Hip-Hop, Are We Still Pham, or Does Money Trump Everything?

Have you ever had that feeling like friends you’ve been tight with for years have changed on you and you no longer recognize them? Like someone who you used to shoot bottle rockets with when you were nine, and shoot dice with when you were 17, ain’t really down no more?

I had that feeling when I saw that four hip-hop stars, three of whom are heavyweights in the culture, performed at events directly or indirectly connected to the inauguration of Donald Trump.

Snoop Dogg, Nelly, Rick Ross and Soulja Boy, each participated in such events in the days leading up to or during the event, and each were dragged hard over it. The one who got the worst dragging was Snoop D-O-Double-G because of his earlier voiciferous and vulgar criticism of Trump.

I don’t know what changed, but he made an appearance at the Crypto Ball, a Jan. 17 black-tie affair, which organizers said “celebrates the leadership of President-elect Donald J. Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.” Trump himself wasn’t there. It was apparently one of many politically-linked inauguration shindigs around Washington D.C. If you haven’t been there, these types of things happen almost daily and are exclusive who’s who-type deals. This one, however was about boosting someone half the country didn’t vote for.

Ross and Soulja also took the mic at the same event, Nelly did the same at the Inaugural Ball on Jan. 20, and the culture took a bite out of all their asses.

Snoop apparently hasn’t responded, and neither has Ross, but Soulja Boy – who once shouted out slave masters (although he later claimed it was a joke and a setup), said he did it all for the bag, while holding up a stack of cash in his hand in his response video. Meanwhile Nelly tried to explain that his choice to perform was nonpartisan and that he was “honored’ to be on the stage that night.

Some compared this to the decision singer Chrisette Michelle made to perform at Trump’s first inauguration in 2016, which drew such heavy backlash from the Black community that it severely damaged her career. At the time, she saw it as a chance to stand on business, making a statement that Black people could not be forced off the national stage by any politician and that she wasn’t linked with Trump. But Black folks didn’t see it that way.

I actually did not agree at the time. I felt some criticism may have been warranted, but to tank her career after how she explained it went too far. Especially since Chaka Khan sang at the 2000 Republican Convention, and even after James Brown (Soul Brotha No. 1) performed at Richard Nixon’s inauguration in 1969 (he sang “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud") and publicly endorsed him in 1972. These two artists have lost no love at all from Black folks.

So to me, people criticized Michelle because their memories were short and they wanted to pile on just to seem “on code.” Still, the singer herself later called the move a mistake.

None of These Kids Are Doing Their Own Thing

Anyway, I won’t extend the same grace to the four rappers in question here. While Chrisette, Chaka, and JB may have had different and perhaps earnest reasons for performing before conservative audiences, these men went in completely aware of Trump’s agenda from not only his last term in office but the trouble he caused while he was out of office.

First, he doubled down on his insistence of the guilt of the Central Park Five, whose sentence was vacated in 2002 after evidence surfaced proving they were not complicit in a gruesome 1989 sexual assault. He heavily pushed the flat falsehood that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States until he had to admit in 2016 that he was. He included a group of domestic terrorists in Charlottesville, Va., in his claim there were “very fine people” on both sides of a deadly race riot. Most recently, he attacked and lampooned former Vice President Kamala Harris’ racial background when she has vocally clarified that she is Black and Indian.

Of course, his worst crime is the one that for all intents and purposes he got away with: Inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot that killed five people – all because he wants people to believe he won the 2020 election, which he didn't. To make matters worse, he pardoned the 1,500 people involved, even those convicted of assaulting Capitol Police officers. He is now ordering government agents to conduct racist and illegal raids to further his agenda.

All this is in addition to a very long history in which he has been accused of racist behavior and alignment with white supremacists. To perform in any kind of connection with a man with that type of record is a pimp slap in the face of the many who suffered indignities and injury so that these artists could have the freedom to be on stage and not have to use the “colored” entrance to get there.

Family Disunion

My cultural life has been a home where I lived with hip hop as a brother, house music as a sister, jazz and rock n’ roll as my mother and father, and blues and gospel, as my grandparents.

What these MCs' capitulation to Trump told me is that one sibling has changed on me. Yes, these are only four artists, but they set an extremely bad precedent and opened a gate that I’m not sure can be closed. Will other artists feel no obligation to the culture and people that propped them up? Is it being auctioned off to the highest bidder? Does it only take money for you to tell them “My name is Toby?”

Maybe I’m buggin.’ Maybe they see themselves the same way James Brown did in ‘69, present in the faces of people who would otherwise ignore them. Apolitical, but making money for it.

For me, though, they made a statement through the most prolific art form to ever come out of the Pan-African diaspora, sending the message that Black expression is no longer a threat or challenge to racism. “We gon’ be good colored folk, now. We won’t be no mo’  trouble to ya, boss.”

So hip hop, here’s my question. Are we still tight or have you left me in the ‘hood, alone and fending for myself? Are we gonna shoot dice like back in the day? Maybe blood is thicker than water, but does Cash Rule Everything Around Me – even your allegiance?

Hip-hop, are we still pham?

Madison Gray is a New York City-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in multiple publications globally. Reach out to him at madison@starkravingmadison.com.