The song also illuminates how drugs negatively affected his neighborhood and childhood. To get a sense of the implications of the Reagan 1980s, I also have students listen to Kendrick Lamar’s “ Ronald Reagan Era,” which came out in 2011 and deals with the flow of drugs, crack cocaine in particular, into Lamar’s native Compton, California, and Los Angeles during the late 1980s. It allows students to see the effects of the loosely regulated market economy of Reagan’s America, which led to profound wealth gaps. Raps Killer Mike: “ Just like Oliver North introduced us to cocaine / In the 80s when them bricks came on military planes.” Why is this course relevant now? Students also examine the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s through the lyrics of Too $hort’s “ Girl That’s Your Life” from 1983, N.W.A’s “ Dopeman” from 1987, and Killer Mike’s 2012 song “ Reagan,” which holds the Reagan administration complicit in creating the crack cocaine epidemic. If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper” ‘Cause the teacher’s a jerk, he must think, I’m a foolĪnd all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper
The group rapped: “ My son said, Daddy, I don’t wanna go to school It uses hip-hop as a tool to understand the sociopolitical, economic and cultural factors that affected the lives of Black youths during the 1980s – the era of “ Reaganomics.” That’s the name given to Reagan’s economic policies, which called for deregulation of the markets, widespread tax cuts, less spending on social programs and more spending on the military.įor instance, we use Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s classic 1982 hit “The Message” to examine the disappearance of middle-class factory jobs from American cities during a period of globalization and cuts to public school funding. I realized then that, just as today’s rappers are weighing in on politics, I could teach a course about how rap artists in the 1980s – and even afterward – dealt with the politicians from that era, chief among them President Reagan. Many of my students, who came of age during the Obama administration, enjoyed the 2016 song by YG and Nipsey Hussle titled “ FDT,” which is an acronym for “F- Donald Trump.” The song’s lyrics criticize Trump for campaigning for the White House by trying to breed resentment against immigrants from Mexico. A 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign button employed the use of the phrase ‘Let’s Make America Great Again.’ Smithsonian Institution, CC BY-NC-SA
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