Pistol Whipped
by Denene Millner, Link Magazine

Headlines are ablaze with accounts of rappers getting busted on weapons charges. Artists say they stay strapped because their wealth makes them walking targets. Is a loaded gun the best defense, or are armed MCs just asking for trouble?

There he was, on January 15, Wu-Tang Clan's most infamous member, being led across our TV screens handcuffed and ducking into a squad car--again.

For the fourth time in the past seven months, Ol' Dirty Bastard, whom the police call Russell Jones, found himself in trouble with the law--but this time not for jacking some sneakers at a mall or harassing his baby's mama. Police say the Brooklyn-born rap star opened fire on two undercover cops after they stopped him in his green Chevrolet Tahoe for driving with no headlights. The cops chased Dirty through the crowded streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, unloading eight shots into his car, finally catching up with him at his aunt's house. He was charged with criminal possession of a firearm and attempted murder. On February 3, the charges against the rapper were dropped. Still, his arrest made ODB the newest entry on a growing list of entertainers nabbed on weapons charges.

Less than three weeks before Dirty's run-in with the cops, Busta Rhymes spent a night in the clink after Manhattan police found a loaded .45-caliber handgun in the backseat of his Benz. Earlier in '98, Coolio was arrested on a weapons charge in Lawndale, Calif., ex-Geto Boy Bushwick Bill and Wu's Ghostface Killah were busted in New York City and No Limit rapper Mystikal was nabbed in Kenner, La. Several other artists--such as Snoop Dogg in 1993, Tupac in '94, Nas in '95 and Queen Latifah in '96--have all been caught with guns in their vehicles. And when they weren't stashing guns in their cars while they drove, it seems celebrities were trying to take their weapons onto planes. Over the past seven years, MartinLawrence, Eddie Van Halen, Christian Slater, Harry Connick Jr. and Keith "Guru" Elam of Gang Starr all tried to take guns through airport security. The high-profile weapons arrests have practically created a crime category of its own: Stars Busted While Packing.

But while any celebrity might make headlines after a weapons charge, more often than not, it's young black rappers who are splashed across the front page. For every Eddie Van Halen arrested with a gun, it seems there are nearly half a dozen Bustas or ODBs getting chauffeured in the back of squad cars for the same offense. "We're finding that many young rappers are still involving themselves with the hoodlum life," says New York Police Department Lieutenant Eric Adams, cofounder of the New York-based 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement. "Those who don't are considered sellouts."

Undoubtedly, some rappers do flash their firearms to solidify their status as hard rocks on the hip-hop landscape. It only takes a glance through the racks of a record store to see that for artists like Scarface, Ice-T and Mobb Deep, guns are a near obsession. They rhyme about weapons, pose with them on their album covers and some even name themselves after their favorites--as did Mack 10, Peter Gunz and Smif-N-Wessun (who, in response to complaints from the gun company Smith & Wesson, changed their name to Da Cocoa Brovaz two years ago).

"At some level, guns are fashion accessories," says Nelson George, critic and author of Hip Hop America (Viking, 1998). "They're cool things to have. A lot of rappers go to gun clubs, practice at the range. Guns have always been a part of America as sort of a style thing."

George recounts how a prominent entertainer, whom the author won't name, invited him to go gun shopping in Brooklyn six years ago. The artist had recently been robbed and wanted a gun for protection. But when they got to the store, George says, the entertainer got caught up in the "romance" of high-power weaponry.

"He wanted a Glock with a laser sight and all the toys," George says. "On one hand, he had been rolled on--it was a bad experience--and he wanted to feel more comfortable and safe. On the other hand, he didn't want a .22. He wanted a really big, scary, sexy gun. He wanted a gun that, when he pulled it out, he wouldn't have to shoot."

George's shopping companion may have wanted his Glock just for show, but many artists insist that guns aren't about image, they're about protection.

According to Method Man, many artists arm themselves to keep from getting ganked. "We're targets, man, and people don't understand," he says. "I mean, our lives are in danger. If I got a gun, it's for protection. You have motherf****** who love your music and would still rob your ass. Like, 'I'm sorry, dude. I love your music--but times is hard.'"

And when times is hard, who better to rob than someone who makes his living bragging on record about all the cars, jewels and clothes he owns? Especially if he tops it off with lyrics that seem to invite confrontation. "I dare you," barks Black Rob on his recent Bad Boy hit of the same name, "to come against me."

"You make these claims on records and people want to test you," says Brand Nubian MC Sadat X.

Bill Stephney, president and CEO of Stepsun Records, agrees. "This money [rappers are making] isn't being passed around in Greenwich, Conn.," he says. "These kids are going back to Lefrak, [Queens] and Bushwick, [Brooklyn] and East Orange, [N.J]. And they don't get some special treatment because they're there. They get targeted because they're like walking ATMs, essentially."

Sure enough, the list of rappers stuck for their paper and personal effects reads like the Billboard top 20: Foxy Brown, Ice Cube and Suge Knight have all had their homes broken into. Tupac Shakur was shot five times and stripped of $40,000 worth of jewelry in a robbery at a Manhattan recording studio in 1994. And just this past January, Guru got jacked for his cell phone and a $6,000 diamond Rolex outside of a Richmond Hill, Queens, recording studio.

"People see someone out on the street," says Sadat X. "Maybe driving a nice car or having jewelry, and a lot of times it's just a mentality, 'Let's roll on him.'" Sadat says because they see themselves as targets, close to 80 percent of the rappers he knows carry weapons.

That adds up to a lot of guns. Especially when you include not just rappers but also their bodyguards, drivers, hangers-on and friends. It's rumored that shortly before he was murdered in 1997, Biggie armed himself and about 40 of his boys when they traveled to a Los Angeles-area arena to do a show. Sources say Brooklyn's favorite son was trying to stave off a threat of violence from a local gang who had gotten upset when the rapper refused to pay off members for "protection" during his concert. Stories of real gangstas extorting performers, and even label executives, for funds are often whispered about among industry insiders. One record exec who used to walk the line between ill and legal says, "A lot of ex-dope dealers feel like it's safer to threaten artists and get money from them than it is to be getting their hands dirty with crack."

Of course, when it comes to being gun happy, rappers have plenty in common with the rest of America. As of July 1998, there were more than 235 million firearms in the U.S.--almost as many as there are people living in America.

The difference is that the majority of gun owners in the country don't have constant run-ins with the law. Rappers are part of a select group particularly vulnerable to getting stopped by cops: young black men.

Following numerous, highly publicized complaints from around the country, police departments in states such as Pennsylvania, Florida, California and Maryland are being investigated by various civil rights groups for "profiling"--that is, stopping vehicles and searching them based on the race of the driver. And in New Jersey, in 1994, a group of 19 black drivers filed a joint motion claiming they had been illegally targeted, stopped, searched and arrested by troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. New Jersey SuperiorCourt Judge Robert E. Francis ruled in favor of the defendants, and said that profiling was indeed "tolerated [and] encouraged" by state police. New Jersey is now appealing the decision.

"Black males are being targeted," says Columbia University professor Michael Eric Dyson, author of Race Rules (Vintage, 1997). "Not only are they arrested at a higher percentage than whites, but they are tagged in a justice system that follows them the rest of their lives."

Still, law-enforcement agents argue that it's the rappers themselves who are responsible for the high number of arrests by carrying on as though the laws don't apply to celebrities. In 1996, a security officer at New York's LaGuardia Airport found a loaded gun in Guru's carry-on bag. The serial number had been filed off. Guru reportedly looked at the officer and said, "I'm a rap star and a major producer. Can I have my gun back?" He was arrested.

Furthermore, say law enforcement officials, some rappers don't even bother to learn gun laws, which vary from state to state. For instance, in New York, where a majority of rapper-with-gun arrests occur, a license is needed to keep a gun in a home or place of business--and it cannot be transported, not even down the block, unless the owner can prove he needs it for target shooting, hunting or self-defense. In Georgia, on the other hand, weapon owners can have a gun in their homes, on the job, in their cars and even at the park--provided they have a license to carry it.

According to Lieutenant Adams, if rappers insist on carrying guns they need to remember that they're not just targets of potential assailants, but of the police as well. "No matter what state you're in, everybody knows that a black man plus a gun equals criminal," Adams says. "Even black cops allowed to carry guns in other states leave their guns at home because they understand this. [Rappers] are not dumb," Adams continues. "If you can create and remember rhymes in your head, then you can damn sure remember in which state you can carry a firearm."

But Naughty by Nature protege Mag, whose album Hustla'z Heaven (Relativity) was released March 2, says, "I'd rather go down [get arrested] than be killed. I feel like this: Even if you are not a rich rapper, people want to take what you got. That's the reason I think all rappers should carry guns. [If they don't already], eventually they are going to go through things that make them carry one. You want to live another day, protect yourself."

This article originally appeared in the April 1999 issue of Vibe.
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