Most do not feel that they are in a war, like the ones in the movies. Most feel compelled to imitate the media culture that is presented to them and absorbed by their adjacent peers. They do it with varying degrees of success, and many end up in just as much trouble or just as dead as the real gangstas. But it is a big misstatement to say that there is any politics or struggle for rights of freedom or even the end of everybody's poverty and violence in their songs. It's about making money, pure and simple. The idealists get swept away the same way they do in other forms of expression.

Chet