what we label the music. We decide what music we make. We decide what music is hot. That’s what they need to face.

–RICK ROSS