How Hip Hop Culture is Influencing the Rising Mental Health Movement
Hip-hop, at its core, is therapeutic. Hip-hop music is part of a culture started by Black people and the Black community that helped us to cope with the pain and hopelessness of being Black in America, as well as the many pitfalls of society that we fall into (either by circumstance or by choice). Music education was taken out of schools in the 1970s, so the new instrument became the turntable, while the poetry turned into rap. Since its inception in 1973, hip-hop has become a cultural institution that grew into a global phenomenon. It is now the most popular genre of music in the world. Rappers have always discussed their own mental health issues in their own unique ways (sometimes without knowing they’re doing it). So, why is it that so many people in the Black community who love this music still have an aversion to getting help for the things that they struggle with?
“Hip-hop has always asked the tough questions and touched on subjects that no one else would even look at, and mental health should not be an exception.”
In the Black community, we have historically been taught to keep our pain bottled up. It is also worth mentioning that many of us were raised in the church, and whenever we went to our parents or pastors with whatever we were dealing with we were simply told to “pray it away”. Another way that we attempt to cope is through laughter, hence the phrase “laughing to keep from crying”. It has been said by many that no matter what’s going on, Black people will find a way to laugh. However, deep down, we knew learning to find humor in everything wasn’t enough. Sometimes our mental health issues start with something our parents did or said (or something that we perceive they did or said), which makes it more difficult to forgive them and see them as human as we reach adulthood (which I will go more in-depth about later).
History of Hip Hop and Mental Health
In the past, most MCs have chosen to speak about their pain indirectly without explicitly calling it depression, PTSD, or anxiety. However, hip-hop legends like Scarface, member of legendary Houston rap group Geto Boys, helped to pioneer the direction that music would eventually go in terms of mental health topics. One of the first hip-hop songs to depict mental illness among young Black men was “Mind Playing Tricks on Me”. Scarface is, in many ways, the originator of mental health-related hip-hop; he never shied away from talking about his personal struggles in his music and it has served his influence well to this day. In the Geto Boys’ 1991 classic “Mind Playing Tricks On Me”, Scarface (who spent time in a psych ward as an adolescent), Willie D, and Bushwick Bill spoke on various issues, including suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and paranoia. Anybody who has ever experienced these disorders can appreciate the vivid detail that was put into describing these issues.
Tupac Shakur is another great example of not being afraid to share his own vulnerability and personal demons. In March 1995, his third official album entitled “Me Against The World” was released while he was incarcerated at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. In this project, he spoke about various struggles that he was afflicted by at the time, including his impending prison time for a crime that he did not commit, paranoia about certain people setting him up to be robbed and killed, depression and suicidal ideation, losing friends/loved ones, the poverty he experienced as a child, and unpacking his complicated yet loving relationship with his mother Afeni. The reason this album went double platinum and made him the first artist to ever have a number one album while incarcerated is because so many other people, especially young Black men, were able to identify with the things that he rapped about.
However, as a die-hard fan of Tupac and his work, I have to wonder where he might be now if he had taken a break from music and focused on his personal healing for a little while. In an interview on the set of the video for his iconic West Coast classic song “California Love”, he jokingly claimed that instead of seeing a psychotherapist he just went to the studio to get his thoughts and feelings out because it was cheaper than therapy. That’s a poignant point of view because music is therapeutic, but it’s not therapy.
The statement that Tupac made that day serves as a behind-the-scenes look into the mind of many young Black men who have been through considerable trauma. Many of us take our struggles and attempt to release them in the recording studio, and also on the basketball court, the football field, or on the canvas if we like to draw. Even on YouTube if we like to vlog. The one common thread, however, has historically been that most of us fear the idea of “telling a stranger all our business”. The irony in this is that we create these songs and tell all our business to the whole world anyway, especially now in the age of social media.
Afterwards, many times these artists go on press tours and expound on what their raps are about in their interviews. We live in a time where too many people will pay attention to someone self-destructing before they will pay attention to something positive and/or enlightening. This is a narrative that is overdue to be changed. This is not to say that things aren’t changing, but there is still much work to be done.
Current Day Hip Hop
Fast forward to 2022, hip-hop is slowly embracing the idea of therapy and counseling. Radio personalities in hip-hop like Devi Brown and Charlamagne Tha God have been doing their part to shift the ideology of the culture in terms of the way we deal with mental illness. They accomplish this by bringing up the topic in various conversations with the artists that they interview and by not being afraid to ask the tough questions. There are rappers who have been in the music business for thirty-plus years that have now started to speak up about being bullied in their middle school or high school years. In 2017, the rapper Logic confronted the topic of suicidal ideation head-on in his song
“1-800-273-8255”, which is named after the National Suicide Prevention Hotline. this piece, he starts out the song by expressing how much he doesn’t want to be alive, and how he just wants to die. By the end of the song, he essentially talks out his feelings in his own unique way and he has broken through, claiming that he “finally wants to be alive” and “doesn’t want to die today”. In my opinion, this is an essential example of a song that can provide an illustration of where someone may be mentally at one time, and where someone might have the potential to go/grow.
Kendrick Lamar released his fifth album this year, entitled “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers”, and it’s arguably the most soul-bearing project of his career. This is a project where he was beyond confessional, opening up about sensitive subjects such as infidelity, daddy issues, toxic relationships, deep regrets, and grief about things he witnessed as a child, not being able to please everybody, transgender family members, family trauma and molestation that is swept under the rug in Black families. Finally, Kendrick finds the courage to choose himself over others. In other words, Kendrick Lamar set a precedent of truth and vulnerability with this album that will be hard for anyone to match in the future.
This is a phenomenon that will become bigger than Kendrick Lamar or any other rapper. Albums like his most recent will continue to help raise awareness and lessen the stigma surrounding getting help for our mental health challenges. Research has shown that in 1998 (Russell, 2021) only 32% of popular music discussed mental health, and that number doubled twenty years later in 2018. Jay-Z, Eminem, and Lil Wayne were among the artists that were reviewed, which all brought similar mental health themes forward as results of the data. As mentioned earlier, hip-hop is a global phenomenon that influences the way people think, act, talk, dress, eat/drink, and even how they raise their children to some degree. Whether they want to accept the role or not, rappers are looked at as role models by many, including some young children who aren’t fortunate enough to have father figures in the home or in their close family.
For the sake of argument, let’s look at all the young Black men who actually do happen to have father figures in the home. Sometimes, honestly, simply having a man in the house may not be enough. That father figure may be emotionally unavailable. Perhaps we were raised under the ideology of “don’t cry” or “man up”; we were raised to believe that having emotions or being sensitive never helped anything. Then, as a result, we grow up with all of this baggage that we are unable to process and/or unpack, which leads us to not being able to provide emotionally for ourselves and our families. How can we break generational curses if we don’t admit to having them? We admonish young boys for having feelings and emotions, then as grown men they are judged harshly for not having the capacity to feel anything or manage those feelings and emotions. What can we expect when we continue to raise more and more generations of emotionally constipated men as time goes on?
Exploring the Solutions
Let’s discuss more solutions and start with the obvious. The influence of a rapper holds more weight than the influence of any politician or activist ever could, regardless of whether some of us feel that this truth is a good or a bad thing. Why not use this fact to help further our progress in terms of our mental health support? I believe that one of the ways that rappers can help push the idea of mental health forward is through what I refer to as “mental health tours”. This is a similar concept to rappers going on tours to promote their albums, but instead they would tour across the country holding expos/talks on their mental health struggles and the solutions that help to get them through. Rappers and hip-hop culture as a whole have always given many children (and many adults as well) their cues on how to live life. Hip-hop is so influential. If an individual chooses to come out and be vulnerable about their depression/anxiety/PTSD/abandonment issues, that will continue to help erase the stigma that still surrounds mental illness and getting help for those issues. I think of the Bible verse of Proverbs 27:17 that states that “as iron sharpens iron, man sharpens man”. I can speak from personal experience that, as a man, affirmation and safe spaces to be real with ourselves and with each other need to be provided by other men more often. Certain messages engage differently when we can hear them from those whom we can identify with most. I also believe that annual hip-hop summits should be held in every major city in America, funded by the local rappers and celebrities in that city.
The stigma that counseling has in our communities may not ever go away completely, but with a little effort the needle can be moved closer to the positive solution side more than ever before.
