hiphoplifeandtimes

                                               (All this just because I listened to some Lil Wayne)

A few days ago I was doing some late night time wasting on the internet. I’d been listening to Pacewon and Mr Green all night, so I hopped over to Mr Green’s music page to see what he’d been up to recently. He had posted a little article saying ‘check this out, it could just be a conspiracy but it would be crazy if it’s true’. Now you know I was intrigued. The whole article was an open letter from an industry insider who said they’d worked for many years within the music industry, and had been invited to a meeting in the early 90’s organised by some other big name heads. They all had to sign wavers to say they wouldn’t spill the beans, and things got more devious from there. Turns out a lot of these big names had shares in private prisons, (and for the sake of not quoting the whole thing) they wanted to start marketing negative, self-destructive pop-raps to encourage violence, misogynism, drug use and all the other lovely stuff. The more these things were glamourised and pushed within media, the fuller the prisons. Now I’m really paraphrasing the whole thing, but I strongly suggest you read the whole letter to make up your own mind.

If you’re reading HHLAT then you probably already all about the fuckery that surrounds mainstream media, so I’m not going to patronise you; there’s so many reasons you’re only gonna hear violent raps on mainstream radio and TV. You really don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work that one out, but I think you’ll find this really interesting especially when you think that the private prison shareholders get about $120- 300 per inmate.

“At this point I begin to feel slightly uncomfortable at the strangeness of this gathering. The subject quickly changed as the speaker went on to tell us that the respective companies we represented had invested in a very profitable industry which could become even more rewarding with our active involvement. He explained that the companies we work for had invested millions into the building of privately owned prisons and that our positions of influence in the music industry would actually impact the profitability of these investments. I remember many of us in the group immediately looking at each other in confusion. At the time, I didn’t know what a private prison was but I wasn’t the only one. Sure enough, someone asked what these prisons were and what any of this had to do with us. We were told that these prisons were built by privately owned companies who received funding from the government based on the number of inmates. The more inmates, the more money the government would pay these prisons.” Read the whole letter here.

Words: Aimee