Respectability in Hip Hop

The 2012 BET Hip Hop Awards raked in more than 3 million viewers last week and has become the most successful running award show in the hip-hop community for seven years running.

The award show aren’t the Courvoisier-laced celebrations we outsiders might expect them to be.

As new rappers and producers hit the scene, different labels and subgenres struggle for the reign of power. The artists pumping out big sales and setting new trends will always be viewed by the listening public as the biggest and best.

These camps uphold an immense sense of competition amongst one another, and every so often, the boiling pot overflows.

The Hip Hop Awards are the stage for these giant personalities to clash.

50 Cent stole the spotlight in childish fashion this year. He started hot by getting into a
pissing contest with Diddy about who has more money, apparently a touchy subject not to be jested about.

Enter Gunplay. The Maybach Music Group affiliate ended up getting bested in some street boxing by Fif’s entourage.

He was arrested just after the scuffle began. Unfortunately for him, this arrest led to other charges the Miami-Dade Police Department had been waiting to drop on his head.

This wasn’t the night’s only award-winning beef. Young Jeezy the Snowman and Rick Ross the Bawse also expressed their mutual dislike with a good ol’ fashioned entourage scuffle that led to threats of gun violence.

As opposing egos led to flaring tempers and displays of hypermasculine physical confrontation, the imagined picture of mob bosses and gangsters running a respectable scene crumbles to pieces.

Maybe these guys are just showing us their emotional side, but it seems like they are tarnishing the names they’ve built during their ascent to the top of the rap game.

The standard should be set by these figures, and the standard should be set much higher then the less-than-exemplary behavior we witnessed at last week’s BET Awards.

Respect isn’t something listeners and fans should be throwing at 20- to 40-year-old men ready to beef it out like they’re on recess.

By Patrick Guilfoyle