Yukmouth has pointed the finger at the OGs from his era for the current climate in the Hip Hop community, accusing them of failing subsequent generations.
In a new interview snippet posted to his Instagram page on Thursday (February 9), the Luniz rapper explained that he felt once his generation of artists got successful, they left young people in their neighborhoods to fend for themselves.
The root comes from us. Me and your generation. We fumbled the fucking ball,” he said in the video. “Because our OGs went to jail or got killed; the n-ggas who gave us the game, the n-ggas that had the code. We became successful in other areas. We didn’t go back to the neighborhood, we left the neighborhood, never came back, never schooled the youth.
“They was there to figure shit out by they self,” he continued. “And they didn’t have no parents because of course, you know, they locked up or shot up somewhere or whatever. So they ain’t have no parents. They ain’t have no OGs because we all moved out the hood and never came back, we never gave the game to ’em.
The clip came from a December 2022 interview with the Holdin Court Podcast, in which Yukmouth addressed the prevalence of violence in Hip Hop today, calling record labels out for profiting from beef.
“So now they studying Hip Hop, that’s their father,” he explained. “And also they young boys that’s on the street with ’em, that have no clue about this street shit, they’re raising ’em also. So now you got a generation that don’t got the game, that don’t have the code, that don’t have the morals, that don’t know how to move, figuring it out on their own. And this is what we got right now.”
Yukmouth’s sentiments echo an open letter written by fellow Bay Area veterans E-40 and Too $hort late last year. The pair of West Coast OGs used their platform to speak out hoping for a change by penning a powerful op-ed in The Atlantic in November.
After naming the likes of fallen rappers such as XXXTENTACION, Nipsey Hussle, PnB Rock, Pop Smoke, King Von, Young Dolph and most recently the loss of TakeOff, they chillingly wondered “who’s next?”
$hort and 40 called for an intervention in Hip Hop and they believe social media is a root cause of a surge in violence in the culture.
“The inner city is like the MMA Octagon—it’s the cage, the trap,” they wrote. “A lot of violent shit goes down, but it’s still home for many hip-hop artists. And there’s still a lot of hope, hunger, and love in the streets. We just need to find better ways to support each other. This is our generation’s responsibility as much as it is for the young MCs.
“One reason the violence has gotten worse is social media. Rappers are trying too hard to flex online to the detriment of their safety. These dudes are getting money at a faster rate than we ever did. We’ve been to the strip club when a rapper was sitting with walls of money—like, walls: Each stack was three feet tall.
“How can you throw that much money in one night? We have no idea. Some of these artists spend thousands on an outfit and millions on jewelry, then jump in their Bugatti or whatever and show off so much money that they can barely hold it in their hand for an Instagram photo.”
E-40 and Too $hort went on to write that the IG flexes are only a portion of the issue, and called on all aspects of the industry to join forces to find some solutions to the address the current violent climate.
