Abstract
Dimitri Bogazianos writes about the intersection between rap music, crack-cocaine, and lethal violence. In doing so he provides a fascinating account of the evolution of subcultural norms associated with street-level drug dealing in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Specifically he is interested in how this period is portrayed in the rap music of the late 1990s, the music that was made by a generation that was growing up during crack’s worst ravages. The book provides an interesting and original contribution to the analysis of a phenomenon that has puzzled policymakers and researchers alike, the sudden and unexpected decrease in homicide rates in the 1990s. In his choice of perspective and data material, Bogazianos simultaneously gives a hitherto unprecedented and nuanced analysis of rap music’s black sheep, gangsta rap.
The introduction and proliferation of crack cocaine fundamentally changed the way in which drugs were sold in the major US cities, and indirectly led to the severe increase in the punitiveness and violence associated with the war on drugs. Crack is made by heating a mix of powder cocaine and baking soda. It is essentially a diluted version of cocaine but has the advantage that even tiny amounts, sold for a retail price of US$5–10, gives an intense, although short, high. Initially crack was sold in the open-air markets of impoverished neighbourhoods, and proved to be highly lucrative for gangs that would eventually engage in extreme patterns of violent competition with each other over access to the market, turf, and market shares. In the decade after the introduction of crack, the homicide rate for black males under the age of 25 years more than tripled. This was followed by a similarly dramatic decline in the following years, all but returning to the level prior to the crack era. This decline was both sudden and unexpected and has puzzled researchers as well as policymakers well into the 2000s. In Levitt’s (2004) study of four factors that explained the decline in homicide rates in the 1990s, he specifically credits the receding crack epidemic as a contributing factor, albeit with a low certainty of the estimated impact. This low degree of certainty is reflected in how a common and internationally applied misinterpretation has been allowed to flourish; that the success was due to zero-tolerance policing in New York and the Broken Windows theory (Young, 2011).
The structure of the book depicts the interrelated issues of crack-cocaine and the punitive turn in the war on drugs, summarized as crack’s lethal work. Each chapter is introduced with a quote from well known rap artist that posits the problem to be examined. First Bogazianos introduced the context of the draconian punishments that are associated with possession of crack-cocaine and the string of paradoxes that surround this legal regulation. The title of the book is reference to the amount of crack that entails a minimum sentence of five years imprisonment. Despite the harshness of a five-year prison sentence for simple possession, this is just scratching the surface. In 1996 a legal provision was introduced that stipulated how crack-cocaine was to be punished with a 100-to-1 sentencing disparity compared to powder cocaine, despite crack being a less pure, derivative product of cocaine. This is even more puzzling because the regulation was introduced 10 years after the initial introduction of crack, at a time when the epidemic was widely recognized as receding. The deterrent value of the provision is questionable. Reuter, MacCoun and Murphy (1990) had several years earlier found that most crack sellers were barely earning minimum wage, but with substantially higher risks of bodily harm. Crack was no longer on the upswing at that time but it was not until 2010 that the legislative disparity was reduced to 18-to-1.
The basic premise of Bogazianos’ analysis is that hustling crack on the streets was a lifestyle choice, even a career option, for urban youth in the ghettos despite the low expected monetary gain, the five-year mandatory minimum sentences and the violence. The powerful dream of moving from ‘courier to kingpin’ continued to hold the imagination of youth attracted to street culture and the social disorganization of their neighbourhoods provided ‘an unending supply’ of would-be retailers. This is where it gets really interesting. We know that the crack era coincided with an unprecedented increase in homicide rates, but exactly how crack played into this is not well understood. Bogazianos deconstructs the systemic violence of the crack market by drawing on a series of sociological studies on drive-bys, sex work, and gangs form a complex amalgamation of ‘crack’s networked violence’.
The following section introduces the rap music that was born out of the crack era. This section of the book is littered with entertaining as well as telling examples from rap’s colourful vocabulary in both rhyme-form and artist alter-egos. Who would have known that ‘Raekwon the Chef’ originally got his moniker from being the person responsible for ‘cooking’ the powder cocaine with baking soda to make crack? It also turns out that ‘Fat Joey Crack’ was not referring to the size of his carpenter’s crack either. Crack comes to be the rugged symbol for a rugged time, Bogazianos writes, in which the grinding of retail dealing would eventually restructure the nature of hustling itself and lead to a decline in social order and normative frameworks.
Bogazianos is not the first to author a scholarly work write scholarly about rap music but he goes a step further than previous contributions. Where other writings are primarily interested in the African American subculture, he introduces the reader to his vast and intimate knowledge of underground hip hop as a counter-weight to ‘the industry’. There is no lack of attacks against the duplicitous music industry in the history of hip hop. However, Bogazianos manages to rise above the clichés and provides an analysis where he elegantly parallels the grinding of street-level crack retailing with the young hopeful artists entering a music industry that they have no chance of initially comprehending. He recounts how young artists signed the contract that they imagined would stop the humiliations of ghetto life but which ends up being maybe even more humiliating when they find themselves trapped in an endless maze of contractual obligations, unfulfilled creative aspirations and little to no actual profit to show for any of it.
Rap music, its fans, and performers do not have the best image. Sagging pants, misogyny, and generally a violent subject matter has made rap music represent a generation responsible for moral loss. This is where Bogazianos excels. Contrary to popular understandings he shows
how rap creatively reworks one of the crack era’s most devastating transformations: the rise of a new moral order in which market relations supplanted culturally bound ones. This moral transformation has been experienced as both power and loss by the young people raised in it and reflects their adaptations to the social disruptions of coercive mobility and disproportionate punishment. (p. 80, emphasis in original)
Drug markets have for long been recognized to be associated with violence. Goldstein (1985) recognized this and addressed the ‘aggressive patterns of interaction within the system of drug distribution and use’, primarily heroin at the time of his writing. Participants with no access to the legal system may resort to violence to settle disputes or gain competitive advantage. This phenomenon was severely exacerbated when crack entered the scene. Bogazianos terms this the rise of ‘new school violence’. This chapter more than the others applies lyrics from songs to portray the generational adaptation from fist fighting to gunplay: ‘things done changed’. The violent lyrics that rap is frequently criticized for is in Bogazianos’ perspective in fact the
detailed accountings of the profound transformations that accompanied crack’s market volatility, and the rise of a system that now requires violence in order to function.(…) Crack calls forth not a lack of morality, but a new moral order that has emerged regardless of anyone’s control…
This brings us back to original puzzle: the steady decline in lethal violence. Many explanations, scholarly or otherwise, attribute the decline to a change in parenting, essentially (self-) control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990). However, the puzzle is that within this generation the parents were absent. The change in norms and attitudes was not handed down from above, but rather grew from below. The severity of punishment for simple possession goes hand in hand with increased lethality, a sentiment in line with Becker, Grossman and Murphy’s (2001) analysis of the drug economy. The pain, rage, revenge, and contempt in the lyrics mirror and mock the socio-economic circumstances that surround life in the inner cities, rather than prescribe a set of norms to live by. As such the violence in rap lyrics is: ‘The cultural work that crack has come to perform in America’s criminological structure of feeling (…) a multilayered, conflicted sensibility about that coerced adaptation.’ In the conclusion of his book Bogazianos compares Scandinavian penal policies with the draconian US system. Here, he is in line with Reinarman and Levine (2004) and many others in noting the moral panic-like characteristics of the crack scare, but his analysis goes deeper and for this he deserves credit.
Bogazianos is not the first to apply a cultural criminological perspective to the norms associated with street-level drug dealing, nor is he the first to identify that crack-cocaine was followed by a generation that explicitly dissociates itself from the associated violence (Golub, Johnson and Dunlap, 2005). He is, however, the first to draw together these complex processes into an analytical whole. The way he does it by using and contextualizing the words and voice of the people that actually lived through this period renders the book an original twist not common to criminological research.
Bogazianos does not hide his subject position and describes himself both as a fan of the music and a former performer. He has lived in New York City where the ravages of crack were arguably the most severe and he has a long trajectory within rap music that serves to portray the contents of the music in an empathetic way. The book deals with complicated issues and Bogazianoes does not attempt to simplify matters, rather his analysis is a complex web constituted of a series of parallel processes described above. He uses song lyrics, legal documents, biographies and excerpts from interviews in ‘an effort to register the richness, emotional force, and logical contradictions that constitute crack’s experiential fabric.’ His efforts are not in vain. The book successfully portrays a complex web of interrelated problems in American society.
American rap music is regularly referenced as point of identification in studies among marginalized youth in Scandinavia and elsewhere. However the reference to rap music is often superficial and seldom goes beyond the mention of the group N.W.A. or Niggaz with Attitudes and its shocking moniker or the claim that these youth idolize the deceased rapper Tupac Shakur and his ‘Thug Life’ ideals. This is a shame because rap music has developed as a common point of reference for youth all over the world and has a rich legacy that deserves more attention. By placing his analysis of crack and homicides in the context of rap music and rap artists, it makes for an interesting read even for a Scandinavian audience. In my opinion his book constitutes a notable contribution not only in the originality of the source material and methodological approach but also in the subject matter. The insider’s perspective into a subculture that is usually reduced to mere thuggish posturing and braggadocio is welcomed by this reviewer.
Anyone working with or researching youth would be well advised to pick up a copy, not if they are looking for an introduction to rap music, but if they want to understand the complexities, self-contradictions and reflections from some of the genres most prominent artists. While they are at it they might want to take a look at some of the other titles coming out of New York University Press’ Alternative criminology series with Jeff Ferrell as General Editor.