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Hip-hop stars behind bars

The words rolled off the BET announcer's lips like a tease to a commercial break. "And here's another video from a rapper in jail." That's how things are in hip-hop these days. Seems like every week the entertainment reports on Atlanta hip-hop station Hot 107.9 and urban contemporary titan V-103 include an item about a rapper's run-in with the law. "You know, they need to just go on and build a hip-hop penitentiary," Griff of Hot 107.9's morning show "The A-Team" joked on the air recently. It's hard to figure out what's saddest about the situation: That the number of rappers in trouble with the law appears to be spiraling upward? That it happens so frequently it qualifies as entertainment rather than news? Or that jail time has become an unofficial marketing plus in hip-hop? Consider what's happening now. Rapper Lil' Kim (shown with 50 Cent in the photo illustration above) released a new album called "The Naked Truth," eight days after she reported to prison to serve a year and a day on a perjury conviction. Then consider the rappers who've spent or are spending time behind bars, a list that includes 50 Cent, T.I., Beanie Sigel, Cassidy, C-Murder and Gucci Mane. "I think this is, in part, a reflection of where hip-hop comes from, and what it is," says Nelson George, author of "Hip Hop America." "But don't forget, country music and rock 'n' roll were once rebel music," notes George. "Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings and, come on, George Jones, they were real rabble-rousers. And in the '70s, rock 'n' roll guys were getting locked up for drug possession all of the time. "But I think as those other kinds of music have moved away from music made by working-class people - now it's mostly professional musicians - hip-hop has become the rebel music," continues George, a former Billboard magazine editor. "It's people coming out of hard-scrabble environments, making music about those environments. Hip-hop is still a way out of the ghetto for a lot of these kids. And even when they make it out, they still can't escape its criminal element." That may also explain the increasing severity of the alleged crimes: Where country, rock and blues stars typically got locked up for drinking, drugging or disorderly behavior, hip-hop stars often face charges involving violence. Shakur changed the game

If you had to point to a specific time when that began to change, it would be 1995, when rapper Tupac Shakur's "Me Against the World" debuted at the top of the pop charts while he sat in prison for sexual abuse. More recently, Atlanta rapper T.I. took advantage of his most recent stay behind bars for a probation violation on a felony drug conviction. Not only did he film a promotional video in the Fulton County Jail, he earned "street credibility" from the visit that was part of the reason he named his latest CD, "Urban Legend." "It's like (T.I.'s) absence made the hip-hop community's heart grow fonder," says V-103's music director Tosha Love. "People fell even more in love with him and his music while he was away." "Don't get it twisted," counters T.I., now promoting an album called "25 to Life" by his hip-hop group P$C. "Nobody goes to prison to better their career. Nobody wants to go away." Maybe not, but they'll use it to their advantage if they can. "There was a time when artists downplayed any jail or prison time because it would detract from their images," says Michael Eric Dyson, a University of Pennsylvania professor and author of books on Shakur and Marvin Gaye. "Also, in earlier periods, the influence of religious values might bring a greater degree of moral shame to even an artist who wasn't necessarily all that religious. . . ." There was an added pressure on young black performers, who were being held up as role models for a race trying to establish its identity in a country that had long treated it as inhuman. "Black Americans had been barred from the music business for so long, that when Motown got in, (its artists) took on a role as representatives," George says. "You had to make white people feel comfortable. That is no longer the case." Not happy in the long run

But more often than not, the audience's interest, and the embattled artist's record sales, dry up quickly. Imprisoned rapper Shyne released his most recent CD, "Godfather Buried Alive," in August of last year. It debuted at No. 3 on Billboard's album charts, and he went so far as to record a remix of a single from his cell. Still, according to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold 443,000 copies to date. Just-released rapper Beanie Sigel put out his latest CD, "The B.Coming," in March. Damon Dash, his label's co-president, promoted it by recording a BET special that included the party he had before he turned himself in after pleading guilty to a federal weapons charge. The album entered at No. 3 on the charts, the highest debut of his three-CD career. And yet it has sold 379,000 copies to date. And then there's Cassidy, who's incarcerated and facing first-degree murder charges. His CD "I'm a Hustla" hit stores in June. It debuted in the No. 5 position on Billboard's album charts and has sold 222,000 copies to date. Those aren't bad numbers, but they're nowhere near the millions that artists like Kanye West, OutKast and Ludacris have sold. "Part of the reason some of those records fell off is after a while that hype rubs off," said Trina, a rapper who's managed not to have a recent mugshot in her press kit. "Then you're just another person in jail. The label doesn't care about you anymore because you can't market and promote your record." What's sadder, said the late Shakur's mother, Afeni, is that what's happening with hip-hop stars is just a reflection of what's happening in black culture at large. "My son used to talk about young black men going to prison all the time in his music," said Afeni Shakur, who along with 12 other Black Panthers once faced multiple felony counts. (All 13 were acquitted of the charges.) "The only difference is now more young black men are in the spotlight." And this new glare, contends former NAACP President Benjamin Chavis, has made the law enforcement system focus on young black rap stars. "They're being profiled," says Chavis, now the president and CEO of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network. "Over and over, our artists are targets only to be later found not guilty. Like (Sean) 'Puffy' (Combs)." But a number have been found guilty. And a number have admitted to breaking the law, including Lil' Kim. "I've known great art to have come out of horrible, tragic times. In his short life, Tupac went through an awful lot, and I think that's one of the reasons people call him one of the greatest of all times," says Elliott Wilson, editor in chief of the hip-hop publication XXL, whose magazine, along with the Source, have published entire issues on hip-hop acts and crime this year. "I haven't heard all of it, but what I have heard of Kim's album is good. Maybe because she knew what she was facing, she put her all into it. She was motivated. Struggles and controversy can make strong records." And in the short run, perhaps, strong revenue. Guess who's on one of two covers of XXL magazine for November? Beanie Sigel. Back on the streets after a one-year sentence for illegal gun possession - and, in an unrelated case, last month found not guilty of attempted murder.