Rapper arrest fuels questions over hip hop

ATLANTA (Reuters) - The arrest on weapons charges of Grammy Award-winning rapper T.I. could fuel the image of violent inner-city black males and undermine efforts to clean-up hip hop, experts said.

Many rappers make a living from portraying the aggression and profanity they say reflects the reality of U.S. inner city life but this year record companies and civil rights leaders have waged a campaign to ban hip hop records that use curses from radio.

T.I., who was born Clifford Harris, faces up to 20 years in jail if convicted of charges that he tried to buy unregistered machine guns even though he was a convicted felon. He was remanded in custody on Friday for a further week.

His arrest last Saturday stunned many hip hop fans because it came just hours before he was due to star at a major hip hop awards ceremony in Atlanta.

"It (the arrest) is going to fit into the stereotype of the violent young black male and of course it will look like he did something incredibly stupid with no reasoning about it," said William Jelani Cobb, the author of a recent book of essays about contemporary black culture.

That impression is exacerbated in T.I.'s case because, after two No. 1 albums on the U.S. billboard charts and an appearance in a forthcoming movie with Denzel Washington, he appeared on the verge of joining hip hop's elite.

Cobb said that if found guilty T.I., who is 27, will have likely thrown away his career.

He will also be seen to have failed to separate himself from the negative influence of some of the people he grew up with and to have fallen into the trap of living out the reality on which he based his music, Cobb said.

"Hip hop as a culture prides itself on urban savvy," said Cobb, a professor of history at Atlanta's Spelman College.

"The line that you have to walk is you have to be close enough to that community to be able to appeal to it and represent it but if you are too close you fall prey to the perils that are endemic in it," he said.

GUNS

Byron Hurt, who has made a documentary about masculinity in hip hop, said that for many young black men guns are seen as a legitimate way of expressing manhood and resolving disputes.

"(Many) men are indoctrinated with this belief that you show people how tough you are by the use of a gun .... A lot of young men in the hip hop generation buy into that," he said adding that the issue was not the sole preserve of blacks.

Insecurity was also a feature of life for many people growing up in inner cities who felt threatened by the people around them, said Bilal Mansa, an associate professor of sociology at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Research showed that many young African American males in inner cities lived with a fear of betrayal and a mistrust of their peers and kept guns as a result, he said.

The murders of hip hop icons Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls in 1996 and 1997, apparently by other blacks, reinforced the notion among some rappers that their lives were under threat once they became successful.

Many rappers who found success were also faced with a choice: to break from the culture in which they grew up and thus jeopardize their authenticity, or to remain part of it.

"Society says: 'You've made it now so stop being who you were.' But for a young person that's a hard call because being who you were got you where you are," said Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip Hop Generation. He added: "Most people trust people who they have been around."