Portraying Black
As I looked at People’s Instinctive album cover and compared it to other rap trends at the time, I was focusing on the differences. One is very colorful, the others are dark. Some have very light and artistic fonts, their counterparts have block letters and simple font. But that's when I realized what they had in common. They are both symbolic of black life in urban areas, just being portrayed in different ways. Both of them are trying to communicate the harsh realities of African American life during this time in the US, they just choose to show it in a different light. Both album covers are an interpretation and an expression of their lived/witnessed experiences as a black person.
How rappers chose to showcase black culture had a large impact on how the rest of the US perceived it. So the artistic choices made to enhance the shock-value of songs, lead to white Americans developing a some-what inaccurate representation of the culture. And the black artists that choose to use rap to praise the gangster lifestyle that they tried to get out of, trapped their brothers and sisters in the harsh-fate of this lifestyle together. Although the majority put blacks in that position of poverty, death and strife... early party-rap artists carved this lifestyle in song and wrongly defined it as black.