hip hop mortality

"I'll probably get shot". The whole room of 90 some odd students turned towards us in horror in that lecture hall. It was my sophomore year of college. And my entire sociology class was staring at me, and the only other brotha in the room, like they couldn't believe their ears. What were we discussing? Mortality rates and lifestyle. The professor asked us, if we died tomorrow, how did we see ourselves going out. I watched about 70% of that white classroom confess they saw themselves going out in an automobile accident. The other 29% said heart attack, cancer, or some other unspecified health complication. The last two people in the class also happened to be the only blacks in the class. Both male, both hip hoppers. Our answer? We both said the same thing. "I'll probably get shot".

The tragic number of young lives we continue to lose in hip hop makes me wonder, are there any parallels between the lifestyle, and the mortality rate of our peers? The easy answer is yes. We've all seen what happens when hip hop turns violent. And no, I'm not talking Pac, Big, and Jam Master Jay stories. I'm talking about our countless peers who were cut down in the prime of their lives. I'm talking about all those people who live in those sad stories spoken softly at small gatherings when people bring up their names while reminiscing. Although they may have never picked up a mic or scratched a record, they were hip hoppers. They wore the gear, blasted the sounds, and lived the lyrics--and other hip hoppers, who lived the culture too, gunned them down. Gun violence has devastated hip hop. But so has the drug trade. We always hear about the overglorified drug dealer, but the reality is, for every dealer shot dead on the streets, there are three or four young homeless junkies dying slow in an alley somewhere. And nobody's gonna tag a wall for them. Nobody wears R.I.P. tee shirts for crack heads, but those people are as much a part of the culture as anybody. It's just they belong to that unspoken part that's often overlooked.

As a lifestyle, hip hop has always been about excess. The biggest chain. The most money. The most girls. The most expensive cars. Who could smoke the most weed. Or drink the most liquor. But all this excess is having a tremendous affect on our mortality. Case in point, the same excessive, wild, adulterous lifestyle Eazy E glorified in his lyrics, eventually led to his untimely death. And he's not alone. African Americans below the age of 25 continue to be the group with the largest growth rate of HIV infections. But it makes sense. Simply listen to the songs we digest, or the images we see in all the hip hop videos. It's sex sex sex. Not protected or monogamous sex-- just sex. Now think about alcohol and cigarettes. I love going out to local hip hop venues to check out the shows and what not. But one of the things I hate is all the cigarette and weed smoke in the venues. Hip hoppers are smoking their asses off. And at this point, alcohol is a hip hop staple. But it's not the alcohol or cigarettes alone that I fear. It's hip hop's excessive way in which we consume things. Hip hoppers don't want to have A joint. They want the biggest bag of weed. It's not cool to have A drink or two. It's all about who can drink who under the table and be the last man standing. With all this excess, I can easily foresee a time, when many of our most loved hip hoppers will succumb to lung and throat cancer. As well as kidney and liver disease, at an epidemic-like rate. Is it really that much of a stretch to imagine Snoop Dogg with lung cancer? Or any of our Hennessey guzzling emcees with liver failure? Well for every famous person who we loose, they'll be thousands of non famous hip hoppers succumbing to the exact same lifestyle.

Don't let me paint a hopeless picture. I've seen hip hop's finest sell their chiseled bodies to the hip hop nation causing many to watch calories and exercise. Also seeing emcees drink water on stage has created a huge push for youngsters to consume more water, which is a great thing. But make no mistake, overall, the hip hop lifestyle can take quite a toll on ones health. Gun toting, fast food, drugs, insufficient rest, excessive drinking, smoking, and casual sex, are all playing a part in what seems to be an ever lowering hip hop mortality rate. Just a few days ago, we lost legendary producer, and Detroit icon, Jay Dee. Mind you, Jay Dilla died of lupus, which is a serious disease that is unrelated to how we live as hip hoppers. Yet, it serves as a reminder of how fragile we all are, without abusing our bodies. So just imagine, how much more susceptible we become to various health risks, when we do everything in excess. It's time we all begin to embrace the notion of growing old, because too many of us have been bright flashes in the night that burned out far too quickly. In '06, visit a doctor, wear condoms, drink less, smoke less, and please, leave your guns at home. We can either grow old together as a hip hop nation, or we can continue to live like we want to die tomorrow. Ultimately, the choice is yours.