Dame Dash shares how he thinks YouTube and other social media platforms can help curb rap beefs and violent music.
It’s no secret that hip-hop has been under attack from gun violence within recent years. Numerous artists can be added to the morbid list of those who have died because of a bullet. Fans have tried to understand what is happening in the hip-hop community that has claimed some of the most prolific rising artists, including Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, Young Dolph, King Von, Drakeo The Ruler, and, in the most recent shooting, Snootie Wild.
What’s also troubling about the trend is that it seems continuous and somehow never-ending.
At least one veteran is trying to provide some answers as to what is happening, and that veteran, Dame Dash, believes that social media has a crucial role in the current situation.
Dame Dash believes that the rise in deadly rap beef is at the hands of the chosen algorithms behind social media and streaming platforms. These algorithms, he explains, help accelerate the feuds and the back and forth between artistes as they help the negativity spread quickly and excited by onlookers.
His solution is simple, and that is, these particular algorithms need to be stopped. He made the comments while speaking during a recent interview with sports analyst Shannon Sharpe on his Club Shay Shay podcast. He further explained that if you are into these types of feuds, more than likely, information about beef will pop up on your phone.
That means that the algorithms are controlling us because it is a program and is good at knowing what will trigger people, he added. Not to mention based on these triggers, the algorithm is able to profit from dysfunction.
After identifying the problem, he also offered some solutions. For one thing, he believes streaming platforms need to get more socially responsible. According to the Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder, YouTube should stop paying when people put up beef.
“Instead of people paying attention to a negative algorithm, they should pay attention to a positive one. It’s just the program that we keep falling into … What needs to be profitable is our love and our unity, and that’s what has to be showcased. But no one shows that,” he continued.
He had some more advice as he said that family members are now killing their own instead of facing the real enemy. The Harlem native added that while many people are aware of it, we all keep repeating the same cycles. One of the ways to break this is by adopting the rule “I’m not hurting anybody with the same color skin as me, period.”
Dame Dash may have also spent a lot of time analyzing the current situation as New York has not been exempt from the effects of gun violence, which seemed to have escalated this year. One example of this was Brooklyn drill rapper Tdott Woo and Bronx native CHII WVTTZ who were killed mere days apart.
The violence in the state has been spiraling so much that it has caught the attention of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has also shared similar sentiments as Dame Dash. While he also condemned social media’s role in the murders, he took it a step further when he blamed the genre itself.
Despite his comments, he still agreed to meet with a delegation of rappers, including Maino, Fivio Foreign, and B-Lovee, to try and address the current state of the drill rap genre and what can be done to deescalate the ongoing violence.
Adams came out of that meeting confident that something could be done and announced that he would soon unveil a plan to try and mitigate some of the violence.
Do you think that social media has an integral role in violence in hip-hop?
