Gangster Rap as Social Resistance

Gangster rap is often cast aside as a commercial project, an advertisement which exploits urban violence and societal drug problems in order to create the image of the gangster, a figure condoning overconsumption and violence. I would like to analyze the lyricism and aesthetic of the lone gangster rapper figure as a poet. Although gangster rap certainly glamorizes violence and monetary excess, perhaps this glamorization calls to attention greater systemic problems within the community from which this figure originates.

One of the most infamous figures in the ganster rap tradition is the Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie Smalls. Biggie died at the age of 24 in a drive-by shooting. Biggie was known for affiliations with east coast gangs and his rise to fame and wealth are often associated with these dubious allegiances. Biggie’s death marked an opportunity for media to condemn the event as the crystallization of a music culture which glorified the accumulation of wealth at any cost. But Biggie’s image and his music treat his socioeconomic background with far more nuance than critics credit him. I believe Biggie is quite self aware of his media image, which his label coopted to glorify a lifestyle of overconsumption in order to gloss over larger social problems. His lyrics reference his relationship to the drug scene and also situate his image in relationship to a broader cultural tradition of the crime lord figure.

His song, “You’re Nobody (Till Somebody Kills You)”, ironically released posthumously, exemplifies Biggie’s dialogue not only with media criticisms of the contemporary gangster rap image, but with broader historical social structures of capitalist oppression and the cultural tradition of crime as the manifestation of underlying structural violence.

The song begins with a reference to Christ’s 23rd Psalm:

“Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil — for you are with me
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me
You prepare a table for me, in the presence of my enemies
You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows
Surely goodness and love will follow me — all the days of my life
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever”

Biggie references Biblical morality and complicates this moral compass by positioning the gangster as the figure seeking spiritual absolution. The question implicit to this formulation is: can criminals who have forsaken the law of the land still have access to its mercy? Is a figure outside the law of the land forsaken of its justice? Moreover, if the law of the land is exclusionary, if a figure born of this oppressive exclusion actively defies the law, is it not their social marginalization the real sin, and not the vile acts the criminal commits?

In the next verse, Biggie establishes the gangster as a figure caught between two opposing worlds: a life of socioeconomic exclusion which push the impoverished criminals into a life of violence, and a legal system ready to kill gangsters without considering the circumstances that have caused them to act outside of the law. As Biggie notes, “Strictly gun testing, coke measuring…/Shit’s official, only, the Feds I fear”. Gangster have created an alternative system of existence to support themselves in the face of economic subjugation, an official system outside the law. Paradoxically, any attempt to create a legitimate system outside of the law is necessarily illegitimate. There is no escape from economic subjugation, because any attempt to form resistance can only be done so with reference to the dominant oppressive system – it’s a catch 22.

Biggie goes on to demonstrate an awareness of the cultural tradition of criminal alterity: “Watch Casino, I’m the hip hop version of Nicky Tarantino”, draws reference to the cinematic tradition of the Italian-American gangster. Cinema studies notes the formation of the Italian-American gangster figure as an explicit critique of exclusionary legal and social structures. Driven outside society, the gangster is left with few options other than to commit to a life of crime in order to survive. Biggie notes a cultural parallel between this cinematic tradition and the contemporary state of gangster rap music.