Searching For The Line To Cross : What's Going Too Far?

“"Put molly all in her champagne/ She ain't even know it/ I took her home and I enjoyed that/ She ain't even know it,"

People are upset over some of the lyrics from Rick Ross that seem to glorify rape.  He was on the radio here in New Orleans and said he does not condone rape. He didn’t even say the word rape. Rick Ross is either ignorant in not knowing the full definition of what a rape is or he’s so stupid that he thinks you don’t condone something by not saying the word even if you describe it. My personal opinion is that you can only keep talking about the same subject song after song and he slipped up in an attempt to be creative. It was wrong and he should apologize and never perform that song.

There a few times a year when the community has a moment that triggers a reaction and you wonder if we are finally at the line where everyone thinks it’s time to stop certain behavior and get ourselves in order. Usually it’s something much bigger than a song lyric like a baby being shot or Trayvon Martin. No matter how much these events affect us things seem to go right back to the way they were. I don’t think that’s because we don’t care. I think it’s because we don’t know what the line is anymore. When there doesn’t appear to be a limit to what you can say and how you can act it’s difficult to know when enough is enough.

When I was in high school The Geto Boys had a song called Gangsta of Love. If my daddy had known this kind of song was in those headphones that I never took off he would have made me sleep on the porch. I was going to post a link to it but I don’t know who is going to read this. That song’s lyrics are so misogynistic it makes the things today’s rappers say seem like love songs. That was over 20 years ago right when the crack era was in full swing. From those days until now we have experienced so many things and nothing has seemed to pull the community together to correct itself. There has to be a limit somewhere.

I have my own personal limits to what I will and won’t do. In any situation I can feel if I am taking something too far and pull myself back. I got that from my family who set expectations on a certain level of behavior. I know there are a lot of black families who have the same expectations and standards. There are reasons I may not be smart enough to figure out that makes it seem like it’s impossible to spread this around to the community as a whole. I think the downward spiral started when we made the decision to embrace hustling and getting money above all else. That’s how drug dealers got to thrive for so long in our neighborhoods while destroying them. That’s why mothers let their sons stay out all night doing things they shouldn’t do to buy tennis shoes and clothes because they think he needs those things to be somebody. That’s why our young ladies love those guys and why Rick Ross can get rich faking like he’s one o f them. How was he supposed to know a line about slipping a molly into a woman’s drink was going to piss anyone off? He may have performed that song live a few times and the first three rows full of women were singing along with him.

You should never say anything that indicates it’s okay to have sex with a woman without her consent. I’m not a fan of Rick Ross and its okay for people to go after him for awhile but let’s keep it all in perspective. Unless we make some tough choices and have the family argument we need to get these things corrected we are headed for a full blown rape song.  Anything is possible when the game has no rules.