CLASSIC: Did the prison industry push gangster rap?

What makes a genre of music successful? Ideally, the art connects on a personal level with the audience, speaking truth to power, tapping into a universal experience.... but what if that isn't always the case? In 2012, an email from someone claiming to be a former music industry executive alleged that gangster rap was not an organic success. Instead, they claimed, the success of this genre was the result of a secret, high-level meeting in 1991, between members of the music industry's elite and representatives of the private prison industry. Making this music successful, they argued, would ensure the prison system became even more profitable for investors. It's a profoundly disturbing idea -- but could it be true? Tune in to learn more.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow conspiracy realist. We are returning to you with a
classic episode that's been on our minds lately. Not to
too long ago, Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame claimed
that there was a conspiracy behind what he sees as
the decline of rock music and the rise of gangster rap.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
I just think he's as mad people aren't listening to
his records and I yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
We talked about this with our friend Gandhi on her
excellent shows Sauce on the Side. Please do check out Gandhi.
She's just a legend in the game, and we had
a lot of fun chatt and conspiracies here. This also
reminded us our recent conversation of an episode we did
an investigation way back in twenty twenty. Right, I want

(00:49):
to say, right after Thanksgiving about whether the prison industry,
in cooperation maybe with the government, created gangster rap or
popularized gangster rap.

Speaker 4 (01:02):
Wait a second, are we saying that there are maybe
small groups of powerful individuals that run I don't know,
television networks, schamle channels, radio stations, and they like can
push certain music on us.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
And dare we say shape world events through their influence.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Well, you know, it's funny.

Speaker 5 (01:30):
Though, guys, because it becomes a question of like is
it taste maker kind of stuff, like is it influence
of culture in a way that you know, leans on
maximizing profits or is there something more sinister and stuff
they don't want you to know about it in terms
of like doing that in the most weird ass around
your elbow way you could possibly imagine. And one thing

(01:52):
we talked about too on our conversation with Gandhi was like,
isn't this also this notion that like gangster rap executives
like wanted to feed the is in pipeline by pushing
gangsterrap out there to make young people commit more crimes.
Isn't that also kind of a satanic panic thing?

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Like did Marilyn Manson really make more people worship Satan
or whatever it be?

Speaker 1 (02:11):
You know, an outbreak of moral panic. That's a good question.
You know. It reminds me, of course, I think I
mentioned this earlier on air. Reminds me of that jay
Z line that might be surprisingly insightful for this classic
I used to rhyme like common sense until I made
my first mill I haven't rhymed like common sense.

Speaker 4 (02:31):
You know, so we're speaking of Common the rapper.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yes, yeah, Common Sense the thing that is in short supply,
and these are modern times.

Speaker 4 (02:40):
I would just like to congratulate him on not rapping
like Common. I don't know why I do not. I
do not particularly care for the stylings of Common. And
that's not that I don't like what he's saying. I
just don't like the way that he wraps.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Okay, don't like his flow, don't like his kaiden, I
do not appreciate.

Speaker 1 (02:56):
It, Sam I am. I do not like these green
eggs of But yeah, I don't know if I told
you guys. But years ago I actually interviewed Common for
a very different thing, and he answered the questions in freestyle.

Speaker 4 (03:10):
When did this happen? How did this happen?

Speaker 1 (03:11):
This was at a club called Vision, I want to say,
which no longer exists in Atlanta. It was a different time,
But this was before. This was before I want to say,
twenty twelve, when an email from someone claiming to be
a former music industry executive alleged that gangster rap was

(03:33):
not an organic success. Instead, they say the story dates
back to a high level meeting in nineteen ninety one
when all the big to dos that were slightly mentioning
here got together and said they're going to ensure the
prison system becomes even more profitable by making crime cool.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
Whoa and then Diddy.

Speaker 2 (03:57):
Make crime great?

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Geez?

Speaker 4 (04:00):
Wait? So wait? Is he is Ditty the Epstein but
for the music industry, you know, like you know how
Epstein is for the world leaders?

Speaker 1 (04:08):
I think they have an embarrassment of Epstein's. That's the
group name, the group term HM parliament OL's embarrassment of Epstein's.
Did the prison industry push gangster rap? Let's roll the tape.

Speaker 6 (04:23):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies? History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 4 (04:47):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
my name is Noel.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
They call me Ben. We are joined as always with
our super producer Alexis codename Doc Holliday Jackson. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here, and that makes this
stuff they don't want you to know. What more appropriate
way to begin today's episode than to shout out dead press,

(05:12):
who should be familiar to any fan of hip hop.
I don't know about you all, but as I was
researching a lot of this, it kept playing in my head.
It's bigger than hip hop, and it's true. This is
a prescient group. This is a group that, for anyone
unfamiliar with the genre, is known for activism, known for

(05:34):
political stances, known for taking the message beyond the music
right and into the halls of power and speaking truth
to those folks. Today's episode, if we were describing it
as a wine, would have a you know, an autumnal
note of Edward Burnet's right, a crisp bite of music

(05:58):
industry corruption, yes, maybe a vintage of hip hop. And
then some would say an undertone throughout a bouquet of
conspiracy that may affect millions of people today, and overall quite.

Speaker 4 (06:13):
The you mommy, if I may say so myself, Yeah,
Mommy of institutionalized racism bunch.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
That's the one I was referring to, Matt.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
The Insidious Ummmy, which was also the name of my
post rock vape wave group. Anyway, we don't need to
get into that, but music. We're talking about hip hop.
We are fans of hip hop. We are obviously nerds.
I think to some degree, like many people, we define
different phases of our lives by the music we encounter

(06:47):
at those pivotal moments, and that's something that's common to
all human beings. But if you didn't know anything about
hip hop, we should probably start there as we dive
into this strange allegation. So here are the facts.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, I mean, the genesis of hip hop really is,
and it's a uniquely American art form, and that it started,
you know, in Brooklyn, New York, largely in Harlem street
parties kind of or block parties that involved DJs taking
two records and playing back and forth the breaks, which

(07:25):
are like the part in a track that is sort
of like the part where there's no singing, and you
could take like jazz records or you know, R and
B records or what have you, and juggle those back
and forth by keeping those breaks going, and then MC's
masters of ceremony would rap over them and these would
literally be I mean, there were certainly parties that involved

(07:46):
just you know, like boomboxes and that kind of prerecorded music,
but it's this phenomenon that really started, you know, becoming
what we now know as hip hop. You had DJs
like jam Master J, grand Master Flash, funk Master Flex,
they were all masters of the art of turntabling. And
then you would have MC's like Fab five, Freddy or

(08:09):
some of the earlier names that you would hear about
in the genesis of hip hop rapping on top of
those juggled kind of beats.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah, I would say one of the biggest misconceptions that
we run into when exploring hip hop is if someone
is not familiar with it right or familiar with the
history of it, then it might be mistaken as simply music,
which is not the case. Hip hop is more of
a movement, and there's a large amount of scholarly debate

(08:38):
over what the foundational pillars of this movement would be considered,
you know, but in general, these four pillars or elements
will call them, can be considered the foundations of this movement.
Like you describe Noel to the most well known DJ,
MCing or rapping right DJ and turntabling, mcen rapping, graf right,

(09:01):
and then of course breakdancing B Boy. And nowadays you'll
often hear hip hop use as a synonym for rap music,
but it's really best to think of rap as part
of hip hop rather than the thing entire And you're right,
it did originate in New York City in the South

(09:21):
Bronx in the nineteen seventies, an economically depressed period of
time in that area. And again, there's so much excellent
scholarship on the complex cultural roots of this movement that
I would recommend. There's something will reference later in this episode,
a great new podcast called Louder Than a Riot, which

(09:44):
is available on NPR, and I highly recommend checking it out.
It's got our own Rodney Carmichael on there. This kind
of stuff proves that there's serious academic thoughts, forensic research
into the ecosystem from which this movement sprang and the

(10:05):
way that it synthesizes much much older traditions and things.
As hip hop began at society's margins. Its origins are
kind of legendary, at times mythical or enigmatic. But one
thing's for sure. The bright eggs in the music industry

(10:25):
realized there was money to be made. And when they
realized there was money to be made, what was seen
as an underground or less mainstream thing began to move
to the center of public conversation.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
I do want to walk back really quickly.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
I said, the earliest days of hip hop were in
Brooklyn and Harlem, And you're absolutely right, Ben, it was
the South Bronx where it started, but then it quickly
kind of spread throughout the other boroughs of New York
and it is very much a New York City phenomenon.
And it's very true, Ben, it very quickly became clear
that there was an industry within, you know, this very

(11:03):
grassroots genre and culture. Because you're right, it wasn't just
the music. It was the graffitia, it was the dancing,
it was fashion, it was all of this thing that
was just rife for you know, commodifying.

Speaker 4 (11:15):
Yeah, I think that's an important, just an important thing
to think about. I want to pinpoint on the graffiti
really quickly because it's a form of marketing in a
way if you think about it correctly. You know, if
you could if you tagged your name and you're a
well known you know, DJ or MC, and you were
you know, tagging in certain places, people start to recognize,

(11:35):
oh yeah, this is around an area where there was
you know, essentially a concert or a party or something
going on. You begin to recognize that tag and then Ben,
you're just you're talking about some some people within this
larger music industry realized how popular this could be if
it was funneled through the official channels. And that's that's

(11:56):
what this whole episode is about. What happens when when
something that has a grassroots, that is being risen from
the grassroots, gets funneled through these channels.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
With a little bit of a viig some rents seeking
along the way. That's right, shout out to capitalism, the
only ideology that'll take a T shirt that says down
with capitalism and figure out a way to sell it
to you. That's, at the risk of sounding cynical or nihilistic,
that is the case. The music industry today is a

(12:30):
very different beast now, mainly because of the advent of
the Internet, which democratized a lot of things. People had
access they did not have before. But in the days
before you could hop online or use your magic pocket computer,
structural forces in the music business wielded profound control over

(12:53):
what could or could not be played, what was or
was not to find us successful, right, and what you
heard if you're just going to concerts, if you're just
listening to the radio, if you don't live in New
York and the music industry suits are not giving the
co sign consigliere style to a given group performing in

(13:15):
New York, then you might never hear of them. And
of course this is still to some extent true in
the modern day. The industry, with all its wiles and woes,
still does this stuff all the time. We've talked about it.
We talked about who actually writes so many of the
pop songs you hear. But in the pre internet era,
corruption was there's a there's a word. Frank Maharan, friend

(13:40):
of the show, taught me a long time ago, wide rife.
Remember that one corruption was wide rife, like predatory deals
sent artists directly from the studio to the poorhouse.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
Well, they'd make us stop at a couple concert halls
and then here we are.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
And that's maybe something we have to do another day.
That's a whole episode, but it's true.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
Really quickly, I just wanted to add, you know, we're
talking about the difference between needing a record deal and
being able to do it yourself through like SoundCloud and
so many of these these infrastructures that are in place now,
just you wouldn't have had those in those days. And
that's really democratized, you know, the entertainment industry to the
point where it's almost like who needs a record label anymore?

(14:27):
And if you're interested, there's actually a little bit of
clever modeling that some programmer dreamt up, and it's called
a record deal simulator, and it just lets you kind
of run the numbers and make it make you realize
very quickly if you are in fact getting screwed. And
unless you're dealing with cool indie labels that have a

(14:48):
very cool niche kind of foot in the door with
a certain type of genre or certain type of artists,
you really don't need that as much anymore. And so
many amazing artists like Billie Eilish, for example, Sure she
has a record deal because she gets this massive benefit
of the distribution that is a record label like Interscope,
but she got big because of her SoundCloud and because

(15:09):
of like just being an interesting artist in and of herself,
or touring.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
You know, a lot of a lot of the financial
bread and butter for many musical acts is ultimately touring. Anyway.
Shout out to Algiers and then the Matador label. They
seem they seem pretty cool. Nobody ruined that for me.
I don't want it to go wrong. You're right though,
you're right, and contracts aside, there's physical and emotional danger
in the music industry. You want to be successful, says

(15:37):
some creepy suit, What would you do? You know what
I mean? So abuse of all types is common, and
it's covered up because people feel like their careers are
on the line, and in some cases they may be
absolutely correct. Paola and nepotism runs rampant. For anyone who
doesn't know, guys, what is paola?

Speaker 4 (15:58):
It's a it's Creola's really really evil cousin.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, nailed it. Paola is also a term for a
term for direct pay to play on a radio station, right.

Speaker 4 (16:15):
Yeah, yeah, And it's weird. It's really yeah, that's that's
weird stuff because you could you can pay to gain
on it, or the radio station can just decide to
play your song a lot, and then all of a
sudden it becomes their one of their top hits. And
that's weird to say coming from you know that you
may be listening to this on the radio.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
That's true.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
I hope you are.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
That's true. We Actually it's funny just for being associated
with so many radio stations. We had to take a
a mandated thing about ethics in this in this field,
and one of the big things that our corporate overlord
said is no payola, it's illegal. Don't do it like
that was that was a point. I don't know about

(16:57):
you all, but coming from the podcast that that was
really weird to me. I was like, thank you for
thinking I'm important enough for this to ever be an issue.
But I think you guys got it, you know.

Speaker 3 (17:09):
Yeah, And I think the simplest way to think about
what payola is is just pay for play.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's it's it's.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
Literally, you know, grease and palms to get radio play,
you know, gifts and the like. And so there are
a very codified set of rules in place to prevent
even the whiff of this practice, and that's mandated by
the Federal Communications Commission.

Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, and that happened for a reason. Like you ever
walk into a place of business and you see a
weird like you see you see the normal warnings like
no shirt, no shoes, no service, but then you see
really weirdly specific warning where it's like no drunk ducks,
and you're thinking, okay, well that something weird happened at

(17:53):
this chevron or whatever. But this law exists, and it's
explicit because it was so prevalent, and there were like
literally small groups of people, small number of people who
could make someone a success. And this group or this industry,

(18:15):
whatever you want to call it, I wouldn't call it
a cabal quite yet, but this group cast its collective
gaze saw on like toward this thing called rap. Fast forward. Today,
rap comes in a multitude of genres, so many and
so many amazing, amazing things like conscious hip hop, trip hop,

(18:37):
like you know, think of like tricky or similar performers,
mumble rap, grime. And for a time, as these things
were evolving successfully and concurrently, one of the most controversial
genres was something that was originally known as reality rap

(18:57):
and today is often referred to as bangster rap.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
Yeah, and you know the genre of gangst You know,
sometimes the name of a genre, it certainly doesn't come
along with the like advent of a genre. It kind
of gets named later, usually based around the zeitgeist, like
the way it's referred to in criticism or in like
music journalism or whatever. Like. Nobody usually coins the name
of their genre as they're pushing it out into the

(19:22):
world is kind of left up to the listeners to decide,
or you know, the tastemakers or whatever. But we could
trace back the genre that is considered gangster rap, which
isn't always a sound. It's not always there's there's a
lot of things that goes into it. But six in
the Morning by Iced Tea, which was released in nineteen
eighty six, is typically referred to as the very first

(19:44):
gangster rap song. But Iced Tea, however, gives credit where
credit is due, as we are huge fans of doing
on this very show, but that is not something that
is always a common thing done in the entertainment industry.
It's all about kind of flexing and sort of you know,
biting people's styles often especially in hip hop, and just

(20:08):
being first to market with something, and that in and
of itself is almost like considered, Oh, I was first
to do it, therefore it was my idea.

Speaker 2 (20:15):
But we know that's not true.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
But he very clearly gives credit for this tune to
school e D's PSK.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
Track Parkside Killers Yeah I See. Also notes that around
the same time, Boogie Down Productions on the East Coast
came out with the album Criminal Minded so if you're
the average fan at this time, you notice immediately there
is something different here, and it's not clearly defined or

(20:46):
limited by a single difference. You know. That's why I
really like about your point, Noel. There's a sound that's different.
The stories told are different, as they are. Wont to
do hate this new stuff it. Hate it, hate it,
you know what I mean? They say the main reason

(21:09):
they hate it is they feel that it glorifies violence.
They feel that it sells a romanticized view of a
criminal life to vulnerable children, to vulnerable populations struggling to
get by. This is a relatively conservative view. It's very
popular in conservative circles. But I want to point out

(21:30):
this is not an original view. The US has had
a weird love hate relationship, call it a fatal attraction
crush with what it perceives as gangster since the country
was founded. I mean, people loved al Capone, right, al
Capone didn't even make music, he was he was just
a scumbag. And people people like Body and Clyde, right,

(21:54):
they were murders.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
I mean that's right.

Speaker 4 (21:57):
Yeah, Well people also loved alcohol even and we were
you know, when the view was that it should be
prohibited completely, you know. I mean, it's just it's an
interesting love hate relationship that we have with law and
order and then you know freedom right. I think those
are the two dichotomies, like right, that's what it feels like.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
What's that old line during Prohibition there was some guy
I can't remember his name, he said, uh, his choice
quote where he said, look, people are going to vote
for prohibition as long as they could still stumble to
the polls. And that's that's kind of I mean that
there is a commonality there, There is a there is
a pattern America. And I love your point about freedom

(22:40):
versus law, you know, autonomy versus authoritarianism here, Matt, because
one thing that the critics often and in my mind,
willfully ignored was that gangster rap was is speaking truth
to power like n w A. I'm sorry, you'll have
to edit me here. I want a sense the thing
in WA's song the police this right, this ruffled feathers. Right,

(23:06):
not just like a moral panic somewhere in America, but
the FBI paid attention. The FBI assistant director at the time,
a guy named Milt Alarch, wrote a letter in response,
and the letter was mainly talking about just how deeply
law enforcement resented the song, so they got a strongly
worded letter, which is like the most square authoritarian thing

(23:29):
to do.

Speaker 3 (23:30):
But I was speaking to a real problem in that
in that quarantity, and it's something that obviously, you know
hasn't gone away. If if the times we're living in now,
or any indication that the l a p D in
particular has a history of corruption and has a history
of being involved in crime themselves and taking advantage of people,

(23:52):
especially people of color, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
But it is I mean, it's it's a fascinating thing
to look at me because cause if you look at
the lyrics of something like six in the Morning, the
iced T song that we're referencing there, I mean he's
talking about getting into a firefight, a gun battle with
police officers with a SWAT team, which you know, you
can totally see like suburban families, maybe more conservative thinking

(24:21):
people would just think that is the worst thing ever.
And like you're encouraging other people to think about that
and like that's a cool thing or a good thing.
It's talking about jail time, it's talking about a lot
of other crimes. But yeah, you're absolutely right, like drawing
that line then between what the LAPD is actually doing,
what NYPD was doing, what police departments across the country

(24:44):
were doing at the time. It's just, you know, it
does feel like a battle in some ways for the
mind about what is right and what is actually happening.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
Absolutely, and then also point out country music does the
same damn thing. Long time read those reads, Johnny Oh yeah,
read at you read some Johnny Cash lyrics and tell
me there's not some gangsters in there.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
You know.

Speaker 3 (25:09):
It's like we always say one one side's terrorist is
the other side's freedom fighter.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
You know, it's easy.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
It's all about where do you stand as to what
the police is to you? And I think that's that's
important to have that perspective. And so many of these
are also play out allegorically where it's not there's there's
subtext within a lot of these lyrics that that clearly
isn't saying, yeah, live this life. It's like, you might
die if you live this life. But it is a life,

(25:36):
and it is the life that I live or that
we live, So it is speaking truth to power, But
I don't I would argue that it doesn't always glorify
it in the way that the square sounding kind of
critics might think.

Speaker 1 (25:48):
I agree with you at times. You know, it's you
can't say an entire genre. It can be described by
one thing or one message in one song. But yeah,
it's it's incredible misleading to say that there is always glorification.
I'd also like to shout out a really cool my
song freestyle on funk Flex that is about this very issue,

(26:10):
the image being sold for the betrayal of that image,
and what the origins of that betrayal are and who
decides what part of the picture gets framed for public consumption.
In any case, you guys are making We're making real
points here. The battle lines are drawn right in some
people's minds. We've got these organizations, these individuals who enter

(26:34):
a legit moral panic about hip hop, similar to you know,
as you pointed out, Matt, a satanic panic, right, D
and D is going to have our children reading the
Keys of Solomon or whatever, which they might, but it
would be for a campaign and it would probably be
pretty fun. This is weird? Is it glorification? Other people?

(26:56):
Proponents of are artistry, proponents of activism, actual musicians, producers,
fans responded, and you know. Of course, the artist responded
by saying, look, I'm depicting the life I experienced, right,
and I'm successfully doing it. I didn't create the situation

(27:19):
in which I was born, and it's you know, it's
it's a deeply offensive kind of censorship to say that
I can't tell the truth about my life in the
US of all places. So there's a complex argument there,
and it's pretty solid. But back to the money, because
this is the US in America, there are a couple

(27:40):
of things that move the needle. The big one is cash,
cold heart cash, the cheddar, the cheese, so gagser rap
was selling. It was successful. People wanted to listen to it, right,
And it wasn't just a phenomenon where you know a
lot of people are listening to it from a privileged perspective.

(28:02):
They had the luxury of never experiencing and never having
to experience the things that are talked about in this music.
So for whatever reason it's successful, it was pushing the industry,
and then that means for both critics and proponents, it
is pushing the conversation. And side note, you know, there

(28:22):
was a lot of research at the time and ongoing
that tried to determine whether there was a causation right,
whether there was a causative relationship between music and crime,
specifically between listening to gangster rap and then later joining
a gang. This was, by the way, a popular view

(28:44):
for many folks on the US conservative side. But the
problem there is that vastly oversimplifies the numerous socioeconomic factors
that were involved, many of which the majority of which
I would say clearly existed way before Schooley d Right
ever ever, put out a record. In twenty eleven, the

(29:07):
World Development Report confirmed that most of the street gang
members as they defined them that they had spoken with
maintained that they were driven to crime by poverty and unemployment,
not by music. None of them even mentioned music once,
which I think is an interesting snapshot to pull for
a look at this situation.

Speaker 4 (29:28):
Yeah, you know, I don't want to bring my wife's
expertise into too many of these episodes, But another thing
that you know has been shown to increase street level
gang members, at least very young people is home situations, yes,
and just what they're dealing with on a daily basis
and looking for a place for family, essentially outside of

(29:51):
any of the other glorified stuff that you would hear about.
Just putting that out there.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Yeah, yeah, that's a really good point because people seek structure,
don't We want some form of stability. And in this morass,
in this quagmire, as records are continuing to sell, by
the way, a larger stranger question arises. What if what
the industry is calling gangster rap isn't an organic success.

(30:18):
What if in boardrooms and offices across the landscape of
the music industry, a hidden hand moves through the charts,
turns the dial of the radio station. What if someone
conspired to make gangster rap successful. We'll dive deeper into
the track list after a word from our sponsor. Here's

(30:47):
where it gets crazy.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
One thing about music, when it hits you feel no pain,
you know. And white folks they say it controls your brain.
I know better than that. That's that's game. Uh, and
we're ready for that. I just I just want to
put that out there.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Oh de press, it's so well written. But I mean,
that's that's a great that's a great example and salient
because there is the question, you know, to what degree
does the media we encounter affect our decisions? Not for nothing,
is propaganda tremendously successful. That's an exhibit a of how

(31:26):
this stuff, how media can influence real life actions and perceptions.
But there's a weird question here, you know, like when
we ask what if the rise of yangs rap was
not just an organic trend? At first? That seems like
an odd thing to ask, you know, because just imagine
the moving parts involved. How could the success of not

(31:48):
just a single artist, but an entire genre be somehow
coordinated across multiple institutions. How could it be somehow manufactured?
In twenty twelve, someone claimed, uh to know exactly how
it happened.

Speaker 4 (32:07):
Yeah, or at least they gave us a window into
some of the details of how they say it happened.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
Alleged window. I don't wanna, I don't want to. I
don't want to poke at it until we know what
it is. Okay, Okay, yeah, okay, sure, you're right, sure
I claim.

Speaker 4 (32:29):
No, No, I don't know. No for sure, We're we're
we're gonna, we're gonna have fun with us. We just
you know, on this show, as we always state, sources
are very important where they come from, backing things up,
journalistic approach. We are we are presenting this to you
all exactly as we found it and as the world
found it back in twenty twelve.

Speaker 3 (32:50):
So, back in twenty twelve, someone created a Gmail account
and sent a letter that absolutely upended the world of
hip hop. The user name John Smith very clever, the
address industry Confessions at gmail dot com. And they composed
the message using this very I would say, titillating, I

(33:14):
don't know, very intriguing at the very least, subject line
the secret meeting that changed rap music and destroyed a generation.
And this letter, which we're going to look at through
some excerpts, tells a profoundly and disturbing, if true story.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:36):
So this letter, which you can read in full, was
sent and published on hip hop is Read dot com.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
R E ad R E A D Yes. Thank you.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
The anonymous author says, Okay, it's taken me a long
time to I have thought about sending this letter for
a long long time, and I was afraid to. But
I want to tell you what happened. Well, we can
call them John Smith went on, let's play their reindeer games.
So John says that they were from Europe and they

(34:07):
lived in the US in the nineties, where they worked
as a music executive. Very vague term there, John essentially
implying that they're one of the elites on the corporate
side of the music industry. And they say that in
nineteen ninety one they were invited to a very exclusive
meeting on the outskirts of Los Angeles. The letter specifically says, quote,

(34:32):
I was invited to tend a closed door meeting with
a small group of music business insiders to discuss rap
music's new direction, which is just a funny phrase, new direction.

Speaker 4 (34:44):
Anyway they knew when they formed the group, by the way, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Little did I know. The author says that we would
be asked to participate in one of the most unethical
and destructive business practices I've ever seen. And so they
set the stage. Again, this is an elite insider, right,
So you would assume in an exclusive meeting in their
area of expertise, they would know everybody kind of.

Speaker 4 (35:10):
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean it's a possibility at least,
And it gets a little stranger when it comes to
like whose house it was and some of the other
people that were there. The details are a bit murky.
I want to point something out, just maybe grammatically within
the letter itself, so we are a writer here, at

(35:31):
least according to their own story, is from Europe or
originally from some European country, came to the United States
to Los Angeles, became an executive. They wrote this then.
I don't want to spoil it too much, but they
wrote this letter later on after leaving Yes, so they
they make several grammatical errors, several spelling errors that I mean,

(35:57):
it's not spelling, it's just grammatical errors, but things that
I I could see maybe just occurring if you didn't
write a whole bunch. But they're pretty simple errors that
I think would be caught even in twenty twelve by Gmail.
I'm just interested to know how those came about. Maybe

(36:17):
it's something as simple as just a mistype but saying
destructive business practice rather than practices. And there are a
couple other places where they do that within the email,
where it's just incorrect and it's just I don't know,
it's something to point out, I guess to think about
when we're imagining who this person may be true true?

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Who is this Kuyser SoSE the yeah, and it gets
us to the area where we might be reading some
tea leaves at times, but these are important questions. You
could also say something as simple as well, this is
a very emotional confession for them, and they're typing in
a hurry, and they're sending before they regret or before

(36:59):
they give them, you know, before they start to have doubt.
But the truth of the matter is, we don't know.
Here's what they say about this meeting again, this alleged meeting.
They say, I remember seeing about twenty five to thirty
people being there, most of them familiar faces. Speaking to
those I knew. We joked about the theme of the meeting,
as many of us did not care for rap music

(37:21):
and failed to see the purpose of being invited to
a private gathering to discuss its future. It's very interesting.
Among the attendees was a small group of unfamiliar faces
who stayed to themselves and made no attempt to socialize
beyond their circle. Based on their behavior and formal appearances,
they didn't seem to be part of our industry. Oh tantalizing, vague,

(37:44):
incitious umami hmm.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Indeed, and the group in question was given a very
strongly worded non disclosure agreement that they were forced to
sign before the meeting would commence, and some refused and
got a little freaked out and they were like, nah,
I'm good, and they took off.

Speaker 4 (38:07):
And that's when the meeting commenced. And again there's a
there's a person that the writer knew who welcomed everyone.
It was like they're they're running the meeting. At least
it seemed to be their house, at least according to
the person who're writing this. It's like, thanks everybody, And
here's one of these men that you don't know, and

(38:29):
he's going to speak to us for a little while.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
That a.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Polite collapse, all right, And so this speaker will paraphrase
some of this, But this this speaker is one of
those unfamiliar folks, goes on to say some wildly surreal
stuff to this audience. Basically says, look, you all are
here because the companies that you represent have invested in

(38:56):
an exciting new business opportunity, a profitable industry that could
be a gold mine. It could be immensely rewarding as
long as you all help us out. See the companies
that you all work for, says this person, even if
you don't know it yet, they've invested millions of dollars

(39:16):
into building what we call private prisons, and because of
your position as the taste makers of the music industry,
you could have a big effect on the profit of
these investments. Imagine like we've been just over the years,
the four of us, code named Doc Holliday, Matt Nolan, myself,

(39:39):
we've all been in some really weird meetings. One time,
Matt and I had to smuggle an Elvis impersonator into
a product office.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
Wait we did, really?

Speaker 1 (39:50):
Yeh yeah really? Wait were you not there with Roxanne?

Speaker 4 (39:55):
Oh no, we did. Whoa, that's weird. Yep, memory these
weird meetings.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
That one was little right past.

Speaker 1 (40:05):
Okay, so you know, you're active in an industry or career,
you're going to have some weird meetings. But this is
pretty twilight zone even for these folks. And we have
our author's reaction to some.

Speaker 6 (40:19):
Of this news.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, I mean, at this time, in general, the concept
of a private prison wasn't as much in the in
the news has it has it has been for many
years at this point didn't have the rep that it
has now. So the author didn't even know what that was,
and he wasn't the only one, he says, quote sure enough,
someone asked what these prisons were and what any of

(40:41):
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. It was also made clear to us that
since these prisons are privately owned, as they become publicly traded,
we'd be able to buy shares.

Speaker 4 (41:03):
Dude, it's really weird, right, yeah, And it's also a
cheap way to incentivize people. Yeah, I mean, we're talking
about psychological warfare here on like in the highest levels
if this is true, If.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
This is true, and insider trading probably as well. So
the guy that from that point, the guy who you mentioned, Matt,
who may or may not be the owner of the house,
but it's definitely in the music industry. He takes to
the floor for questions and he says, Look, since our
bosses are silent investors in this promising new prison business,

(41:43):
it is now in their interest, in your boss's interests
to make sure these prisons stay filled. And your job,
the way you guys help the team here is to
market music that promotes criminal behavior and rap says, this
guy is our music of choice, and then the author says,

(42:03):
he assured us that this would be a great situation
for us because rap music is already becoming increasingly profitable
for companies, and you know, you'll be able to buy
personal stocks in the prison. So they're not like directly
paying these people. They're saying, tilt the scale with all
the levers that you're you know, at your command, and
then you can, in addition to helping us, you can

(42:25):
buy in to our really messed up plan. And then
silence filled the room for one long moment before someone shouted,
is this a joke?

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (42:39):
But the question that I'm that comes to mind, and
I know we'll get in more into this is the
implication that, like we're gonna fill up prisons more by
popularizing the gangster lifestyle and like making young people aspire
to that and therefore end up in prison.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
Is that the implication here?

Speaker 6 (42:57):
Am I?

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Am I overstating the case? Or am I missing something?

Speaker 4 (43:00):
Let's take a quick break here to talk about history
and bring back some stuff, if it's okay, from our
Private Prisons episode and videos and content we've made on
that before. So if you really want to start talking
about this stuff. You got to go back to Reagan
in the nineteen eighties and the War on drugs and
the effect that those policies had on prison populations, because now,

(43:25):
because of those laws, there are a lot more people
getting sent to prison for smaller charges for like small
a lot of smaller mandatory minimums and being and being
sentenced for longer periods of time, which means the federal,
state and local prisons and jails are being filled up

(43:49):
faster and faster, which then spawns this concept and you're
really talking about nineteen eighty three and onwards. I think that's. Yeah,
nineteen eighty three is when Corrections Corporation of America CCA
that we've talked about is formed. So that is a
real thing. That is you know, I guess an industry
that is taking off, you know what seven years prior

(44:12):
eight years prior to this meeting that allegedly takes place,
and you know it, we do know for sure that
that that system that industry works by filling their prisons
by the number of beds that are filled. I just
I guess I just want to pause you for saying
to say, yeah, the incentive it there is real incentive

(44:33):
there to make sure those private prisons are filled up.
And if you can do anything to move the needle
to get more people into those prisons, then it would
be profitable for people who invested in it.

Speaker 6 (44:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:48):
In the in the research for that one, one thing
that heartbreaking really was to look at video clips you
can see from trade shows where company private prison corporations are,
you know, and they got the little like science fair
displays set up and they're talking the numbers and how
profitable this is and networking, and they yeah, their success

(45:13):
is defined by the expansion of the mass incarceration system
in the US. And when this became, luckily a matter
of larger debate in the US mainstream. Can't remember when
it happened, maybe a little after our episode episodes of that,
but whenever it happened, they were radio silent for a

(45:34):
little while. They took the hit on their stocks, and
then there were these huge cries, panics even dare I say,
a moral panic over illegal immigration. And what did those
private prison companies do with their infrastructure. They just moved

(45:54):
it to you know, they stopped calling them prisons and
started calling them detainment centers.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
I think I may have mentioned this in a past episode,
but in a previous life, when I was a reporter
for Georgia Public Radio, I covered when the housing collapse happened,
and it put a lot of like small towns that
were based around manufacturing basically just completely you know, leveled
their employment.

Speaker 2 (46:17):
There was just nothing.

Speaker 3 (46:18):
And there was this one little town in Georgia that
I covered who their entire business was based around like
textile manuf It wasn't textiles, it was like building materials
and you know, fabric for furniture and things like that.
But all of their plants closed and it was like
they had the highest unemployment rate like in the entire state.
And CCA was gonna bring a prison there maybe maybe,

(46:42):
And I covered this event where the CCA people literally
had a gym, you know, packed with like all the
townspeople like you would think, and just talking about how
great this this prison facility was gonna be, how it
was going to bring jobs to the community, how it
is going to be their ticket out of thehouse. And
then they ultimately ended up taking it somewhere else. And

(47:04):
I guarantee they had that same meeting and a bunch
of other distressed small towns and they got a better
deal on infrastructure or whatever, and they just pissed right off.
But I mean that was the heartbreaking part of the story.
And also I think the heartbreaking part of this larger
story is that these companies are callous on all ends

(47:24):
of these calculations.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for comparison or an
analog in the world of fiction, then I would recommend
checking out the monoail episode of The Simpsons. Those speeches
are made. Those folks are trying to get in front
of Nimby, right, They're trying to find places that are
desperate enough such that Nimby meaning not in my backyard

(47:48):
no longer applies. And it works because these things get
built back to this story. So this is the context,
the larger context in which this conversation is happening. That
was a quote. The guy says, is this a joke?
The two other folks from that unfamiliar group, whoever they are,

(48:10):
they they're not play it. They seize this dude, you know,
with that weird like elbow grab kind of thing that
you see that where you see people getting pushed out
of nice clubs or fancy restaurants or like someone who
objected at the wedding. This this person's getting. They're trying
to get this guy out of the house, and then
our anonymous author and a couple of other a couple

(48:33):
of other dudes try to intervene. They're like, well, what
are you doing? Stop hang on, and that's when one
of the one of the guys, one of the goons,
pulls a gun and then all four people are like, okay,
whoa no, it's this is this is the weirdest meeting.
And they get the boot and they're pushed outside, and
the industry guy, who may have been the homeowner who

(48:53):
set all this up, he follows them outside and the
conversation changes, and then very explicitly, this guy says, you know,
just want to remind you. I want to warn you
that you have signed an agreement and there will be
consequences if you talk about this in public. There will
be consequences if you talk about it to each other
or to anybody else who stayed in that room. And

(49:15):
then months passed, and our anonymous author, John Smith feels
that he saw a sea change in the industry overall.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
I'm just going to read part of this verbatim. The
person where this letter says that he was he or
she was never a fan of gangster rap or a
rap in general, but even I could tell the difference
between like the way this person says rap was and
how it changed around that time. This person says rap

(49:47):
acts that talked about politics or harmless fun were quickly
fading away as this quote, gangster rap started dominating.

Speaker 2 (49:54):
The air waves and only.

Speaker 4 (49:56):
A few months had passed since the meeting, But he
suspects that the ideas presented that day had been successfully implemented.
It was as if the order had been given to
all major label executives. The music was climbing the charts,
and most companies were more than happy to capitalize on it. Okay,

(50:20):
you know, we don't have exact statistics and sales numbers
to compare to here, because honestly, we don't even know
exactly how much money was made within the music industry
and all the various streams of revenue that the music
industry had for a lot of the acts that were
coming out around that time. But there was certainly a

(50:41):
lot of money being made around the time that this
author is speaking about.

Speaker 1 (50:48):
Yeap, and this haunts them, at least according to their claim,
they say that they start checking out of the industry.
They don't want to go to the to the posh party,
they don't want to network. And then so much of
that stuff is networking, and I think networking is terrible
for meritocracies. I'm just going to say it. But anyway,

(51:10):
they eventually call it quits officially nineteen ninety three, they
leave the music business and they returned to Europe for
a few years, and in the nineties, late nineteen nineties,
through the Internet, this author says, they learned about the
prison industrial complex for the first time, learned about the
whole leviathan of the thing and all the places its

(51:32):
tentacles reach. And in their mind, the story of this
Twilight Zone meeting, this x files meeting, because as men
in Black right, this x files meeting began to make
a horrifying sort of sense. Was it true though, and
more importantly, what does the conversation about the veracity of

(51:52):
this letter tell us about music discrimination and crime?

Speaker 2 (51:56):
Today?

Speaker 1 (51:57):
We'll answer that question afterword from our sponsor. Okay, all right,
it was it was a little tough to hold on
to this. I think we I think we were fair
to the author of the letter right, and I think
we gave some good contexts. But if we're asking whether

(52:18):
this letter is true or whether it's bunk, or whether
it's something in between, we have to we have to
be honest. We have to acknowledge a couple of holes
in this story. So people have been scrutinizing this for
almost a decade now, it should be like for any

(52:40):
this letter touches on so many things in US culture, right,
and for anyone familiar with any one of those things,
you may have heard of this letter right now. The
first thing to get out of the way is we
are not at the end of this particular iteration of
the usual suspects. We have not identified the author. We
don't know who this Kaiser SoSE is. And because we

(53:03):
haven't identified this person, we also haven't identified the veracity
or the truth of their claims. We just have a
letter that seems very explicit in what it's recounting. But
there hasn't been another person who's come forward in the
years since who provably said I was at that meeting.

(53:23):
It's still just an email from twenty twelve.

Speaker 6 (53:27):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (53:27):
The other thing to keep in mind here, when we're
talking about attempting to prove this. We have to remember
that the United States government and private industry within the
United States and internationally, these are very powerful things, and
they have functioned in the past as essentially a hand

(53:47):
that's way over here and it's pulling strings and making things. Sorry,
it's not working in audio. The government working with private
corporations and industries has functioned as a hidden hand in
the past. We've talked about this before. Check out our
episode on the FBI and US counterculture. There's a serious

(54:07):
rabbit hole to jump into there about the bizarre aesthetic
rules of Soviet era propaganda. We've talked about this, We've
talked I mean, there's so many things. I mean, just
Brene's alone the first episode we ever did, like, it's industry,
but it's also government and what's good for society? And
what does that mean? What does it mean when when

(54:27):
the government in private industry is deciding what the best,
the best humans do in their homes when they're alone
with each other.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean like the goose for the gander thing, right,
what gander are we talking about? And does anyone ask
the actual goose?

Speaker 4 (54:45):
I mean I've seen him in a while.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
The you know, the the overthrow of democratically elected governments
throughout Latin America. The reason Hawaii is a state. These
things happened because of this sort of hand in hand uh,
evil stuff. Like it's not even if this story is

(55:09):
not true, it's a it's something that could be considered
plausible based on the patterns of the past. Third, and
this is a this is something I have to I
have to pooke a hole in here. So Third, while
this story is amazing and terrifying if it's true, it
has a really dangerous implication and something that we have

(55:31):
to acknowledge is blaming a genre of music for real
life actions. Is it an intellectually honest feat You know,
Dungeons and Dragons is accused of turning nerds across the
country into devil worshipers. Clearly not true. Clearly not. We
talked about this a little bit earlier. I mean, the

(55:52):
heavy metal music that was the subject of so many
satanic panics is not even really that heady. It's like
right right, And we see also this pattern it iterates
into the past. New genres of music have been the
cause of moral panics for a long long time. There

(56:14):
was probably someone at some point who was like Gregorian
chant is going to ruin the world, you know what
I mean, And the world and it's a weird, unsteady,
imbalanced way kept spinning. So this phenomenon dates back into
antiquity and it's it's I think it's a dangerous and
I don't mean be extremist about this, but I think

(56:36):
it's somewhat insulting to the intelligence of a given audience
to say that they can be completely programmed. But again,
you know, you brought up this point of normalization off air,
Matt that I thought was brilliant, and we know propaganda works,
so maybe the truth is somewhere in between.

Speaker 4 (56:54):
Well, I think, yeah, that was off air, wasn't it.
We didn't actually talk about this. I do, I do
want to this up, and I know many of you
will disagree with me, but I do feel like there
is truth to growing up as a you know, the
mind of a child growing up in a world where
the music that's being that you end up exposed to

(57:16):
as as you your developing brain is going through some
of these early processes. The language that you hear on
a frequent basis will I think contribute to the way
your mind forms thoughts. And what you what you do,
like think about social media if if anyone's seen the
social dilemma, you there's essentially gen Z. I think, are

(57:40):
the people who grew up with cell phones in middle
school and how that, how that has inextricably changed the
way gen Z. Not every person who would be considered
gen Z, but as a whole, if you look at
statistically changes their behaviors and their thoughts and the way
they act. And I think any kind of exposure, like

(58:02):
to anything for a long enough period of time at
a young enough age can have an effect not on
you know, the adults who are listening to music and
you know, thinking about what's happening and understanding all the context,
but a child that is maybe thinking about it in
a little more of a fantastical or a fantasy like,
dream like way.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
Aspirational preps.

Speaker 4 (58:24):
Yeah, possibly want to.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
I would argue too that I mean a lot of
the hip hop that's really popular now, like trap music,
it's sort of like all of the glamorization of that
stuff without any of the thoughtful commentary.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
You know what I mean, Like not all of it.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
And I'm a big fan of like gimmicky kind of
trap music, and it's definitely catchy, and there's you know,
it's all about like these catchphrases and stuff. And then
I'm not saying that it's all like garbage, but a
lot of it is a bit more frivolous and not
particularly intelligently constructed and lyrically speaking, Whereas the gang to
rap stuff that we're talking about, at least it has

(59:02):
kind of a message, whereas a lot of the rap
nowadays I sound like a grandpapap but like it's sort
of junk food, you know, I.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Hear you on that. My question then would be are
we hearing like why is that a phenomenon people feel
they perceive, like what's the old what's the old? Jay
Z line? I used to rap like common sense till
I made my first mill. I have it wrapped like
common sense, Like there's there's a financial perspective there, you know.

(59:34):
And I want to be very clear, I don't think
any of us are saying that any musician is somehow unintelligent.
Maybe they're just playing to the crowd, or maybe maybe
they have like maybe they have an entire catalog of
more you know, perhaps more overtly political or ideological stuff
and they're just not allowed to put it out.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
Yeah, it's like the idea that like Pacassa, just like
you know, oh, anyone could do a Paassa. Look, it's
all just like finger painting. But he was like a
classically trained artist that just happened to funnel his efforts
into this particular genre.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
And he you know, but you know, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Literally talking about stuff like Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang, Gucci Gang,
Gucci Gang.

Speaker 4 (01:00:13):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:00:14):
I mean, it's it's very meant to be catchy and
get stuck in your head and be these earworms.

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
But there's not a lot of substance to that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Hey watch out, man, you know, I'm I got excited
on that one.

Speaker 3 (01:00:28):
Sham Dang was hoping, hoping he had a secret life
as a as a as a trap ghostwriter.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
I have a couple of secret lives. But I see what,
I see what you're saying.

Speaker 4 (01:00:38):
I guess in the end, it's in the end. Look,
did I listen to all Christian music as a young
mind because I was Christian and looking for something to
listen to or did a lot of that music influence
me and how I was thinking what I was deciding
to do I want to say that I was listening
to that because I identified as a Christian and I wanted

(01:01:00):
to listen to music with that content. And it's a
fascinating argument that has, you know, been had for a
long time about popular consumption of varying media and its
effect or our you know, our effect on that media itself.

Speaker 3 (01:01:18):
It's a chicken and egg kind of argument right where
it's like, did the school shooter shoot up the school
because he listened to Marilyn Manson or was he going
to do it anyway? And this is just a thing
that he sought out because he I don't know, you
know what I'm saying, Like, I don't think we've ever
successfully been able to like hang actions on like exclusively

(01:01:41):
on violent video games, like violent video games turned someone
into a sociopath or a psychopath. I don't know that
anyone's ever successfully proven that argument.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
And I think this is very similar.

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Well too, I mean in that regard, Well, first I
would say this way, it was spent some time exploding
or in these larger patterns, right, these larger social consumption patterns,
there's a good argument to be made that if someone,
to take your earlier example, did participate in mass shooting

(01:02:13):
or they shot up a school, and even in a
claim that the music they were listening to was the
impetus for that decision, then that's just one impetus. That's
one of the dominoes. There's a very good argument that
if it wasn't you know, insert album here, it would

(01:02:34):
have been something else that prompted a violent break. It's
just it's like, it's so self satisfying and to a
degree masturbatory, honestly for people to say this simple answer
explains the thing and makes my opinion right. And despite
feeling satisfying, the simple answer is not always the correct one, right,

(01:02:56):
And that's when speaking of that point of simplicity. So
one thing we have to say, just observing this scheme
as it's structured in this letter, isn't it isn't it
a little complicated. It's got a lot of intervening variables,
It's got a lot of actors. It seems like there
are other ways to increase incarceration, like increasingly draconian laws

(01:03:23):
for only certain types of crime. Look at the consequences
for possession of crack cocaine versus possession of cocaine, and
you know, say that there and try your best to
somehow explain the difference without talking about systemic racism, you
know what I mean, Like I want to hear it
if you got one. That's kind of stuff seems to

(01:03:45):
have a more immediate and a more predictable impact on
the US addiction to mass incarceration, much more so of
a measurable impact than a three to four minute song
with some insightful if violent rhyme schemes and a ca
as hook. Like it seems like we're it seems like
a lot of work to do. But that's that's again

(01:04:07):
just it's based on this letter. It's based on this
one letter. And we know that factions of government agencies
if like by what I mean is like it's not
always as if the entire CIA decides to do something.
It's like four or five people and the CIA conspire
with somebodies to do something as the CIA, maybe not

(01:04:28):
with approval, but it's true that these entities have tilted
the scale of public opinion in the past. The shadow
of Berne stretches into the modern day. And what's so fascinating,
and another reason I recommend Louder than a Riot is
that the host Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael explore all

(01:04:51):
the all the things this conversation about this letter brings up.
You know, they interview different they interview different luminaries in
the world of hip hop, and say, what do you
think about this? Do you think it's legit? Do you
believe this letter? And some people it's It's fascinating because
there are people who are saying, you know, I just

(01:05:12):
looking around and growing up, I just figured this is
something like this is very plausible, and there are people
who are saying, well, it's a conspiracy theory, but it
leads to important questions in the modern day. We shall
also say, yeah, at this point, not only did is
there no one from that alleged meeting who has come
forward to confirm it. There's no government official on record

(01:05:35):
who's saying like, oh, yeah, nineteen ninety one, Yeah that
was our bad And there's.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
No it doesn't even require this like shadowy meeting to
have taken place with the actual executives of private prisons.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Like the laws that led to so.

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Much more mass incarceration by people of color were in
and of themselves racist, Like the idea of you know,
putting this burden on the black community by having these
mandatory minimums for marijuana possession, you know, for cocaine and
crack possession or what have you. And then you know,
Dave Chappelle jokes, but I don't think he's entirely joking
that he thinks the CIA created crack to destroy the

(01:06:13):
black community.

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
And that's a we did an episode of exactly, but
that's what I'm saying. That's also, you know, just as plausible.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
But I don't think to your point, Ben, it requires
this level of secrecy or shadowiness. It's just kind of like,
of course, this is what's happening, you know, and who's
more likely to benefit from this record label executives or
like people in government, you know, who are we are
in business with these private prisons.

Speaker 1 (01:06:40):
That's an excellent question. And I think there's one thing
we want to I know we're running a little along,
but I think there's one thing we should address. It's this.
We are lucky. We're trying to look at this as
objectively as possible based on the letter, right, the question
about the letter, but there is much deeper exploration. We're

(01:07:01):
on we're on the outside of this, you know what
I mean, very much so. And with that in mind,
why that's why I'm recommending this show Louder than a Riot.
And I'd like to directly quote Rodney Carmichael here, which
you can read the transcript on NPR. He says, he

(01:07:21):
says something that I think is I think is profound,
and he says, quote the hype around this letter fake
news or not. It really tells us that the fear
and the paranoia around how the criminal justice system disproportionately
impacts black people in this country is very real. And I,

(01:07:42):
you know, I want to give space to that observation.
I hope it stays with people, because if everything was
hunky dory, then a letter like this would have just
been another piece of spam.

Speaker 3 (01:07:57):
It's a pointing to a a symptom of a much
larger problem.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
And with that, you know, we can't we can't prove
the validity or legitimacy of this letter, but we want
to hear from you whether or not this letter is real.
Do you think something like this happened? Do you think
there's been conspiracy to you to artificially inflate the successive

(01:08:24):
music of certain types of music to create some kind
of widespread social impact. We're specifically talking about this alleged
plan to push people into the prison system, but it
could be it could be any number of things. You know,
if this kind of mechanism works, you know, it just
becomes a matter of figuring out your end goal, doesn't

(01:08:46):
it If you're that insidious and you've thrown ethics away
long ago. I don't know, do you do you think
it's likely and if so, how would it work? And
also I feel like it's it's it can pines some
stuff we have to unpack about. I don't know. It's
kind of unfair to the actual artist and musicians working

(01:09:07):
in this genre too, you know what I mean. It's
like saying that success that you literally spent years attaining
is not your own. It kind of removes agency from
those people too. I don't know. It's a lot, and
we want to hear your opinion about it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:26):
For sure. We want to hear your opinion about the
low end theory by a tribe called Quest because that
came out in nineteen ninety one I think, or maybe
ninety two, I'm not sure, but that was certainly not
gangster rap like what. We just want to know your
opinion about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
My favorite genre.

Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
I like a lot of rap, but I mean I
love that nineties kind of they called it woke wrap.
I guess like before that was a term that got
thrown around all the time, like tribe and arrested development
and just a lot of those kind of positive positivity rap,
you know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
But then also huge Wu Tang Clan fan.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
Tell us your favorite artists and why and what you
think about this entire episode. You can find us on
social media where we are Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook.
You can find us on Instagram Conspiracy Stuff Show. If
you don't want to do that stuff, we have a
phone number you can call.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
That's right, you can hit us up at one eight
three three s T d W y t K. Fellow writers,
fellow freestylers, if you if you have some insightful response,
you could put it there. Just keep it less than
three minutes. And I also want to hear people's just
favorite isolated lines or thoughts from a from a hip

(01:10:41):
hop lyricist perspective. And the only thing you have to
do when you call that line, just let us know
if we can use your voice or your name on air.
But what if you hate social media? What if You're like, ugh,
I this is too much. You know, life is already tough,
while are you guys throw these plot twists and all
the hoopla at me? I have time to log into Instagram.

(01:11:04):
I'm old school. I use email. Well, do we have
news for you? You can always reach us at our
good old fashioned email address.

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Where we are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
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