The inner city plight isn't the issue. It's that the general public by and large isn't interested in it when the inner city is producing more and more success stories outside of rap. 20 years ago, those stories you could only hear through rap and sports. Now, you sit next to inner city success stories in college. Now shyt, my hood's a fukked up place, but the people out here ain't rapping to get out. They're either doing something else or living a life of crime. The ones that live that tough shyt that try to rap, by and large suck and have nothing new to add to the social commentary that's there. Find me the rapper railing against gentrification. Find me the rapper worried about families uprooting because they can't afford to stay home. Find me the regular dude that lives a regular life trying to make it in rap. That's a different take on the inner city plight. Nobody takes that route because no one seemingly will care.
The fact of the matter is that inner cities in major metro areas ARE getting better. That's celebrated everywhere BUT rap. The still fukked up places simply don't have compelling figures giving you depth into their fukked up life. The few that are go ignored because we'd rather use rap as an escape from misery. Does the music reflect life in 2013? Not completely, but it's not necessarily intended to. Life ain't a 24 hour party, but fans prefer it that way.
As for this.
Killer Mike said the irony is that more Black people went to jail under the Clinton administration than any other time because of all the crooked drug laws that existed, so you have to look at both sides here.