10 Trends We Wish Hip-Hop Hadn't Popularized

Let's be real: the United States legal system is not the fairest in the world (probably). There are a lot of people behind bars for petty shit; black people are incarcerated at a much higher rate. There is injustice woven into the very fabric of the country's court systems (think about the disparity in punishments for cocaine arrests vs. crack arrests). That said: most of the time, your favorite rapper got put behind bars doing some stupid shit. He is not a political prisoner. He is not Assata Shakur. And he definitely shouldn't have brought a gun to the airport.

Back when Mike Tyson first got his face tattooed, we didn't think it would actually catch on. Boy were we wrong. The trend has taken rap by storm the last few years with guys like Lil Wayne, Birdman, Yung LA, Game, and Gucci Mane getting all sorts of stuff drawn on their face. Permanently. In most cases, we preferred the way they looked before. Hey young world, treat face tats like drugs and just say no. Like a real responsible adult, get a tramp stamp instead!

Okay fine, making it rain might look cool. But no matter what some fancy economists might say, the recession is as real as this cut I got on my finger from opening this can of sardines. So do you really need to throw up enough money to pay my rent until next summer? Granted, like most of these trends, rap didn't invent this. But dammit if Lil Wayne didn't make people think it's a good idea to throw money up in the air instead of saving it for something more responsible.

No disrespect to Three 6 Mafia and their awesome song "Ridin' Spinners," but spinners are stupid. They have no practical value whatsoever and they make cars looks ridiculous. And they got buried in a shallow grave when Chris Rock did a bit about them in his Never Scared special.

There's a whole lot of violence and pain that could be averted if this country would legalize many of the drugs it has arbitrarily decided should be prohibited. Much as the legalization of alcohol reduced the gangland homicides that riddled the 1920s, there's no doubt that an easing of drug war hostilities could, at the very least, bring to an end the killings that still blanket certain urban centers. All this is to say, you can't blame the music for the illegal drug markets, which exist due to systemic causes. But while we're pretty libertarian about what you do with your EDM festival free time, it's hard to say the 24/7 lean and molly advertisements that make up hip-hop content these days are something to be particularly excited about.

To me, your giant jersey looks like a nightgown. (And your giant baseball cap makes me wonder whether you're trying out for Charlie Brown's All-Stars.)

We like to drink as much as the next rap listener, because we know that the feeling of invincibility and power that comes with rap music also comes with a bottle of...well, any liquor. So why is hip-hop inundated with the shitty ones? Every rapper is an entrepreneur, but do they all have to sponsor booze? Why does every rapper need his own brand of liquor? Why would Cam'ron name an alcoholic beverage "Sizzurp"? The world may never know.

Hip-hop is one of the only forms of music that approaches male-female relationships in a way that doesn't beat around the bush. It's crass and real, and that's why we love it. On the other hand, it's crass and real, and that opens up a very real window into what a bunch of teenage dudes think of women. Sometimes, this is okay. This is "Id" music; you really go through it. Sometimes, it's not really cool at all, as dudes try to live out their unrealistic fantasies in a real world.

How ridiculously influential is hip-hop that the second after I saw footage of folks dancing on a moving car during the hyphy era, I was ready to try it myself? Hip-hop can make anything stupid look awesome and must-try, from shutter shades to wearing expensive things that will get stolen from you. But for some reason, getting out of a moving car to run next to it hits a new level of ridiculous. Maybe it's that the consequences seem so self-evident. Hip-hop goes Jackass.

This is the worst hip-hop slogan ever coined. It's broadest usage, meaning "be honest," is harmless but banal. It's more pointed usage, meaning "keep it representative of lower-socioeconic class black people" is a very unhealthy way to think about the world. Every experience, every way of life, is just as "real" as any other. Insisting on some specific kind of reality as being truer or more pure than others is a recipe for stasis and intolerance. As the great jazz pianist Less McCann said, "Tryin' make it real—compared to what?!"