Rappers love to remind you that they have money, more often than not that they have more of it than you, and they equally love to tell you what that extra financial gain brings them. It goes without saying that this is an inherently capitalist message, hip-hop is very deeply rooted in hustle culture after all, but in a genre that’s also at the forefront of pro-black sentiments and is a big part of black liberation culture (which, as most progressive movements go, is pretty anti-capitalism), how does the capitalist expression of braggadocio in rap interact with those concepts? 

When I first started getting into rap music, naturally I gravitated to what was popular. I had a late start, so my earliest experiences with the genre that weren’t a result of being shown music by others were the charting songs of 2014. To my young ears, the quintessential rap song had hard bass and rappers telling me what they do with their money (of which they had more than me). Even the songs that were supposedly about *not* flexing (looking at you, Rae Sremmurd) still ended up including flex lines. As I continued to explore the genre, I saw more and more rappers pushing the hustle culture that, even at my young age, was starting to tire me. As the years went by, and I developed my tastes and got familiar with more varied styles of hip-hop, I became aware of the genre as a tool for black liberation, and I also became aware of a type of rapper that (at the time) completely contradicted what a rapper was: communist rappers. 

Here I was listening to these guys rap about the bourgeoise and the futility of chasing money and how the world is actually set up to advantage some groups and disadvantage others. It was a breath of fresh air, and like hip-hop does, it made me think. Are the rappers who flex in their songs just tools of capitalism? Do they do it because they are made to by label executives that want to push hustle culture onto young impressionable minds? Does Offset really want money so he could specifically have sex with *my* girlfriend? Questions swirled in my head as I weighed the idea that rap doesn’t always have to be about who has the most money or material possessions. Mind you, I was 16 when having these thoughts, and my understanding of Music was still juvenile, not to speak of my understanding of economics; naturally as I grew up, I understood that rappers, for the most part, rap about what’s important to them. 

In a majority black space, it isn’t surprising that people who are disadvantaged from the start end up bragging about “making it” more often than not. While that may serve to promote hustle culture and, in turn, capitalism, It can also be seen as a reason to want to tear down the system. It shouldn’t be such a big deal for someone to have a nice house to the point where they feel the need to brag about it on a song, and you damn sure shouldn’t have to sell millions of copies of something that should be a personal expression to achieve it. If anything, flex rap might be a bigger indictment on capitalism than any proletariat rappers can conjure. Yeah, Future has vividly described the diamonds on his watch, but he’s also describes being empty and filling the void with drugs and women. I can’t find a better description of how empty the pursuit of money for the sake of just having it leaves you in any Immortal Technique songs. All in all, rap is beautiful, and it’s truly what you make of it. It encourages us to think about what we’re listening to, and it paints pictures of lives we may never get to live. All you have to do is look beyond the sounds.

Written By Idk Young J: linktr.ee/idkyoungj