The Italian Mob of New York and New Jersey were absolutely revered figures at one point in time. RICO changed that. During The Great Depression when the government banned all liquor the Italians came up with a plan on how to smuggle bootleg liquor and make money from it, and from that, the Mob controlled many aspects of organized crime for 60 years. Their crime was so glorified it made for many great films.
Now let’s take the same principles of prohibition and economic depression and apply them to crack cocaine, heroin, and monetary inflation in the 1970s. This made the lives of Black Americans almost unlivable, but it gave us the rise of hip-hop and Gangsta Rap. For the past 40 years, hip-hop has basically controlled the music industry with the exception of the mid-2000s when subdued emo-rock became popular again for no reason.
Before we go further let me explain the RICO Act Of 1970. Basically, the government was losing control over the Mafia and could not negotiate with them anymore, so they passed RICO and decided to get rid of the Mob. Getting rid of the Mob in the 80s was a very crucial thing to do especially as non-white immigrants were coming to America in droves in the 70s and 80s. They were mainly flocking to places like NYC, Chicago, and LA where Mob hangouts were strong. There was no way for immigrants to realize how bad the Mob is without fully deterring them from coming here and there was no way to tell if the Mob would leave innocent immigrants alone, so to alleviate the obvious societal concerns this would have, the Mob got all but eliminated.
In the 2020s the government is cracking down on Hip-Hop because they have lost control over the industry. Also, the amount of racism coming out of hip-hop and rap in the past decade makes it a necessary act to put hip-hop on the backburner for a few years. We are also moving into a period in history where immigration to and from the east and west is going to plummet big time and you cannot just simply ignore racism anymore by importing people. These things work in cycles. In some eras, people want more movement, and in some eras, they want less. And right now people want less. Again these are cycles.
Many Atlanta-based rappers got charged with RICO predicates a week back. And some are beginning to die of “kidney failure.” Also, hip-hop has become so garbage that no one actually cares about this.
How did the government lose control of the hip-hop industrial complex? It is nothing rappers did per se. What it comes down to was the Pandemic and how people started realizing that music ain’t shit. The government uses hip-hop as a way to control minorities. There is almost no way to control minorities now. Lots of rappers are losing money. And lots of events are being staged to sabotage them. Eg. Travis Scott’s concert where eight people died. Basically, hip-hop as an industrial complex is losing financial and social power. The social power they are losing is that the audience is realizing this is all government propaganda.
In a nutshell, the same way they used RICO to destroy the glamour of the Mob is the same way they are using it to destroy the glamour of hip-hop. These things lose steam once intelligence agencies lose control over them and destroy them.