Since its conception in the Bronx forty or so years ago, hip-hop and the spin-off genres it inspired have been vessels by which suppressed ideas can leak into pop-culture without notice. Usually stemming around musical revolts against injustice, things have progressed from N.W.A’s brash criticisms of the police to Kendrick Lamar’s brand new album which bluntly says, “fuck Donald Trump,” all the while expressing additional sentiments felt by disenfranchised urban America. This minority body of the population and their ideas, known sometimes as the “hood” or the ghetto, is frequently suppressed by mainstream media, but they represent a subculture of Americans that the stereotypical upper-middle class white family simply cannot understand.

I suppose this conversation must first begin with Shawn Carter. Shawn, known more commonly as “Jay-Z,” is credited with being one of the greatest minds in hip-hop, on and off the stage, and his lifestyle “…illustrates how the study of organizations could be extended beyond the boundaries of the safe and the well known, even into the ’hood and onto streets” (Rehn and Sköld, 53). Jay-Z’s story – he was raised in the projects and selling drugs before finally making it out – brought to the world stage a type of entrepreneurship that had never been truly recognized before. Prior to this, white enterprise and cultural connections thereof constructed the universally accepted idea that the entrepreneurial spirit had a concrete definition, but Jay-Z’s success flipped that world upside down. He uprooted the static definition of what an entrepreneur was and because of that the world realized that a particular locality’s culture played a large part in determining success (Rehn and Sköld). Jay-Z deviated from societal norms, and with that act he demonstrated that there were two separate cultures vying for power, the pre-established white-washed consumer culture and a new culture, one set to root itself in America on the platform of rebellion, and that neither of these two cultures had to be unequivocally correct. The world finally saw that culture and subcultures, often appearing to deviate from socially constructed norms, strongly influence every aspect of a person’s life. This new culture was different, and this difference opened up the lane for analysis of what that culture could be and where it could have come from.

A few weeks ago, a rapper named Joyner Lucas released a single titled “Ultrasound,” and the quick tempo and catchy bass line disguise consistent patterns of behavior and speech that, in a particularly moral sense, contrast what society would call normal. The song begins with an answering machine picking up, followed by a female voice saying, “I spent all night waiting for you to come home,” and then as her voice softens, “I’m starting to get worried.” Then she pleads over the phone,  revealing to the listener that he is most likely at the “stupid” casino again, “pissing away” all the money that the couple has. Pause the song here and it may seem like a very tender moment between the couple; it illustrates the financial struggle that the two are going through and it also provides a potential reason for this struggle. The man in the relationship, still anonymous at this point, is displayed as the negative aspect of the relationship. At this point, all the listener knows is he is missing and he may be squandering money the pair cannot afford to waste, and as soon as her voice fades away a man speaks up he says says, “Get the fuck off of my dick, hoe.” The very first lines of the song prove his feelings towards the girl, but he then compounds the misogyny by saying “Yeah I think you should know that you were under me.”

This type of treatment towards women in the song boldly advertises their place according to the established gender stereotypes of the singer, and it also gives us a glimpse into the type of society that this particular subculture valued. Hegemonic masculinity is a result of three major forces, “larger gender relations, the music industry, and local neighborhood conditions” (Kubrin and Weitzer, 5), with the gender relations and neighborhood conditions point going hand in hand, both working to disempower women. Within the subgroups and neighborhoods where these sexist sentiments still live on, principles that outside society supports are abandoned or ignored completely for the doctrines of the locale. The music industry is no better, as corporations put out demeaning music in response to a “perceived customer demand for stereotypical representations of the ghetto, and specifically of young Black men and women” (Kubrin and Weitzer, 7). While twisted and sadistic, this is the argument supporting the promotion of gender inequality, with the large corporations responding directly to what the people want. I knew that people that thought like this had to have been taught such feelings, and I couldn’t help but wonder at what age this culture indoctrinates its citizens. Towards the end of the first verse, the man in the song says, “A couple of hoes that I’ve been boning since a n**** was only ten / I’m tryna get all up in that pussy…” This worrying display of gender inequality and sexual objectification is a glimpse into broader standards of the society in which the song was written. In 1967 Elliot Liebow conducted an ethnographic study on lower-income black neighborhoods, and he described how “important it was for men to be seen as ‘exploiters of women,’ even if they did not always treat women this way,” and a more recent study found that “exploitation and degradation of young women is still a feature of some inner-city communities today (Kubrin and Weitzer 8-9. This is the type of culture that Joyner Lucas is singing from, a place where society tells him it’s okay to treat women with less respect.

It is not soon after this when four verses reveal this life in the truest way. Each line represents a different attitude, with the first one saying: “I think if I die young they gon miss me too / I think I’ma buy guns maybe empty two.” This first line juxtaposes his own death with a group of anonymous others, placing value on his life but none on the risk of shooting two clips of bullets. This is interesting because it portrays a strong sense of either selfishness or some hyper-inflated sense of importance in this society. The speaker believes, in a deranged sense, that the careless shooting of two guns is something that can be arbitrarily done with no serious repercussions. In the next line he says, “I think I’ma sell drugs to the kids at school / I think I’ma get buzzed if it gets me through.” This is where the community aspect of the song is important, as well as the concept of the “hustler.” If the speaker is ready and willing to give children drugs in school, he places no value on their potential, only their existence as a consumer group. This person is manipulating the youth, taking on the persona of the “hustler,” that being a “generic figure who occupies a central position in the black American ghetto” (Rehn and Sköld 69). This is providing a scenario where the bad things of hustling, selling drugs to children and living under the permanent influence of drug, are placed on a pedestal for listeners to admire.

The next two lines play up this idea of the hustler, saying “I think I’ma need to hide if they know where I live / I think I’ma drink and drive till I total the whip / I think I’ma get high and give her all of the dick / Even if she ain’t mine so she know what it is.” The type of person described here is one acutely lacking in morals, to the point where drunk driving to the extent that it will inevitably end in crashing the car is used in a passive, boastful manner. To amplify that depravity, his projected sexism and the sexual domination men have over women in this society resurfaces when he openly professes having sex with a woman that is declaredly not “his.” This second line puzzles me, because I am not sure whether it refers to a girl that is not openly his, meaning someone not in a relationship with anybody at all, or a girl that is in a relationship, meaning that she would have to cheat to be with the speaker. There is no motivation in these lines other than pure selfishness, and it leaves the reader either in mindless auditory enjoyment, or in deep contemplation of what kind of society promotes this.

As negative as this all may seem, there is a light at the end of tunnel. The final verse says, “My n**** what’s your worst fear? / I been running from the start / Scared to be a man, tryna hustle in the dark / I been livin in the ghetto where the devils pray to God.” There is something to be said here, and the one word to summarize it all is Hope. The callous rapper that has been preaching misogyny and corruption now confesses to being scared of the life he seemingly has no power over. This opens up the possibility that the society on the outside looking in is more ignorant than first thought. That instead of the “hood” being a place of unsalvageable corruption, beneath it all there exists hope. The line “I been livin in the ghetto where the devils pray to God” seems to be especially important. The “devils” that he refers to could be the hustlers, or he could be using devils as a blanket term to give the outside world’s perception of the ghetto. Regardless of which is actually true, the religious aspect of the ghetto and in particular how the citizens of the ghetto view religion may be the culmination of what a subculture hides from mainstream life. For an entire song, which can be loosely transposed upon a life in the ghetto, the rapper talks up like he not only wants but relishes in the life he was given, and now he’s scared and praying to God.

Extending the aforementioned transposition, the rapper acts almost like a manifestation of the “hood” lifestyle. Earlier he talks about being scared, and his statement of being scared plants the idea that the entire time he was just faking it or putting on a front. This proves that all is not lost, and it introduces the idea that the “hustler” isn’t necessarily a moral sink, but a necessary part of a society that uses him to cope with everyday struggle. The idea of hope brought in earlier is now a palpable sensation that brings us back to Shawn Carter. Shawn Carter had hope, he hoped back then to make it out of the ghetto himself, and now instead of being satiated and disappearing that hope has been planted in the hearts of everyone that knows his story. There is hope in entrepreneurship, and even though life in the ghetto is scary hope is not lost. That’s what gets hidden from the outsiders, that ideals are not yet abandoned, and Joyner Lucas’ song is a hypothetical ultrasound into this life.

Bibliography

Link to the lyrics: https://genius.com/Joyner-lucas-ultrasound-lyrics

Sköld, David, and Alf Rehn. “Makin’ It, by Keepin It Real.” Sage Journals. Sage, 1 Feb. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1059601106294487>.

Weitzer, Ronald, and Charis E. Kubrin. “Misogyny in Rap Music.” Sage Journals. Sage, 19 Feb. 2009. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1097184X08327696>.

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