The release of Gunna and the Myth of No Snitching in the Hip Hop & Black Community 

It’s not clear at this point if Gunna will be able to resume his career as usual and rekindle the spark he had before he was locked up. It is possible he may share the fate of Tekashi69, the infamous rapper who also was implicated in the RICO case with his associates. Tekashi confessed that those associates were criminals and he was not. He got released, was labeled a “rat” and subsequently lost the steam surrounding his career and the respect he may have earned throughout.    

Either way, the case of Gunna, Young Thug, and the other Hip Hop artists who are being criminally investigated and put in prison are exposing a couple of things. The first thing is that this “No Snitching” thing is more of a myth than a reality.  

The truth is that a quite few of our “Ghetto Heroes” don’t possess the garment of Armour that we imagine them to have. Not just the rappers, but in real life, the idea that people can sell kilos of cocaine, shoot countless people and get away with it is just a fairytale.  

Those jail cells and that time is for real and when faced with those consequences, a lot of people fold. According to a 2012 USA Today article titled Federal prisoners use snitching for personal gain, at least 48,895 federal convicts — one of every eight — had their prison sentences reduced in exchange for helping government investigators.  

I remember I used to watch the reality TV show The First 48. The program has been on the air since 2004 and follows police officers from different cities as they try to solve murder cases. What I noticed in most episodes, was the police were only able to solve the case if someone was cooperating. Whether it be a witness or the actual suspect connected with the crime.   

What people need to know is that not only do the police expect suspects to cooperate, they count on it.  According to a U.S. Sentencing Commission report, in 2011, half of the defendants who cooperated with the government got their sentences chopped by 50% or more. In some white-collar crime cases, the person avoided prison altogether. For some the incentives of getting out of prison outweighs their street reputation or music persona.  

Gunna is no exception to the rule, the young man is an artist, not a criminal. His music is art, not real life. That doesn’t excuse, justify, or rationalize his actions, but it should expose the fraud that is being perpetrated in the music business. So as much as we applaud the people that don’t tell, we have to equally inform people about the people who do. For every drug kingpin, there is a Nicky Barnes or an Alpo. For every Young Thug or Bobby Shmurda, there is Tekashi69 or Gunna. In the words of the character Avon Barksdale from The Wire: “The Game is the Game”   

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