I Gotta Make It To Heaven

“Mom was raped and shot. Dad was decapitated and hung from a hook in the barn. I was nine years old. Boo Hoo, right?… Sometimes I wonder if God will ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other. Then, I look around and realize that God left this place a long time ago.”

– Daniel Archer; Blood Diamond.

The coin drops. The two magazines are loaded into their corresponding pistols. The first song kicks in the door with a loop that then sputters and drops as a calm voice softly recites a laconic poetry that would consume the mind of an entire generation. The message of a cold pragmatist who has made peace with a reality that he knows to be universal. Something forgotten. No friends, no naked emotions, no idealism, no love. Even though it might seem like a character, he succeeds in maintaining a certain level of sincerity. Glimpses of vulnerability and self-doubt leak out through lyrics like “I sit back, twist the best bud, burn and wonder, when gangsters bump my shit can they hear my hunger?” He briefly shares the trauma and resignation of being born on the wrong side of a class war, declaring “I’m innocent in my head, like a baby born dead.” And “God is a seamstress that tailor-fitted my pain.”

That’s all we get… glimpses of a once tortured psyche that has transformed himself through an awakening. Heaven is real and the price of admission isn’t good deeds. You don’t have to ask for forgiveness from God or allow Jesus into your heart. Heaven is not a place you go when you die. Heaven is here on earth.

The history of rap music has always been marked by cycles of alternating eras. The first commercially successful rap single was released in 1979. The lighthearted and funky party anthem “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugar Hill Gang peaked at no. 38 on the Billboard charts. Through the despondency felt by the proceeding generations, because of a seemingly corrupt and collapsing system, an increasing edge was developed and introduced. The fun outlet of block party style rhymes that focused on playful self-aggrandizing and upbeat optimism was quickly replaced by a competitive attitude. Scarcity, violence, and an increasing popularity drove aspiring MCs to stand out by being meaner, hungrier, and more developed lyrically than their contemporaries, and especially their predecessors. A group called Run-DMC achieved commercial success exemplifying the new paradigm. It cemented this revolution and made this aggressive style the new image of rap. Gone were the days of smiling rappers standing in front of the DJ table and taking turns rhyming about being the life of the party and the most popular with the girls over funk and disco breaks as they danced a little two-step. Rappers began focusing on having the most complex and cutthroat rhymes over minimalist beats that kept the lyrics in the spotlight. This resulted in an evolution of the delivery and flow of the rhymes as the youth began mimicking the simplistic beats with their mouths and formed “cyphers” on the street corners where they would sharpen their newly rhythmic verbal skirmishing skills.

As rap carved out a larger and larger piece in the cultural zeitgeist, many rappers saw the genre’s rise as an opportunity to unleash the truth about the state and treatment of African American neighborhoods onto the ignorant masses. This precipitated another evolution. One where rappers began reflecting the reality of their environment and the mindset necessary to survive in it. Along with a semi-political message; violence, sexual bravado, greed, and paranoia became substrates of entire albums.

Another rap group exemplifying this new version of the genre exploded in popularity and commercial success- and transformed the entire cultural landscape. N.W.A.’s 1989 debut “Straight Outta Compton” planted the flag for Los Angeles and its blockbuster commercial performance legitimized the subgenre as the new face of rap music. Young rappers were now required to adopt an even darker view of society to be relevant. Something that came easily with the state of race relations and economic disparity in American society. As the rappers of this generation faced backlash from the establishment, rap’s commercial success brought back variety in the form of more fun artists such as Vaniller Ice, MC Hammer, and Sir-Mix-Alot.

After a tumultuous contract dispute and short hiatus, N.W.A.’s resident hitmaker, Dr. Dre, returned with a monster solo/collaborative debut called The Chronic. Since this era was mired in controversy, it has been dissected and analyzed ad nauseum. What I will say is, their music reflected a cynicism that was plateuing in every young person in America. Since the early 80’s, the institutions were in a state of collapse. Religious, cultural, and artistic idols of the past were now seen as a part of a lie told to us by a power structure that wished to keep us under their control. Anti-establishment idealogies finally broke into the mainstream and reavealed how oppressed we really were. The youth realized that the only way to live the life you wanted was to go and take it, by any means necessary. After the death of two of rap’s central figures, the genre entered a kind of stasis. A state of mourning. All of entertainment was becoming increasingly pesimistic. The whole of American culture was entering a darker and more introspective place. If you felt like an outsider, like someone who saw through the veil of the American dream-  to the darkness behind its corporatist motives, this was the golden age. The information was finally out there. The truth was finally bare and available for all to see.

In this broken and bitter society, Dr. Dre found another artist that spoke directly to the geist (soul of the masses). Eminem machine gunned tracks with an intropunitive mind that had beaten itself down with so much self loathing that when he finally directed it towards the outside world, it was something unlike anything heard before it. A seething lyricism that used every track to search for deeper and deeper sources of trauma and murdered every one of those memories with a linguistic arsenal that Noam Chomsky would be proud of.

This might seem like an oversimplification or reductionist view of Eminem’s contribution to the genre but this essay is not about Eminem. His greater profile is in the works.

At the peak of his popularity, Eminem introduced an artist on the motion picture soundtrack for his semi-autobiographical film, 8 mile. A track that had originally been released on a mixtape called No Mercy, No Fear gained regional popularity through radio play. “Wanksta” mixed an upbeat production laced with chimes with an ode to the battle rap roots of New York. Another revolution had begun. In an era where rap was split between the grunge style introspection of Eminem, the love and party anthems of Ja Rule, Nelly, and whatever super group P.Diddy was pushing, and the constant battle for superiority between Nas and Jay-Z for the most beloved “hustler”; this track had something different. The composition and smooth voice mixed beautifully with a nose for structure that was outside of the typical gangster rap of yesteryear. A perfect sound that melded the innocent production of more pop oriented artists like Nelly and Ja with a hardcore edge in the lyrics.

It was an unnoticed transitional marker. In a world that witnessed the global empire of America be punched in the face and challenged by a group of cave dwellers; darkness was spreading in the cultural rhetoric. The stage was set. And Dr. Dre was going to give him the opportunity for a proper introduction into our public consciousness. “In da club” reversed the style of “Wanksta”. A hard-hitting and ominous beat was used for a party anthem that would take over the world. The music video saw Curtis being built in a laboratory as a specimen that would exemplify the perfect gangster. The new image of rap.

The difference between 50 cent and another of Dr. Dre’s protégés and cultural icon, Snoop Dogg, is that 50 came at a time of hyperglobalization. The internet had been born a decade before but was entering the stage of mass accessibility. And 50’s was a narrower outlook on which principles mattered in this world. Snoop had a varied set of ideals and allegiances. A catalogue of songs that dealt with the specifics of whatever topic was being explored. 50 used every track to espouse the same philosophy: Money over everything. It didn’t matter if the song was about love, hatred, murder, or partying; the verses were always laced with the belief that everything was secondary to his wallet. And every verse was from the perspective of how every subject affected his wallet.

This is why I believe he is the father of the current spirit of the times. The architect of our collective philosophy. We now live in a world where anything that negatively affects our happiness can be discarded. It doesn’t matter if they are family, friends, or lovers; if they don’t contribute to our happiness, they have to be eliminated from our lives. And despite the saying, we now know that the main facilitator of happiness is money. Money gives you the freedom to be a good person, to find redemption, to be happy. Carl Jung once wrote, “A fool lives here, or there. But never here and there.” 50 cent lived in the world as it was. Even with the renewed jingoism of wartime Americana. 50 recognized that the public wasn’t deluded by the deceptive terms of freedom, liberty, and justice. He knew that the masses were aware that the only thing that matters, motivates, and affects everything in this life is cold, hard cash. So his first album was a prayer. He asked the only God that he knows is real, the masses, for entry into the only heaven he knows is real, fame and fortune. And we granted his wish.

50 cent seems like the most lucid of the mega stars that affected our culture. No words give better evidence of this than ” I gotta make it to heaven, cus I’m living in hell.” When other rappers looked inward in their music, it was usually about a moral struggle. An artist trying to rationalize the necessary evils they spread into the world to rise to a place where they can eventually vindicate themselves through the means begotten from those evils. 50 cent never struggled. He knew that spreading this mindset wasn’t evil. It was a mirror. It was how people really lived in this final age of man.