Lecrae's Heroic Analysis

On April 10, I watched the TED Talk of the Christian and social justice rapper, Lecrae. He claimed that good and bad isn’t always black and white. Specifically, he claimed that heroes and villains are subjective terms. As he said, “heroes are sometimes more villainous than we think and sometimes our villains are more heroic than we give them credit for.” Lecrae relates this to hip-hop music when he introduces its timeline. He stated that beginning in the ‘70s and ‘80s, hip-hop was a narration of a struggle, but the ‘90s began a new type of story within the music that seemed to glorify the stigmas created by the media. He elaborates on his theory using the timeline that shows drug trafficking into American neighborhoods increasing as unemployment

Although some people believe that these rappers didn’t have to sell drugs and create these stigmas, or even glorify them in the music, Lecrae insisted that with unemployment shooting through the roof, the only feasible choice was to sell drugs and produce records that

In my view, everyone does what they need to do to take care of their families. Not only were individuals faced with unemployment, they also began to be stigmatized in the media for finding ‘villainous’ ways to cope with it. In addition, drugs were basically handed to them as a way out of unemployment, and artists sold the music that would sell even if it embraced the stigmas placed on them. Some might object to drugs being sold, of course, on the grounds that there are plenty of legit and legal ways to obtain currency. Yet I would argue that a recession coupled with a lack of education posed a challenge for many of these people, causing them to resort to an off-the-books method that allowed them to care for their families. With hip hop being almost a documentary, artists would rap about their struggles, which essentially fed into the stigmas placed on them. As those records sold at greater rates, that stigma was embraced to continue to provide care for families. Overall, I believe that the ‘villainous’ acts are justified because they committed were for heroic reasons--an important point given that survival requires