I suppose that after all these years of rapping about violence and crime that the source material would be video games. Rap today has a very strong resemblance to 80s hair metal. More often than not it is selling an image of fast cars and easy money. Much like poison and motley cru, rappers have built themselves an image of excess. Most of it is marketing. Violence sells records. More often than not the violence is imaginary. It is fun. Its like action movies or the evening news. It’s the breaking news bulletins from Fox. There might be some semblance of reality but it is viewed through a prism. It is escapism. Just like video games. 

The interesting thing is that video games are becoming more and more a topic of songs. If you go back there are numerous mentions of video games in music. For example:

Think about it though, there is probably more street cred to claiming to have killed a ton of motherfuckers in GTA than to have sold the amount of coke that some rappers have (e.g. Officer Ricky). At least the GTA killing spree probably happened. 

The other weird thing though is the emergence of retro gaming as a subject matter. What was once confined to the dark bowels of nerdcore has now crossed over. Contra, Mega Man, duck hunt are being referenced. Nerdyness has apparently become gangster. 

While we wait for the hair metal excess rap to die and be replaced with something awesome gaming influenced hip hop will do.

From The Desk of:

Andrew Morris

Head of Marketing & Acquisition

Defeating fascism with violence since 1934