Less than a week ago, West Coast rappers YG 400 and Nipsey Hussle dropped a track via YouTube titled “FDT,” in which both rappers trade bars and rhymes about the United States’ next potential leader who has already ruffled enough feathers in the media with his off the wall policies concerning religion and minorities. “I’m bout to turn black panther/Don’t let Donald Trump win that n*%$@ cancer,” raps a very vehement YG illustrating that rappers are human beings and despite their luxuries they’re still considered second class citizens. Nipsey chimes in with his lines “Reagan sold dope/ Obama sold hope/ Donald Trump spent his trust fund money on the votes,” exhibiting that not all MCs/artists are interested in maintaining a lifestyle full of materialism, but rather, they have eyes that can see past the veil.
The video has garnered close to about 400,000 views with comments from all coasts of this great nation mostly in agreement with the lyrics. Is Hip Hop getting political again or is this just another gimmick for rappers to sell their next projects in due time we will be able to tell? The record is a very powerful one, a voice of the youth of today in 2016. The unity behind this single are the interesting facts that YG is a Treetop Piru blood hailing from Compton or as he likes to state “Bompton” and Nipsey Hussle is on the other side growing up in South Central LA as a Rollin 60s Crip. They both represent the same ideologies and sentiments of America’s youth towards this capitalist system and those who rule it.
And just like fellow artist Kendrick Lamar these rappers are students who took a page out of Tupac Shakur’s blueprint in “To Live and Die in LA” following the late great rapper’s call for their brown pride brothers Mexicans and Chicanos to unite and rally up with them against Mr. Trump. Hip Hop has been in party mode for the last nine years advocating the use of hallucinogens, social media beef and promoting the LGBT lifestyle every chance that they can do so one could ask could Hip Hop be returning to its very foundations of standing up for the people in the inner cities? Police brutality has increased; the country’s retention rate is higher than when Bush Jr. was in office and catastrophes such as what has taken place in Flint, Michigan seem to have been accepted as a social norm. Will rappers become the leaders to this turnt up yet voiceless generation? YG Newton and Nipsey X seem to be showing a brief glimpse into the new era, and the world is just going to have to watch what will take place next.
