Hip-Hop with No Guidance
Hip-Hop and the community that surrounds it is not exempt of questions of morality. Questions of what should be seen as being right or wrong, proper or not, permeates the field since the days of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" being a hit. The discussion that has made the rounds on the internet and Hip-Hop circles have been the question of forgiveness due to Chris Brown and Drake's latest hit song, "No Guidance". What is bad, and how bad is too bad to recover from it for an artist in the genre? How long ago should something happen before it is worthy of forgiveness, if it even is?
In the case of Chris Brown, the most egregious offense is the infamous domestic violence case against Rihanna in 2008, where he savagely beat her in his car. However, this isn't his only criminal charge or incident of the sort. There are altercations with big stars such as the aforementioned Drake and Frank Ocean to be accounted for as well as threatening a woman with a gun in 2016. What could be seen as a pattern of violent behavior towards groups such as women and the LGBTQIA+ community is evident. Chris Brown is historically seen as a bad thing.
I do not want to play both sides, but I want to value both sides.
On the side of someone who shouldn't be forgiven is standing on the side of those who cannot be forgiven. Someone who cheats will always cheat. Someone who beats will always beat. There is no chance to change, especially if this person continues this dangerous and painful behavior. Chris Brown has proven on multiple occasions that imprisonment and jail does not deter him from continuing. To support him would be to enable activities like those to continue and to get him the money to pay the lawyers to let him see freedom once more. To cancel him is a positive step to clean up the music industry, a bit like how people have cancelled Robert Kelly, the child sexual predator, for the things that he did. Why not take Chris Brown out the same way?
On the other side comes those that would support forgiving Chris Brown. It has been years since the major incidents and it seems that he has grown up and matured. He's shown some substantial amount of growth throughout the years through becoming a father, rehab and a lot of work in his community. To add to that, there is the ever present idea that he was forgiven by Rihanna and that this was publicized and even squashed completely when they made a song all the way back in 2011. No person is perfect, it just so happens that the sins of Chris Brown tend to be exposed to the tabloids, and that is without his consent. So why continue to denigrate him or anybody that makes a conscious choice to go and work with him?
To be honest, I haven't decided on a side yet - the moral debate continues to rage on in my mind. At times, I believe that to cancel him would in fact stop any chances of him doing anything that he's done in the past again, at least in the public eye. But then, I think about how we can all change and become better people if given the chance. We all deserve that chance, no matter the consequences or the problem. I'm in no way impartial to the decision, as a man, I must take a stand and think about my own actions that permit domestic violence and do not, whether that be in my own actions, my own productions (The Rap Clash and others) or through those I support. Therefore, I leave you all with the question that remains: should Hip-Hop continue to have no guidance?