As many of y’all know popular Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane was sentenced to 12 months for parole violation. It comes on the eve of his highly anticipated album being released. His arrest and him testing positive for drugs has left many wondering, how and why someone who has so much going for him, and has apparently overcome a lot, would get caught up and be drug back into the prison system.
Over the past few months Gucci Mane has emerged as an important voice for a generation as he’s been prominently featured on everything ranging from the BET Awards and in videos and songs with the Black Eyed Peas,Usher, 50 Cent and Maria Carey, to name a few. It's been reported that he’s been able to command 64k a show and has been able to get that 4 nights a week.
While Gucci Mane has been dealing with all this, what's been surfacing or resurfacing, depending on how long you been following Gucci Mane, is a video of him punching out a sister. From what I gather, the tape popped up earlier this year and it shows an annoyed Gucci punching out his former rhyme partner, and according to reports, former lover Mac Breezy who is featured on his debut album “Go Head”. It's pretty disturbing and later shows Mac Breezy trying to shrug it off like it was no big thing...
For some, this will not come as a surprise because of Gucci’s persona and rough and rugged reputation, but for many others it's new and raises alot of question including, how was this issue resolved and if it wasn’t what’s the justification for all the mainstream promotion? For example, BET gave Gucci lots of love during their recent Hip Hop Award show. He was featured in 4 performances. It was just a few months ago that came under fire when they featured Lil Wayne and Drake doing what many considered an inappropriate raunchy adult themed song while trotting young girls who looked like they were no older than 12 or 13 across the stage. BET back pedaled and removed the performance in later showings.
But after all the anger that was expressed, they gave prominent performance spots to Gucci Mane. How have outlets who have promoted and are riding hard for him reconciled this? Does it need to be reconciled?
I ask this because when Gucci Mane performed on the BET Awards, he was featured in a Public Service Announcement talking about how it's wrong to do drugs… Perhaps he should’ve been doing one that says ‘It’s wrong to hit women’… maybe that might be the more appropriate response at a day and time where we had a gang rape of a 15-year-old girl while people stood around, watched, cheered took pictures and did not call authorities for 2 and half hours.
This comes at a time when just yesterday it was reported that a young Bay Area woman and her infant were killed by an ex boyfriend and he was just let out of jail for the murder of another child 15 years earlier...
This is not to say Gucci Mane doesn’t deserve second chances or people can’t redeem themselves, etc., but when you see so many artists doing the hard work of addressing and trying to eradicate these pressing issues that can’t get any love whatsoever or even a mention one many of these outlets, one has to wonder why the constant love and upliftment of folks who did wrong and continue to do wrong...
Something to ponder.
-Davey D-