Let me be clear: I am in no way diminishing cancer and the effect it has on American families. I simply want to draw attention to the similarities of how cancer cells destroy their host and how hip-hop culture is destroying America. Since its inception, America has been the birthplace of many subcultures, industries, and genres of music. Americans have always believed in freedom of expression and free markets, so long as it is not antithetical to American values.

Hip-hop culture and its music has reached a level of moral rot that Americans have not seen in any subculture or genre of music in a long time. Some may claim that it’s just art no different than a painting. I would argue that even art begins with drawing a line. Those lines represents boundaries. When we examine hip-hop today, we can observe that it has no boundaries or lines of morality. Hip-hop culture and music over the years has become more aggressively violent, misogynistic toward women, and now anti-American. Hip-hop artists like KRS-ONE, who is considered a religious teacher and author of The Gospel of HipHop, declares, “Hip-Hop culture is a rebellious response to white American capitalism.” Africa Bambaataa, the godfather of hip-hop, teaches that the black man is “God” and the white man is “the devil." How are these statements art?

In America, we measure the benefit of subcultures by how they add value to the dominant American culture. Hip-hop at every turn attempts to diminish American culture with the promotion of rebellion, rants against police, racist overtones, and radical religious ideology. This type of behavior and rhetoric by hip-hop artists is why I consider hip-hop to be a cancer to America.

Cancer changes the way our cells function. Normal cells divide and grow to form new cells. When older cells die, new cells are formed to replace the dying cells. This process enables the body to continue to grow and function in a healthy capacity. Cancer is a breakdown of this orderly process. As cells become abnormal or damaged, instead of dying, they continue to survive. They will divide and continue to grow rapidly and form tumors. Those malignant tumors then aggressively spread into nearby tissues and organs and become invasive. Cancer cells ignore signals to stop dividing and even attempt to change how normal cells function — they convince normal cells to feed them oxygen to grow the tumor.

This is exactly how hip-hop is functioning in American culture. Hip-hop culture has invaded every walk of life posing as a genre of music when it is, at its core, a radical religious subculture that is designed to destroy the host. When we look at hip-hop "cells” that we call artists, they have called for the death of America and its institutions that make us great. In the ‘90s you had gangster rappers like N.W.A. (N*&&@$ With Attitudes) that had songs entitled “F—k the police,” that inspired the L.A. riots. In the 2000s you had rappers like Jay-Z rapping, “Jesus can’t save you. Life begins when the Church ends.”

In 2018, Snoop Dog recently created a video where he depicted President Trump being assassinated and the album cover had the president dead in a morgue with a toe tag labeled “Trump.” In the same year, he released a Christian gospel album. Just this month, rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was featured in a song called “F—k Trump,” was killed violently in LA by an associate gang member of the Rollin 60’s Neighborhood Crips. Nipsey’s influence even reached NBA player Russell Westbrook, who after scoring 20 points, 20 rebounds, and 20 assists against the Los Angeles Lakers, told the interviewer, “This was for Nipsey! 20-20-20 they know what this means!” The player was referring to a shout to the Rollin 60’s Neighborhood Crips gang that Nipsey Hussle was affiliated with. In plain sight, an NBA player was able to use his NBA platform to support gang activity. This proves how the cancer can spread from industry to industry or organ to organ.

The hip-hop cancer has invaded almost every aspect of American culture. It has metastasized in a generation and promotes everything from gang violence and selling drugs to killing police officers and calling for the end of the Christian church. My hope is that Americans will begin to wake up and seek aggressive treatment against this cancerous culture, or better than that, have it removed from their family and life in hopes of saving future American generations.