ARTICLE: America's Most Policed Art Form

POPMATTERS -- Hip-hop, as any number of industry executives, gaudy videos, and endlessly self-referential rhymes will tell testify, is big business. And yet, even with its fabled rise “from ashy to classy” – leapfrogging from ghettos to rural hamlets and back again, from New York to Los Angeles, Atlanta to Houston, and all points in between – hip-hop has retained its status as Public Enemy #1: the subject of endless crusades, tirades, crackdowns, and lockdowns. Just ask DJ Drama and DJ Cannon, two prominent Atlanta-based DJs and radio personalities who spent the evening of January 16 this year cooling in sheriff’s custody on racketeering charges. The early-morning SWAT raid on their Gangsta Grillz mixtape operation – the culmination of an investigation supported by the Recording Industry Association of America – did more than confirm the high stakes involved in hip-hop’s newest, most dynamic addition, the informal mixtape economy: it solidified hip-hop’s long-running status as America’s most policed art form.
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