NY- Errol Lewis writes in the NY Daily News: The death of Israel Ramirez, the 29-year-old bodyguard who was gunned down outside a Brooklyn film studio Sunday, spotlights the criminal irresponsibility of so many of the people who make money creating and marketing hip-hop music.
Some of the biggest names in hip hop were among the millionaires present at the Busta Rhymes video shoot that led to Ramirez's murder. Now they all need to step up, take responsibility and pay the price - not just funeral expenses, but a fund that will take care of Ramirez's kids.
But refusing to act responsibly or lawfully - or even intelligently - is a point of pride among performers who have discovered the financial benefits of turning their own careers into a bloodstained minstrel show.
I encountered the attitude during a recent Hot 97 radio talk about the state of hip hop with some rappers. My suggestion that performers exercise more responsibility drew a familiar, almost boastful response: I'm not here to raise your children.
That's a riff borrowed from Charles Barkley, the often foulmouthed former basketball superstar. "Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids," Barkley once quipped.
Many hip-hop performers mouth the Barkley line, refusing to show any concern that children or other fans may be influenced by their violent lyrical boasts, sickening misogyny or arrests for real-world crimes. Their Hollywood narcissism is the opposite of the famous African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child."
Rappers don't have to be role models, but they can't duck responsibility, either.
In this case, their carelessness set the stage for the murder of a man who was working to raise his own kids.
Exactly what happened at Kiss the Cactus studio during the video shoot remains unclear. Some witnesses reportedly said Tony Yayo, an ex-drug dealer and member of 50 Cent's G-Unit group, stomped out of the studio after arguing with producers over the fact he wouldn't appear in the video.
Witnesses also say that a man wearing a G-Unit jacket, who boasted of being an ex-con, got into an angry exchange when video crew members tried to clear nonessential people from the building. Shots rang out about half past midnight, according to cops. Ramirez ended up on the pavement with a bullet in his chest, dying as people fled past him.
In retrospect, it seems clear that making a video with hundreds of people in the middle of the night wasn't the brightest idea. Somebody also should have created and enforced a guestlist for the building - or, better yet, simply banned goon squads from the premises.
And the question remains: How many more shootings, killings and jail sentences will it take before corporate sponsors and the listening public stop showering money and airplay on marginally talented crooks?
The millionaire performers from the deadly weekend fiasco ought to break the Barkley rule for once, and set up a trust fund for Ramirez's three children, ages 1, 5 and 10. It's the least they could do.
