Russell hit the nail on the head IMO. You can't blame the artist for the symptoms or problems of the community. And by extension nor can you blame the corporate entity that monetizes the artist's voice. I'm not going to lie, I do want to throw up when I see some of the shyt that's being sold to young people. Watch the Loyalty video and see the shameless electronic cigarette promotion for instance. But young people have always done dumb things, I can't knock others for making a buck off stupidity.
The weird thing is that Chuck D has to know all this shyt. He saw the vice president of the United States blaming violence on 2pac and Ice Cube in the late 80s/early 90s. You could argue rap was more violent in the 90s in fact. Yet now crime is down, drug use is down, gun violence is down over all...so why blame music for anything? The problem remains the prison industry as Russell said, and by extension our drug laws.