As hip-hop celebrates its 50th birthday this year, the forefathers, icons, dons and divas of the culture are owed a debt of gratitude for enriching so many facets of our lives. The music has heightened our political and socioeconomic awareness, its swagger redefined our sense of fashion, and the melodic rhymes of hip-hop artists created a soundtrack for our youth. 

However, the arrival of “middle-agedness” usually triggers weighty introspection, especially after reaching such a milestone – the kind of serious reflection that often culminates in change. The result is usually an inner recognition of new growth or a desire to abandon the folly of childhood. Unfortunately, except for a small group of artists, hip-hop, as a culture and collective conscience, has seemingly failed to experience some of that maturation. But maybe it’s just been blinded by $15 billion in “bling” — hip-hop’s current market value. 

Hip-hop represents a rich global economy that has transformed underground artists into oligarch-like influencers that grace the cover pages of Forbes and Vogue. Some Hip-hop icons have even amassed enough clout to secure presidential pardons and the kind of cachet that sways presidential popularity. But after wielding this level of money, power, and respect, why are some artists becoming “crash dummies” for music labels?

As rap impresario Jadakiss (one-third of the platinum-selling group “The LOX”) stated in a recent podcast interview with “I am Athlete” (hosted by Brandon Marshall), “[record labels] are gambling on you to do something dumb, so they can profit [off of it]”…”[artists] are being successful off nonsense” and “we just blaming it on the kids.” Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on where one stands morally and financially), murder, drugs, and violence can operate like an algorithm to multiply music streams. Whether labels intentionally use that knowledge to profit from the crimes that their artists commit (as Jadakiss and others have suggested) or their complicity is unintentional, they are certainly banking lots of “bread” on the carnage. But are these labels also exposing themselves to criminal liability? The Young Thug/Young Slime Life (“YSL”) RICO trial might serve as a textbook illustration of that point if YSL was an actual legal entity and not just an unincorporated record label. 

Although it’s not a legal trend yet, labels (incorporated or otherwise) could easily find themselves in the crosshairs of aggressive law enforcement tactics (as in the case of rap lyrics being used with increasing frequency in the criminal trials of rap artists like Thug).

Legal principles like criminal negligence, corporate criminal liability or successor liability could be leveraged against media conglomerates or even boutique businesses owning music labels connected to illegal drugs or violence. The money and motivation shared between artists and their labels surrounding a particular crime would likely be the key ingredients used to implicate these billion-dollar businesses or informal imprints in the dragnet of a government agency.

Therefore, artists and their labels should spend less time being distracted by who’s snitching (e.g., YSL Gunna, and YSL Woody) and focus more time on identifying business practices that are placing them dangerously close to criminal liability. 

Ambitious prosecutors are always prepared to leverage the immaturity of aspirational artists and producers (shady or otherwise) against their loyalty to underworld elements because they understand the importance of street credibility in hip-hop. On the other end of the spectrum, media companies have become surgically precise in monetizing this kind of cognitive dissonance among their music makers. So the artist/producer can easily become a pawn in both transactions.

But here’s the trigger warning for labels: Beware and proceed with caution. If a label’s business activities reflect more than sheer opportunism because they’ve taken steps to encourage, sanction, or facilitate an artist’s felonious activity, then their philosophical dilemma has risen to a class A felony. 

As hip-hop turns 50, it’s time for the culture to claim its agency and break its bondage to the streets. The true legacy of the art form is cemented in a rich history of creativity, social change, and wealth creation.

As for record labels, they should remember that the long arm of the law has tentacles too. There may be enough mitigating factors today to distance a corporate entity from the dubious deeds of a subsidiary or the criminal acts of an artist. However, public sentiment, new legislation, and the increase in hip-hop homicides are slowly closing that gap. As the cry for label accountability increases, the romanticized rhymes about an “artist’s life of crime” may end up indicting the “good ol’ boys” in the boardroom and not just brothers on the block. 

Photos: Chance the Rapper at Red Rocks, 2017 by Julio Enriquez, https://www.flickr.com/people/7806965@N07
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Kendrick Lamar, July 17, 2016, by Batiste Safont, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Batiste_Safont&action=edit&redlink=1
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

J. Christopher Hamilton is an attorney and professor at Syracuse University