ALL EYEZ ON US

By FARAI CHIDEYA

Is the hip-hop generation all about violence and degradation? are we collectively doomed to go the way of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls? I hope not, because I'm a member of that generation. In the weeks to come, as we try to make sense of the death of two of the youngest, richest, best-known black men in America, we'll probably succumb to a natural temptation to divide the "good kids" from the "hip-hop kids." I'm not buying it. I grew up listening to hip-hop. In elementary school I tuned my radio to the techno-influenced chant Planet Rock and innocent party jams like Rapper's Delight. By high school and college, hip-hop was everything from the pop female braggadocio of Salt-n-Pepa to the black nationalism of Public Enemy. Today, in addition to music that ranges from alternative rock to techno, I listen to rough-edged rappers the Wu Tang Clan--and, yes, Biggie and Tupac as well.

Mindful of our public image, most of our elders in the black community would rather see us repudiate rap than redefine it. But groups from the Fugees to the Roots to A Tribe Called Quest continue to blend phat beats, dope rhymes and intelligent ideas into high-powered rap, regardless of marketing data that say gangsta rap sells best. Who's pushing the rawest rhymes to No. 1 on the charts? For years now, the largest volume of hip-hop albums has been sold to white suburban kids who've deposed heavy metal and elevated hip-hop to the crown of Music Most Likely to Infuriate My Parents. The suburban rebellion--its record-buying tastes, its voyeurism of what too often it views as "authentic black culture"--has contributed to the primacy of the gangsta-rap genre.

The music may be in white America's homes, but the violence is in black America's neighborhoods. That's why we, the hip-hop generation, bear the ultimate responsibility for reshaping the art form we love. Hip-hop used to lift us above the struggles we faced; then it tried to inform us about the struggles we faced; now it's become one of the struggles we face. I used to tell myself that the "thug life" portrayed in the music was just fiction. Now it's incontrovertible fact. We can do better than this. If we don't, we're little more than voyeurs of our own demise.

CNN commentator Farai Chideya is also online at www.popandpolitics.com