Rap

It should come upwardly every bit picayune surprise that conspiracy thinking circulates inwards rap music. This dark musical form—comprising rapping MCs, record-spinning DJs, too studio producers—first emerged inwards America’s deteriorating urban centers inwards the belatedly 1970s. From these subcultural beginnings, it has developed too diversified into a volume marketplace set form, spell sustaining vital connections to dark lived experience.

Reasons why rap music, which has deep roots inwards dark oral culture, should include conspiracy motifs extend all the means dorsum to the firstly coordinated conspiracy directed against dark people inwards the United States: the slavery organization of race-based task exploitation.

In the contemporary era, white supremacism is of class less state-sanctioned, next gains made past times blacks culminating inwards the civil rights motility of the mid-twentieth century. However, though oftentimes harder to identify, institutional discrimination too race-based prejudice are however widespread inwards contemporary America.


Many dark too working-class Americans cause got lost basis economically over the past times 30 years, casualties of rising inequality too free-market fundamentalism. These social atmospheric condition cause got given ascent to novel kinds of conspiracy stories too “urban legends” (Turner), which flora rich too varied human face inwards rap music.

Rap’s conspiracy trend was oftentimes highly politicized. Black nationalist rap, peaking inwards the years unopen to the plough of the 1990s, compellingly critiqued white ability structures, oftentimes construed every bit a vast conspiracy. The highly influential grouping Public Enemy released Fear of a Black Planet (1990), the championship playing amongst white fears nigh dark power.

The championship of the group’s follow-up album, Apocalypse 91: The Enemy Strikes Black (1991), sensationally casts political scrap every bit a global race conflict. Other groups aestheticized their distrust of official cognition too dominant structures inwards less pointedly political ways.

East Coast ghettocentric rapper Prodigy, from Mobb Deep, amidst many others, fashioned images nigh surreptitious ability elites: “Illuminati wants my mind, soul, too my trunk / Secret society, trying to hold an optic on me” (rapping on LL Cool J’s “I Shot Ya Remix,” 1995).

In to a greater extent than pedagogic too religious terms, Poor Righteous Teachers released an album entitled New World Order (1995). These artists shift betwixt fantastical, other-worldly visions too to a greater extent than socially driven expositions of frightening actual basis monastic say developments: technologized surveillance too exploding incarceration rates (Smith too Fiske).

For rapper Coolio, the neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles became a “penitentiary culture” inwards the 1980s, its bounds traveling good beyond the many actual prisons located inwards “Fortress LA” (Davis).

Of the to a greater extent than psychologized too hallucinatory rap portrayals, Tupac Shakur, Geto Boys, too Wu-Tang Clan are notably inventive. Houston’s Geto Boys are best known for their 1991 striking “My Mind Is Playing Tricks on Me,” which, according to Source magazine, “took us on a terrifying trip through the heed of a gangster nether the gun.”

Tapping into the masculinist paranoia of “ghetto survival,” such tracks were highly compelling, telling tales of insomnia, heavy alcohol consumption, suicidal thoughts, too paranoid delusions.

Wu-Tang Clan’s hallucinatory journeys, past times contrast, were much to a greater extent than expansive too surreal. This nine-strong collective from Staten Island, New York, launched its esoteric, black-nationalist philosophy of “living mathematics” on its debut Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993).

Adopting a dizzying array of personas too monikers (leading rapper Method Man is aka Johnny Blaze, Iron Lung, Johnny Dangerous, etc.), Wu-Tang combines Five Percent philosophy (an off-shoot of the Nation of Islam religion) amongst manifold pop-cultural references taken from Mafia lore, ufology, children’s television, too higher upwardly all martial arts.

The recipe produces paradoxically gritty simply trippy albums too a full-blown simply coded conspiracist mode. Notable examples include the age-old mysticism of GZA’s Liquid Swords (1995) too Method Man’s mentally claustrophobic too apocalyptically titled Tical 2000: Judgement Day (1998).

As rap flooded the mainstream inwards the mid-1990s, rap stars continued to mobilize apocalyptic, conspiracy-laced images to less political ends. Busta Rhymes, for instance, offers Armageddon-style prophesies on his best-selling albums, When Disaster Strikes (1997) too Extinction Level Event (1998)—usually amounting to high-decibel boasts nigh his ain song prowess.

The trend too themes of celebrated video manager Hype Williams are also decidedly futuristic, including his award-winning clip for Tupac too physician Dre’s “California Love” (1996), which depicts a dystopian future-desert of campfires too rusty cyber-technology reminiscent of the Mad Max films.

Although politically witting too choice rappers proceed to deploy conspiracy themes to limited too explicate the confounding experiences of America’s dark youth, mainstream acts to a greater extent than routinely explore the grandiose, explosive, too marketable dimensions of power, conspiracy, too paranoia.