HIP-HOP TRIES TO BREAK IMAGE OF VIOLENCE

NEW YORK - With the kind of in-your-face boast common to the hard-edge
beats of hip-hop, rapper Jay-Z rhymes out in a recent video: "No matter how
much money I got, I'm still gonna sell rock, on the block." Translated,
he's still going to deal drugs in the neighborhood.

But youth activist Pee Wee Kirkland is determined that young kids see the
truth in that artistic invention. "You got to tell them selling drugs is
against the law. Selling drugs, there's a consequence," he says. "And then
you got to explain to them that Jay-Z ain't in Brooklyn selling drugs. He's
in the [mostly white, exclusive] Hamptons." Mr. Kirkland, himself a former
gangster and drug dealer, is part of a nascent reform movement spearheaded
by some of the biggest names in rap. Called Hip-Hop 4 Peace, it's
determined to use the power of the industry to reduce the violence and
change the face of the controversial genre. It was launched this week in
New York by LL Cool J's former manager Charles Fisher and Grammy
award-winning artist Chuck D.

At the core of their campaign is a conviction that amounts to heresy in
some quarters of the rap world: that artistic images do influence behavior,
especially when it comes to young people, and that the industry has a
responsibility to counter the glorification of guns and street hustling
with a realistic message that empowers kids, rather than landing them in jail.

The campaign is part of a larger transformation under way in the hip-hop
world, which emerged from the ghetto in New York more than a quarter
century ago. While the media has focused primarily on the violent lyrics
and images, particularly in so-called "gangsta rap," many other artists
have been developing a social critique and nurturing hip-hop's potential
political power to deal with issues from education funding to gun control.

It's called "raptivism," and some analysts believe it has the potential of
the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s to transform America's
political landscape.

"The potential is there, but it's still in its infant stage," says Carl
Taylor of Michigan State University in East Lansing. "In one sense, they're
much more powerful. [The earlier civil rights leaders] didn't have the
avenue to parade the rage the rappers do."

The latent power of the movement became evident in June when almost 100,000
young people descended on New York's City Hall, joining teachers and labor
activists to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed $358 million cut in
education funding. They came because rap entrepreneur Russell Simmons put
out the call. But he also enticed them with a lineup of the industry's
hottest hip-hop stars, such as Jay-Z and Chuck D.

Mr. Simmons, who founded Def Jam records, argues that hip-hop has always
been the outlet for poor people's frustration, and if it parlays that
energy into a political grass-roots movement, it can transform the nation.
He founded the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network to fund community groups, arts
programs, and political candidates. It's working with the Urban League on a
literacy program and with the NAACP on a get-out-the-vote campaign.

But some of rap's elder statesmen, like Mr. Fisher, say the $5 billion
industry needs to transform from within to become a more powerful and
positive social force. Despite earlier efforts to stem the violence in some
rap, heated verbal disputes between rappers have continued, sometimes
resulting in killings - such as the still-unsolved deaths of Tupac Shakur
and the Notorious B.I.G. several years ago.

The National Hip-Hop Summit Youth Council, which grew out of Simmons' work,
has been developing a "peace project" to address such issues. The group had
planned on launching it in 2003. But last month's execution-style slaying
of rap icon Jason Mizell, known as Jam Master Jay, prompted the artists and
activists to dedicate their movement to him and roll out their agenda early.

"It took the death of a positive brother for all of us to wake up and say
we have to put our foot forward now to make change," says Fisher, founder
and chairman of the National Hip-Hop Summit Youth Council. The project has
several components: a code of principles designed to be used as a
self-policing mechanism for the industry; an artist's mediation board to
help resolve disputes between artists; a media complaint board; and a task
force on gun, prison, and drug-law reform.

Chuck D, the frontman for Public Enemy, says the goal is not to censor or
dictate artistic direction, but to ensure there's "balance." Too often, rap
artists focus on the "gangsta fairy tale" without mentioning the
repercussions, he says.

"I speak in jails, and everybody there says to me, 'Yo, what's going on
with these rappers? They ain't never going to jail, talking about some
fairy-tale gangsta life while we up here doing 10 to 15 years. Nobody's
telling our story,' " says Chuck D. "Kids needs to know the whole story."

But the proposed code is already generating controversy within the hip-hop
community. Simmons, who's worked with Fisher over years, has made it clear
he believes any kind of code amounts to censorship and is opposed to it.
Some academics also caution against condemning rap's fury-filled lyrics
without looking at the societal context from which they come. Murray Forman
of Boston's Northeastern University argues that those lyrics give voice to
violent, desperate experiences in the inner city that many in America don't
want to admit exist.

"It's far too easy for the media to paint hip-hop as a problem," he says.
"The other piece of it is that it's never been proven that representational
violence leads to actual violence. There is desensitization, perhaps, and
acceptance of a discourse of aggressiveness, but how that translates into
actual aggressiveness is much more problematic." Guy Ramsey of the
University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia also argues that rap is far more
multifaceted than the media gives it credit for. "You can have a hip-hop
artist like Mos Def who has a searing political critique, but it will never
be talked about in the same way as some guy who's talking about whopping
somebody," says Professor Ramsey.

Youth activist Kirkland doesn't disagree, but he argues that the growth of
gangsta rap has had a clear impact on kids in the community.

"The hip-hop world and the gangsta world are about to collide, and we have
to stop the body count," says Mr. Kirkland. "This is a life-and-death matter."