Orville Taylor, Contributor

"Mi deh ya pon di gully side. If you want know whe' fi fin' mi, mi no gone no way."

Entertainer Mavado entered the Government's free hotel on March 26. On the day of the ceremonial opening of Parliament when embattled member for North East St Elizabeth, Kern Spencer, was declared as being free to take his seat, the DJ was playing a ring game: "Room for rent apply within, when I run out, you run in."

Mavado! What a name! One suspects that it is a misspelling of the name-brand watch that has no digits and therefore leaves the observer unable to read it accurately. He probably doesn't know what 'a glock a strike' is, but he had better keep his fingers crossed, because if the charges stick, he could be gone for such a long stretch, even a Movado would stop working. If his name comes from the Spanish 'malvado,' which means wicked, then he had better avoid the 'L' which comes after the judgement.

For the time being, he is presumed innocent until proven guilty by the courts, but at least he is alive.

It was almost exactly the same date 11 years ago that a much more famous rapper, the offspring of a Jamaican-born woman, launched his second album, Life After Death, posthumously! Christopher Wallace, better known as The Notorious B.I.G. and 'Biggie Smalls,' died under a hail of bullets in California on March 9, 1997. Ironically, his album featured him standing in a trench coat at the back of a hearse. He was an awesome talent, perhaps the greatest ever.

Chilling 'song'

Like Mavado, he constantly belted out lyrics reaffirming his street credits. In a chilling 'song', Niggas Bleed, he detailed a murder-robbery in which he cold-heartedly killed several drug dealers.

Biggie, like the stereotypical youth of the inner cities, glorified violence. In the title track from his debut album, Ready to Die, he recounts, "As I grab the glock, put it to your headpiece/One in the chamber, the safety is off release, straight at your dome homes."

Six months earlier, an equally enigmatic Tupac Shakur predeceased him in like fashion. He, too, was a 'gunoholic'. In A Crooked Nigga Too, he warns, "A loaded AK-47 laying on my hips, so don't trip." But perhaps the most striking line is in his Nothing to Lose, "The only way to change me is maybe blow my brains out."

This is what is most scary because it reflects a sense of hopelessness and the story is exactly the same for the black youth of Brooklyn, Cassava Piece and South Central Los Angeles. They are undereducated, undermentored, underemployed and underrespected.

Hip hop, like dance hall, is the culture of a people who, separated from mainstream society, turn into themselves to create their own standards of survival in a hostile world. It is a world where the reality of a short, violent life ending by lead or copper 'poisoning' is the real truth.

Opportunities are few outside of the ghettos; therefore, their language focuses on their world. Instant gratification reflects the short life expectancy. Thus, when money is gained, it is for conspicuous consumption, or as we say on both sides of the ocean, 'Bling!' Two main enemies of dance hall and hip hop alike are police and their sympathisers, 'informers' or 'snitches.' Mavado makes no bones about it although skeletons are often the results, "Shoot informa because dem see too much, dem fi avoid we."

At present, there is an American underground anti-snitch movement where lines of T-shirts and caps carry the tagline, 'Don't snitch'. It is spreading via graffiti and the black youth are gobbling it up like spicy curry goat. In the lyrics of almost all of the gangsta rappers - who include almost everybody except Will Smith - the snitch is worthy of death and there should be no cooperation with the cops. In a small, open society such as ours, such a stance will cause us to lose the war on crime.

Grandmaster debates

So, we turn to the grandmaster debates raging between my friends, dance-hall apologists Donna Hope and Kingsley 'Ragashanti' Stewart on the one hand, and the Christian journalist who says, "I ain' bowin," on the other hand. The former believe that these youths are merely echoing the reality that spawned them, while the 'Christoholic' attributes responsibility to the behaviour and lyrics of the entertainers. Neither and both are incorrect.

The fact is that these young men are both products and producers of the kind of social order that we have created in the post-emancipation period.

True, some of the entertainers are mere 'mouth organs' and despite their ghetto stories only sing about the shooting and killing as a 'sham'. However, far too many of them maintain strong street credits.

Let's not be fooled; many of the performers are no different from the other vulnerable impressionable inner-city 'thugs' they rolled with long before 'dem bust.' Mavado's declaration of being still on the gully side is precisely that. The talent and increased opportunity given to a youth at age 21 might be too late to prevent him from engaging in a life of crime, even by association.

Scores of entertainers are affected by the culture of violence that bred them. In recent years, the rogues gallery has included Jay-Z, Lil Kim, P. Diddy, C-Murder, 50 Cent, Luton Fire, Vybz Kartel, Aidonia, and the list goes on.

Nonetheless, to whom much is given, much must be expected. Someone needs to teach these youths that being a thug and and entertainer are incompatible; they have a responsibility. Hopefully, they can be reached, because we abandoned them long ago.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology, Psychology and Social Work at UWI, Mona.