Jay Z and the XXXTentacion Line
Hip-Hop is a very lyrical based musical form. An instrumental that can bump makes waves, but even the best beats made by the best producers can't hold a candle to singular lines. Reason why could be because a bar can be remembered, used, flipped and redone easily. Every great rapper has an iconic line that people can attribute to them, such as LL Cool J's "Mama said knock you out" or DMX's all-time classic of "X gon give it to ya". But Jay-Z is a different breed of rapper. He's at a level of greatness that is rare to see. Therefore, when he puts out a line, you can expect reactions from everyone - and that's what happened with Drake's "Talk Up" from Scorpion. The line in question:
Y'all killed X and let Zimmerman live, shhh, s-streets is done
Has been debated a lot in the past weeks, with an op-ed written by Highsnobiety claiming that "Jay-Z's reference to XXXTentacion is hugely irresponsible". Let's get controversial.
To explain Jay's line is as simple as asking: do you like to live in safety? Most would answer yes. In a significant amount of places in the world, that sense of security is achieved through a series of unwritten laws known as the rules of engagement. They're meant to ensure that we are all on an equal footing. We see it in a lot of Mafia movies. An example would be that a small business is under the protection of the Italian mafia and gets robbed by the Irish mafia - what makes it that the Italians don't go in a Valentine's day massacre type of vibe are the rules of engagement. May the punishment fit the crime. An eye for an eye. Before going that far, may I refer to the 1960's Cuban missile crisis, in which the whole situation can be boiled down to the USSR breaking the rule of engagement of not sending nuclear weapons to Cuba, which angered the United States to the point of almost going into Nuclear conflict?
Jay-Z, from the perspective of a well accomplished African-American man who came from poverty and struggle, is telling us that he feels that the rules of engagement have been broken. He's asking Floridians - the government and its people - how could they let a murderer walk and an innocent man die? How could the same black people who marched for Black Lives kill the same Black Lives for a Louis Vuitton bag and some money? He comes from an era in which the streets weren't cool and money was tight. The people inside those areas only had themselves to count on. Therefore, the rules of engagement helped them survive, so how and why do they not apply now? To him, with the rules broken, anarchy and chaos ensues.
The line is neither reckless or irresponsible. It is a very real and stark reality that Jay-Z sees from the top of the world. The streets are done because what kept them together have been destroyed. The sudden and unfortunate passing of XXXTentacion was painful for the entire hip-hop community; while talking about it is like clawing at open wounds, maybe it's the pain that the community needs to wake up. It's like listening to a broken record to hear that the youth is in charge of the future and that we are destroying the culture, but it's true - we need to change the way we are and follow the rules of engagement. It's to our benefit. Creating new rules will mean that people will get hurt as they begin to get implemented. That's not what the culture is for.