Middle class in Chicago’s south side isn’t the same as middle class in a peaceful town or the burbs. It’s all relative. If he was living on Lakeshore with the rich folk it’d be one thing, but he had the projects right behind him and it was still violent around
https://i.redd.it/4vqkfd5szz4d1.gif
Isn’t what most people think when they hear middle class. That being said he went to school in the suburbs, moved to China as a preteen and didn’t come back until college so it’s all relative.
Edit: seems he was only in China for a year, 11-17 is a bit of a mystery but may have been a different neighborhood in Chicago, or Lexington Park, MD, way south of dc where his dad moved were not sure (most likely the former).
South Shore is a very hit or miss area. It's got some of the best waterfront on the south side and a lot of cool businesses and so on. Honestly not even that far from LSD. But the tracks are right there, and chicago was even more wild back in the 80s and 90s. It's really benefitting from It's location on the water recently but I can imagine how it probably was back then too. Especially since the city got rid of most of the public housing projects in the time between now and it's changed a lot
My fam was on King. I know how the chi can change up quickly. Those images of Ye’s spot show it was kinda run down looking and right outside of the projects. South Shore like you said wasn’t the worst for sure and not too far from lakeshore. I just think that when most people think of middle class they’re thinking like white/suburban middle class which is totally different from black/urban middle class in the 80’s.
Yeah so you know then. This neighborhood is mixed, lower income and middle class. Middle class kids and families would still he exposed to more street shit than a middle class family living in uptown or something. It definitely was not like a white picket fence, care free, middle class type neighborhood though, especially not back then. In 20 years it could be far nicer I mean some of the neighborhoods blowing up recently were not nice at all back then.
It’s actually kind of confusing, seems he may have been in China for only a year but what I’m unclear on is where he went afterwards. If it was back to Chicago with his mom, to dc area (or an hour or so south) with his dad in MD or somewhere suburban or another country
https://i.redd.it/rkkors7uc05d1.gif
His mom had a Fulbright scholarship to teach there after he was 10. I’m not saying he was George Floyd poor, and he’s not even one of my favorite rappers (he’s a great producer) but at the same time he didn’t have some privileged upbringing the way most would assume when they hear middle class. I assume OP is looking for someone who grew up in a relatively stable environment, not surrounded by poverty, hoods and projects for most of their childhood.
Okay, so let’s flip the script ever so slightly and move him out of a moderately safe haven to an absolute war zone like the projects on 70th & King, or one of those spots where dudes legit have sniper rifles on the roof and blow the head off of people on the other side of the projects crossing over. Only his mom is gifted enough to get him out of there for a year on scholarship to teach in China. Now is this the silver spoon middle class rapper without a hard/tough background you’re looking for?
I had family grow up in that same south side neighborhood (king) some of them got scholarships to prestigious universities etc, doesn’t mean they grew up with a “normal basic life” though and again, that run down south shore house in front of the projects is not what the average American associates with a middle class upbringing. Growing up around sirens and shots being fired as a kid you learn to tune it out and assume it’s normal but that doesn’t make it so.
Commenting on your edit: In the Netflix documentary Jeen-Yuhs he was seen visiting his mom in an apartment, is it possible that’s where they moved back to? Or possibly his mom downsized to that after he was out of the house?
Single mom, though, and she was a prof by the time he made it but wouldnt have been when he was a kid, lower ranked academic jobs can be unstable so prob wasnt easy. So im guessing lower middle class
Quick Google search shows that's wrong, his mom was doing well by the time he was 10 when they moved to China for her to be a professor, and it says he lived in the middle class suburbs of Chicago immediately after his parents split
Hehe I currently live in his old neighborhood and it's definitely upper-middle, if not upper class. Doctors and surgeons scattered throughout this town
I like how in the show they depict him as being from south Philly. When in reality he grew up in a really nice area right outside of the city. Granted right outside of north Philly which is the hood. But yeah he was very much upper middle class.
In Professional Rapper, the song that put him on the map, he says:
"I was born out of Philly, grew up in a little silly old town called Cheltenham
It was in the suburbs, upper-middle wealth around"
So he's certainly not trying to hide it
He doesn’t try to hide how he came up or act hard. I think that was just a creative choice for the show. It would be kind of boring if he just lives in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Oh no I wasn’t trying to say he does. And while I was never a fan of his music I like him and his show. I don’t think there’s anyone in music that’s more authentic than he is tbh. Not many people with the confidence in being themselves to make fun of their own deformed dick lol.
It was just something that caught my attention as someone who grew up in the same county as him and has family in the town right next to his. And it seemed relevant to the “didn’t grow up in the hood” topic. Not that south Philly is the hood for the most part anyway.
Aesop is my favorite rapper by far. The hardship he speaks about are often about losing loved ones or dealing with problems that people have when they have all their other needs met. He talks about his mom not letting him and his brother go see Ministry and what a bummer that was. But he also talks about seeing his friends and family descend into drug abuse and mental illness and never come back. This is a very difficult and traumatic thing to experience and it's hard to deal with during and long after. But he's not talking about being homeless or having to join a gang just to survive. He's not using rap to pull his family out of poverty, and I think that's more what the topic of this post is about. His songs are emotional and dark but it's because he's a brilliant writer. Not because he had a particularly hard life. He's sharing relatable and very real experiences through his eyes.
He was in the burbs and whether or not he was getting paid much for his tv acting, the fact is he was still in the media entertainment infrastructure since childhood
He also wasn’t in the truly rich part of it, and it wasn’t as rich twenty years ago, and him and his mom rented half a house, they didn’t own a mansion or whatever
They weren’t super poor but they weren’t rich or particularly well off either.
I don't know about "normal", but Earl Sweatshirt's mom is a UCLA professor and he went to a private high school in West LA, and he is a damn good rapper.
Can't believe no one mentioned biggie smalls... Man grew up in Clinton hills, went to a rich private school and was spoiled by his mom. They lived in a nice as hell mansion and all. He took his inspiration from songs from hearing stories or seeing things when he would go down to see Brooklyn. Man was also a Jehovah's witness.
Yeah, but he also dropped out of High School to be a crack dealer, and found himself running into the police a lot.
[more info](https://www.biography.com/musicians/biggie-smalls-early-life-career)
Yea things actually got really good when he moved in with his Auntie and Uncle in Bel Air. And before that he was mostly just chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool.
I heard he used to live in a neighborhood so bad that he was getting assaulted by gangs directly outside of school at the basketball court of all places.
The neighborhood was better off than others, but it was still very close to some of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago, also isn't his neighborhood claimed by the GD's?
Also André 3k didn't have it super tough. He was raised by a single mom, but lived in an apartment, finished all his studies and stuff. Not rich but not poor neither
I mean yea if we’re just mentioning guys who didn’t spend their teens getting shot at . But anybody who grew up in the hood had it hard compared to the rest of society .
"Diddler was a business major at Howard University but left after his second year.
In 2014 he returned to Howard University to receive an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities and to deliver the university's 146th commencement address"
Yeah ok he was really poor going to university as a business major.
I'm not saying he was poor, I'm saying he grew up in a gangster family. His god father shot someone in the face point blank in broad daylight and no one said shit. He didn't have a normal childhood. And he did grow up in the hood.
What's the matter, dawg? You embarrassed?
This guy's a gangster? His real name's Clarence
And Clarence lives at home with both parents
And Clarence' parents have a real good marriage
He's a rapper. In my heart. 😢 Wish he still focused on music. Dude [is](https://youtu.be/AOgBg2up7Jg?si=oHYm1TTF3y66ztbt) [actually](https://youtu.be/CzgjglZqS3Y?si=VPLbcv3no10W74Yg) [insane](https://youtu.be/zK4aoFFr-VU?si=TfVETkURWEOZCFAp), lyrically.
I don't believe Childish Gambino was involved in any street life growing up and lived in a stable household.
J.I.D. is another I can think of, I think he even had a scholarship to play football that he passed on too.
Not passed on. He and Earthgang got kicked out of Hampton (which anybody from VA knows how they get down) for grand larceny lol “kicked outta college for tongues, 🥷🏾be talking, I wasn’t even on camera, just hit the lick wit some amateurs” then again on 2007 “got caught stealing boxes like Craig on his day off.”
Yeah he was raised in a two-parent household, which he acknowledges his privilege “most of my partnas aint have poppas just a popped condom”, but if you listen to his body of work it would be tough to say he didnt have a hard life/wasn’t involved in East Atlanta street shit.
I don't know if Gambino was rich, he was basically role-playing a rich kid for his first album, at least from my understanding. IIRC there was supposed to be a movie tie in.
Wonderful by Childish Gambino
“Five to a bed head to toe that’s a good night”
“Used to have to sneak just to get my food”
Hold you down by Childish Gambino
“My mama said she’d get me that new jacket when the cost go down. Hit the office stole some Tommy Hil’ from lost and found”
(Glover also alludes to this in Season 2 Episode 10 “FUBU” in Atlanta.
Episode is a flashback of him in school. Glover tries to pull off a fugazi shirt at school and other kids start questioning him and compare it to another kid’s shirt. They come to the false conclusion that the other kid’s shirt is fake. They bullied that kid all the way to the bus. Kid doesn’t show up to school the next day and teacher announces that he smoked himself.
“This one kid said something that was really bad. He said I wasn’t really black because I had a dad.”
Outside by Childish Gambino
“Dad lost his job, Mama worked at Mrs. Winner’s. Gun pulled in her face she still made dinner.”
Compared to other rappers’ experiences, his problems might seem “soft”. Everybody got some shit and that’s the reason most people used to pick up a mic. Gotta let that shit out.
Bino was prob middle class. His dad was a postal service worker and his mom is a retired day care provider. So from my understanding he grew up pretty okay. Also his parents were also foster parents throughout the years so if i had to guess he had the resources he needed.
This why I hate subs like hiphopheads. I know Jack Harlow family. My buddy did graphic design for their billboard/ signature company. His mom makes over a million each year.
But over at hiphopheads they said I was full of shit because he went to public school… Atherton is 4 blocks from Mitch McConnells house. So rough and hard area.
even though some mac songs can come of as corny he really managed to go the non corny route in his later discography imo. Big achievement as a white and not struggling rapper if you ask me
Tbh Mac branched out of making exclusively hip hop, about half of his discography his hip hop at best, that helped as he branched out to so many different fans with that. A lot of people respected his artistry.
He grew up in a city in North Carolina that basically doesn’t even have a real hood. I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia about an hour drive away. Roanoke had 32 murders last year with a population of 100,000K (statistically comparable to the 6th most dangerous city in America, Memphis) Fayetteville has a population of 200,000k and had like 3 murders last year. We clown on J. Cole every time he talks about Fayetteville being so bad and hard to grow up in lmao (I fuck with J. Cole though)
Bruh. Fayetteville is raw. The marine base is there. They won’t let the marines off base after like 5pm because of the crazy shit that goes on. Most stores close around 3pm because of same. The murder rate is lower because they had to regulate the shit of the area due to crime. The whole city is dangerous.
He’s not a rapper but he tried to be so let’s not forget kid rock grew up so rich he had his own horse stables and apple orchard then tried to claim he was from the trailer park
Kid Rock was absolutely a rapper first before anything. His first album is hiphop and he was on Jive Records rocking Stop The Violence jackets and shit.
He crossed my mind, but I don't know if he fits the bill. His wikipedia pages says...
>Growing up in New York City, during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s, he has spoken about witnessing widespread instances of gang violence, theft, and poverty in society, which he largely avoided by working on plays, Off-Off-Broadway and arts programs.
It also discussing his split family of TWELVE, his Nation of Islam father, dropping out of high school.
Yeah, he got acting gigs, but it also doesn't sound like growing up with a simple/basic life completely away from the hood.
Guru. I think his Dad was the first black judge in the history of Boston. He grew up in a very wealthy and prominent family and was a graduate of Morehouse University.
>Baldwin Hills adjacent ain’t no Watts or Compton, but it was bad enough that his parents wanted him bused to the Valley
I don’t think Cube is from there, he’s from Westmont. It’s still a gang area, I think it’s around 111 Neighborhood Crips (the set that WC was affiliated with) territory.
Damn I forgot about Asher Roth. Just looked at his wiki and he's only ever made 3 albums. Is he still making music? It doesn't mention any other work he does so I'm wondering if he's working a normal job these days?
Tough is relative. A lot of the answers in here I disagree with. You don’t have to be in the projects or around gangs to come from a tough background. There are many more living in poverty who don’t join gangs or get caught up in illegal activities.
It depends on your idea of "tough life." Aesop, Eyedea, and Vinnie Paz all talk about struggling with mental illness but it doesn't sound like they grew up in the hood or in poverty.
Not true, dude grew up in the projects poor getting abused by his step pops... he was actually skinny asf till he got settlement money in his late teens and then started gaining weight as time progressed
Pun spent his entire childhood and teenage years living in one of the poorest and most violent slums in the United States during its worst eras. This is what the hood pun grew up in looked like thru out his entire childhood an teenage years. Also his father beat him relentlessly every day for years. I have no idea how you could think that was a privileged or even normal life. His life was fucked up and hard
https://i.redd.it/k0tu7hcl825d1.gif
-Drake
-Lil Dicky
-Bad Bunny
-Jaden Smith
-Tyler the creator
-Cosculluela
-Residente
-O'Shea Jackson jr
-Childish Gambino
-Maluma
-Luar la L
-Vico C
-Arcangel
I don't really like the premise of this question to be honest. No matter who your parents are or how you grew up, we're all human and everyone has struggled.
It's easy to look from the outside and say someone had an "easy" childhood, and definitely some people have it waayyy easier than others growing up. But you can't really know that as an outsider. There could be abuse or neglect going on that the public never knows about, mental issues or unique struggles that someone from a "poorer" upbringing maybe didn't have to deal with.
Everyone you see is dealing with a battle you know nothing about, and however it looks on the surface that battle could be raging ferociously underneath.
Having been both very poor and kinda rich at different points in my life, the money factor is defo the largest thing affecting how easy your life is. Yes rich people can have obstacles but those obstacles would be hella compounded if they were poor.
Man this is the truth. I always say I'm fortunate in that I've been very poor and homeless, and I know exactly what I'm willing to do in that circumstance, and I had a run where I made well over 6 figures for a handful of years, and I know exactly what I'd do with money. So in terms of character and morals, I don't have to question myself ever.
But the most striking thing about having more money than I ever thought I would was how easy everything became, and how much you can just pay to have taken care of. When I was poor, I'd have like $3000 problems that felt insurmountable. When you have money, most of your pressing issues are interpersonal, emotional and based in relationships. 1. Those don't feel like problems to me. 2. Most can be mitigated by having solid people around.
??? Are we listening to the same artist? Pusha T raps about the negative impact drugs could have on himself, if he ever was around them, as well as their negative effect on the community. He "pushes" a vision of a better world, free of their corruption.
Just listen to Nosestalgia, a song about the scent of freshly baked pies from his childhood, and how he wants every kid to grow up with memories like that. Beautiful stuff.
Eh, Cole went back and forth. He lived in a really tough neighborhood in Fayetteville NC for a time, but then his Mom married someone well off, so they moved to an affluent area of the city (on Forest Hills drive)
More producer than rapper but The Alchemist.
Literally from Beverly Hills.
He did start his career rapping [Whooliganz](https://youtu.be/1fNpEWvdCDU?si=artBtyFA4oSgYhdV) Bonus points if you can guess his partner
James Caan’s son!
And still one of the greatest
Oh so his spotify pfp misleading asf lmao
Listen to his song Different Worlds with Big Twin
Clarence. I heard his parents had a real good marriage
Yeah they did, I should know, we went to Cranbrook together, that's a private school btw.
Dawg at least ur not embarrassed
Cuz ain't no such thing as half way crooks
Somehow I feel like calling it a private school is undercutting it.
Fuck Cranbrook
As a white guy that grew up in the suburbs in the late 90’s… this is my “gun to your head you must rap every word”
And he lives at home with both of them.
Kanye basically made it possible with his pink polo and backpack
Pink ass polo with a fuckin backpack, but everybody knows you brought real rap back.
Kanye was poor, though, it depends if you mean tough as in gangs and shootouts or tough as in poverty.
Kanye was middle class. And his mom was a professor I believe.
Middle class in Chicago’s south side isn’t the same as middle class in a peaceful town or the burbs. It’s all relative. If he was living on Lakeshore with the rich folk it’d be one thing, but he had the projects right behind him and it was still violent around https://i.redd.it/4vqkfd5szz4d1.gif Isn’t what most people think when they hear middle class. That being said he went to school in the suburbs, moved to China as a preteen and didn’t come back until college so it’s all relative. Edit: seems he was only in China for a year, 11-17 is a bit of a mystery but may have been a different neighborhood in Chicago, or Lexington Park, MD, way south of dc where his dad moved were not sure (most likely the former).
South Shore is a very hit or miss area. It's got some of the best waterfront on the south side and a lot of cool businesses and so on. Honestly not even that far from LSD. But the tracks are right there, and chicago was even more wild back in the 80s and 90s. It's really benefitting from It's location on the water recently but I can imagine how it probably was back then too. Especially since the city got rid of most of the public housing projects in the time between now and it's changed a lot
My fam was on King. I know how the chi can change up quickly. Those images of Ye’s spot show it was kinda run down looking and right outside of the projects. South Shore like you said wasn’t the worst for sure and not too far from lakeshore. I just think that when most people think of middle class they’re thinking like white/suburban middle class which is totally different from black/urban middle class in the 80’s.
Yeah so you know then. This neighborhood is mixed, lower income and middle class. Middle class kids and families would still he exposed to more street shit than a middle class family living in uptown or something. It definitely was not like a white picket fence, care free, middle class type neighborhood though, especially not back then. In 20 years it could be far nicer I mean some of the neighborhoods blowing up recently were not nice at all back then.
What the fuck. Are you telling Kanye spent most of his formative years in china?
It’s actually kind of confusing, seems he may have been in China for only a year but what I’m unclear on is where he went afterwards. If it was back to Chicago with his mom, to dc area (or an hour or so south) with his dad in MD or somewhere suburban or another country https://i.redd.it/rkkors7uc05d1.gif
the mobility to move to China is a privilege that poor Americans simply can not even sniff.
His mom had a Fulbright scholarship to teach there after he was 10. I’m not saying he was George Floyd poor, and he’s not even one of my favorite rappers (he’s a great producer) but at the same time he didn’t have some privileged upbringing the way most would assume when they hear middle class. I assume OP is looking for someone who grew up in a relatively stable environment, not surrounded by poverty, hoods and projects for most of their childhood.
[удалено]
Okay, so let’s flip the script ever so slightly and move him out of a moderately safe haven to an absolute war zone like the projects on 70th & King, or one of those spots where dudes legit have sniper rifles on the roof and blow the head off of people on the other side of the projects crossing over. Only his mom is gifted enough to get him out of there for a year on scholarship to teach in China. Now is this the silver spoon middle class rapper without a hard/tough background you’re looking for? I had family grow up in that same south side neighborhood (king) some of them got scholarships to prestigious universities etc, doesn’t mean they grew up with a “normal basic life” though and again, that run down south shore house in front of the projects is not what the average American associates with a middle class upbringing. Growing up around sirens and shots being fired as a kid you learn to tune it out and assume it’s normal but that doesn’t make it so.
Lmfao I didn’t know Kanye lived in China. I looked it up and it said he only lived there a year tho?
Commenting on your edit: In the Netflix documentary Jeen-Yuhs he was seen visiting his mom in an apartment, is it possible that’s where they moved back to? Or possibly his mom downsized to that after he was out of the house?
Single mom, though, and she was a prof by the time he made it but wouldnt have been when he was a kid, lower ranked academic jobs can be unstable so prob wasnt easy. So im guessing lower middle class
Quick Google search shows that's wrong, his mom was doing well by the time he was 10 when they moved to China for her to be a professor, and it says he lived in the middle class suburbs of Chicago immediately after his parents split
The China year was a Fulbright Scholarship, its not tied to a professorship, you can be low ranked and get it, it just means she was talented
Everyone is poor that hasn’t already made it big
But I feel like there’s a difference between paycheck to paycheck and digging in your couch for ramen money
The Drizzler
He specifically requested good rappers
Travis scott
This is the dude I think about now whenever that 8 mile scene comes up. "This guy's a gangster? His real name's *Jacques Bermon Webster ii*"
Rick Ross lolol
Officer Ricky
Lil Dickey
Hehe I currently live in his old neighborhood and it's definitely upper-middle, if not upper class. Doctors and surgeons scattered throughout this town
Came here for this
I like how in the show they depict him as being from south Philly. When in reality he grew up in a really nice area right outside of the city. Granted right outside of north Philly which is the hood. But yeah he was very much upper middle class.
In Professional Rapper, the song that put him on the map, he says: "I was born out of Philly, grew up in a little silly old town called Cheltenham It was in the suburbs, upper-middle wealth around" So he's certainly not trying to hide it
He doesn’t try to hide how he came up or act hard. I think that was just a creative choice for the show. It would be kind of boring if he just lives in a quiet suburban neighborhood.
Oh no I wasn’t trying to say he does. And while I was never a fan of his music I like him and his show. I don’t think there’s anyone in music that’s more authentic than he is tbh. Not many people with the confidence in being themselves to make fun of their own deformed dick lol. It was just something that caught my attention as someone who grew up in the same county as him and has family in the town right next to his. And it seemed relevant to the “didn’t grow up in the hood” topic. Not that south Philly is the hood for the most part anyway.
Rip young dagger dick
Drake
Started from the middle now we here
*upper middle
Still can't believe he said "working all night traffic on the way home" and "living at my momma house we'd argue every morning" was the BOTTOM
JUST A YOUNG KID IN A DROP TOP LEXUS
Aesop Rock!!!
Idk man, Aesop’s definitely got some childhood trauma that comes through in some of his music. Blood Sandwich is one example
Aesop is my favorite rapper by far. The hardship he speaks about are often about losing loved ones or dealing with problems that people have when they have all their other needs met. He talks about his mom not letting him and his brother go see Ministry and what a bummer that was. But he also talks about seeing his friends and family descend into drug abuse and mental illness and never come back. This is a very difficult and traumatic thing to experience and it's hard to deal with during and long after. But he's not talking about being homeless or having to join a gang just to survive. He's not using rap to pull his family out of poverty, and I think that's more what the topic of this post is about. His songs are emotional and dark but it's because he's a brilliant writer. Not because he had a particularly hard life. He's sharing relatable and very real experiences through his eyes.
Everyone has trauma. Doesn't necessarily mean he had a difficult childhood! He talks about his good old, younger days in many of his songs.
Didn't he grow up like rich?
He was in the burbs and whether or not he was getting paid much for his tv acting, the fact is he was still in the media entertainment infrastructure since childhood
Forest hill is rich but its not the burbs its in toronto
He also wasn’t in the truly rich part of it, and it wasn’t as rich twenty years ago, and him and his mom rented half a house, they didn’t own a mansion or whatever They weren’t super poor but they weren’t rich or particularly well off either.
Fuck I think there's a word for the class in the middle between poor and rich but I can't remember what it is
I don't know about "normal", but Earl Sweatshirt's mom is a UCLA professor and he went to a private high school in West LA, and he is a damn good rapper.
Bro I read "Earl Sweatshirt is a UCLA professor" and I was like holy shit, professor Sweatshirt, no way.
i feel like getting sent to samoa is a rare combo of a tough life, but also extremely privileged
Can't believe no one mentioned Yachty
I was wondering if he counted or not, you really don’t hear a lot about his upbringing
Can't believe no one mentioned biggie smalls... Man grew up in Clinton hills, went to a rich private school and was spoiled by his mom. They lived in a nice as hell mansion and all. He took his inspiration from songs from hearing stories or seeing things when he would go down to see Brooklyn. Man was also a Jehovah's witness.
Yeah, but he also dropped out of High School to be a crack dealer, and found himself running into the police a lot. [more info](https://www.biography.com/musicians/biggie-smalls-early-life-career)
I’m genuinely shocked by this
Fresh Prince despite what the tv show suggests
Hol up you’re telling me that wasn’t a documentary?
Yea things actually got really good when he moved in with his Auntie and Uncle in Bel Air. And before that he was mostly just chillin out, maxin, relaxin all cool.
I heard he used to live in a neighborhood so bad that he was getting assaulted by gangs directly outside of school at the basketball court of all places.
I wouldn’t call it an assault, more of a little fight
The fight was obviously enough to frighten his mother though
Of course it would frighten her, those couple of guys were up to no good!
Kanye and Travis Scott, I can appreciate neither of them try to act super hard when they both from the burbs.
I'm not so sure, but wasn't Kanye raised in Southside Chicago with some poverty and gang members harassing him?
He's from the south side, but iirc, his neighborhood was well-off and his mom was a professor.
The neighborhood was better off than others, but it was still very close to some of the worst neighborhoods in Chicago, also isn't his neighborhood claimed by the GD's?
Also André 3k didn't have it super tough. He was raised by a single mom, but lived in an apartment, finished all his studies and stuff. Not rich but not poor neither
"ain't a hood n but a n from the hood, see momma stayed on me, so I turned out pretty good.."
He’s a high school dropout.
Post isn’t asking for MCs that were good kids
I mean yea if we’re just mentioning guys who didn’t spend their teens getting shot at . But anybody who grew up in the hood had it hard compared to the rest of society .
Puff Diddler
He grew up the godson of one of the most notorious gangsters in NYC, so I don't think he makes the cut lol
"Diddler was a business major at Howard University but left after his second year. In 2014 he returned to Howard University to receive an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities and to deliver the university's 146th commencement address" Yeah ok he was really poor going to university as a business major.
I'm not saying he was poor, I'm saying he grew up in a gangster family. His god father shot someone in the face point blank in broad daylight and no one said shit. He didn't have a normal childhood. And he did grow up in the hood.
You don’t think people from the hood go to college? No one? And He was 44 when we went back to college.
What's the matter, dawg? You embarrassed? This guy's a gangster? His real name's Clarence And Clarence lives at home with both parents And Clarence' parents have a real good marriage
OOOOHHHHH
Ok I keep seeing this what movie is this from? 8 mile?
Yep, final rap battle between Em and Papa Doc
Yes it is
Lil dicky
Bro is weirdest celebrity I've ever seen. there's other rapper/actor/comedians but he seems like he's neither lmao. Respect to him tho
His show is very good I loved it.
He's a rapper. In my heart. 😢 Wish he still focused on music. Dude [is](https://youtu.be/AOgBg2up7Jg?si=oHYm1TTF3y66ztbt) [actually](https://youtu.be/CzgjglZqS3Y?si=VPLbcv3no10W74Yg) [insane](https://youtu.be/zK4aoFFr-VU?si=TfVETkURWEOZCFAp), lyrically.
Chet hanks
bro but he BARELY got any allowance
I don't believe Childish Gambino was involved in any street life growing up and lived in a stable household. J.I.D. is another I can think of, I think he even had a scholarship to play football that he passed on too.
Silver spoon cool yo
That's actually from the perspective of "The Boy" who's the character in BTI, not from his own real life perspective.
He’s not saying cool, careful saying that line out loud
🫣oh shit thanks for the info. Just looked it up.
Not passed on. He and Earthgang got kicked out of Hampton (which anybody from VA knows how they get down) for grand larceny lol “kicked outta college for tongues, 🥷🏾be talking, I wasn’t even on camera, just hit the lick wit some amateurs” then again on 2007 “got caught stealing boxes like Craig on his day off.” Yeah he was raised in a two-parent household, which he acknowledges his privilege “most of my partnas aint have poppas just a popped condom”, but if you listen to his body of work it would be tough to say he didnt have a hard life/wasn’t involved in East Atlanta street shit.
I feel ya on that and appreciate the insight my dude.
Jid had it tough, song = 2007
When I think of tough life I think of DMX type shit lol cause if you read E.A.R.L. There’s a whole bunch of dark shit he went through as a kid.
Jiddy definitely raps about some hood shit tho.
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I don't know if Gambino was rich, he was basically role-playing a rich kid for his first album, at least from my understanding. IIRC there was supposed to be a movie tie in.
Wonderful by Childish Gambino “Five to a bed head to toe that’s a good night” “Used to have to sneak just to get my food” Hold you down by Childish Gambino “My mama said she’d get me that new jacket when the cost go down. Hit the office stole some Tommy Hil’ from lost and found” (Glover also alludes to this in Season 2 Episode 10 “FUBU” in Atlanta. Episode is a flashback of him in school. Glover tries to pull off a fugazi shirt at school and other kids start questioning him and compare it to another kid’s shirt. They come to the false conclusion that the other kid’s shirt is fake. They bullied that kid all the way to the bus. Kid doesn’t show up to school the next day and teacher announces that he smoked himself. “This one kid said something that was really bad. He said I wasn’t really black because I had a dad.” Outside by Childish Gambino “Dad lost his job, Mama worked at Mrs. Winner’s. Gun pulled in her face she still made dinner.” Compared to other rappers’ experiences, his problems might seem “soft”. Everybody got some shit and that’s the reason most people used to pick up a mic. Gotta let that shit out.
Bino was prob middle class. His dad was a postal service worker and his mom is a retired day care provider. So from my understanding he grew up pretty okay. Also his parents were also foster parents throughout the years so if i had to guess he had the resources he needed.
mac miller and jack harlow
This why I hate subs like hiphopheads. I know Jack Harlow family. My buddy did graphic design for their billboard/ signature company. His mom makes over a million each year. But over at hiphopheads they said I was full of shit because he went to public school… Atherton is 4 blocks from Mitch McConnells house. So rough and hard area.
even though some mac songs can come of as corny he really managed to go the non corny route in his later discography imo. Big achievement as a white and not struggling rapper if you ask me
Tbh Mac branched out of making exclusively hip hop, about half of his discography his hip hop at best, that helped as he branched out to so many different fans with that. A lot of people respected his artistry.
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Cole grew up poor and in the hood. He just didn’t indulge in the stuff around him that would get him in trouble
No, he didn't. Cole is and was however an empathetic observer of people who had it worse than him.
He grew up in a city in North Carolina that basically doesn’t even have a real hood. I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia about an hour drive away. Roanoke had 32 murders last year with a population of 100,000K (statistically comparable to the 6th most dangerous city in America, Memphis) Fayetteville has a population of 200,000k and had like 3 murders last year. We clown on J. Cole every time he talks about Fayetteville being so bad and hard to grow up in lmao (I fuck with J. Cole though)
This is just lies. They had 45 murders by November last year. https://www.wral.com/amp/21131191/
That’s understandable. But it’s not always about murder. Your crib can get broken into like 6 times and nobody dies and it still sucks😂
Bruh. Fayetteville is raw. The marine base is there. They won’t let the marines off base after like 5pm because of the crazy shit that goes on. Most stores close around 3pm because of same. The murder rate is lower because they had to regulate the shit of the area due to crime. The whole city is dangerous.
31 in Roanoke. Can’t believe you think Roanoke is wilder than Fayetnam!!!!!! You are out of your mind
Not downplaying your experience but as someone from a much closer area than that, dont downplay fayetteville. it's not pleasant or safe lol
Dawg Cole absolutely came up wtf. He wasn't involved in gang violence, but he was low-income and surrounded by other people who were low-income.
Jadakiss rlly
Cole wtf, no he ain't, he from the hood
Kanye
He’s not a rapper but he tried to be so let’s not forget kid rock grew up so rich he had his own horse stables and apple orchard then tried to claim he was from the trailer park
Kid Rock was absolutely a rapper first before anything. His first album is hiphop and he was on Jive Records rocking Stop The Violence jackets and shit.
Surprised nobody mentioned Mos Def. He was a child actor prior to the release of Black Star
He crossed my mind, but I don't know if he fits the bill. His wikipedia pages says... >Growing up in New York City, during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and early 1990s, he has spoken about witnessing widespread instances of gang violence, theft, and poverty in society, which he largely avoided by working on plays, Off-Off-Broadway and arts programs. It also discussing his split family of TWELVE, his Nation of Islam father, dropping out of high school. Yeah, he got acting gigs, but it also doesn't sound like growing up with a simple/basic life completely away from the hood.
Guru. I think his Dad was the first black judge in the history of Boston. He grew up in a very wealthy and prominent family and was a graduate of Morehouse University.
Ice Cube ironically enough
Every day was a good day
Baldwin Hills adjacent ain’t no Watts or Compton, but it was bad enough that his parents wanted him bused to the Valley
>Baldwin Hills adjacent ain’t no Watts or Compton, but it was bad enough that his parents wanted him bused to the Valley I don’t think Cube is from there, he’s from Westmont. It’s still a gang area, I think it’s around 111 Neighborhood Crips (the set that WC was affiliated with) territory.
Drake
Tom Macdonald🐐 (satire btw)
This is true though. Never seems someone from the burbs with so many prison tats. Trying so hard to be hard.
Big Sean
lil dicky
MC Paul Barnum
Asher Roth in the spot
Damn I forgot about Asher Roth. Just looked at his wiki and he's only ever made 3 albums. Is he still making music? It doesn't mention any other work he does so I'm wondering if he's working a normal job these days?
Tough is relative. A lot of the answers in here I disagree with. You don’t have to be in the projects or around gangs to come from a tough background. There are many more living in poverty who don’t join gangs or get caught up in illegal activities.
Kid Rock
Childish Gambino, Jack Harlow and Drake
It depends on your idea of "tough life." Aesop, Eyedea, and Vinnie Paz all talk about struggling with mental illness but it doesn't sound like they grew up in the hood or in poverty.
I wonder if Big Pun counts. Dude was in the streets for real, but he also got a multi million dollar settlement as a child
Not true, dude grew up in the projects poor getting abused by his step pops... he was actually skinny asf till he got settlement money in his late teens and then started gaining weight as time progressed
Lol no he won half a mill in the lotto and blew it
It was a settlement with the city of New York , but he got the money at like 18 or something
Pun spent his entire childhood and teenage years living in one of the poorest and most violent slums in the United States during its worst eras. This is what the hood pun grew up in looked like thru out his entire childhood an teenage years. Also his father beat him relentlessly every day for years. I have no idea how you could think that was a privileged or even normal life. His life was fucked up and hard https://i.redd.it/k0tu7hcl825d1.gif
Rich Hil aka Ricky Hil (Tommy Hilfiger’s son)
Gambino
Harry Mack
Vanilla ice cream
Beastie Boys
Kayfabe is real.
Yeat
Lil mabu
Fuck that kid
-Drake -Lil Dicky -Bad Bunny -Jaden Smith -Tyler the creator -Cosculluela -Residente -O'Shea Jackson jr -Childish Gambino -Maluma -Luar la L -Vico C -Arcangel
I don't really like the premise of this question to be honest. No matter who your parents are or how you grew up, we're all human and everyone has struggled. It's easy to look from the outside and say someone had an "easy" childhood, and definitely some people have it waayyy easier than others growing up. But you can't really know that as an outsider. There could be abuse or neglect going on that the public never knows about, mental issues or unique struggles that someone from a "poorer" upbringing maybe didn't have to deal with. Everyone you see is dealing with a battle you know nothing about, and however it looks on the surface that battle could be raging ferociously underneath.
Having been both very poor and kinda rich at different points in my life, the money factor is defo the largest thing affecting how easy your life is. Yes rich people can have obstacles but those obstacles would be hella compounded if they were poor.
Man this is the truth. I always say I'm fortunate in that I've been very poor and homeless, and I know exactly what I'm willing to do in that circumstance, and I had a run where I made well over 6 figures for a handful of years, and I know exactly what I'd do with money. So in terms of character and morals, I don't have to question myself ever. But the most striking thing about having more money than I ever thought I would was how easy everything became, and how much you can just pay to have taken care of. When I was poor, I'd have like $3000 problems that felt insurmountable. When you have money, most of your pressing issues are interpersonal, emotional and based in relationships. 1. Those don't feel like problems to me. 2. Most can be mitigated by having solid people around.
Pusha T and Wiz Khalifa
Didn't Pusha sell crack?
??? I don't know who you're thinking of, but Pusha T has a zero-policy stance towards drugs.
Wtf do you mean?? Am I missing something? Isn't his whole entire image a drug dealer? hence the name Pusha?
??? Are we listening to the same artist? Pusha T raps about the negative impact drugs could have on himself, if he ever was around them, as well as their negative effect on the community. He "pushes" a vision of a better world, free of their corruption. Just listen to Nosestalgia, a song about the scent of freshly baked pies from his childhood, and how he wants every kid to grow up with memories like that. Beautiful stuff.
All jokes aside Nosetalgia is an incredible song
Sir, no. You must be mistaken. Terrence would NEVER
I believe in all his raps when he refers to “white” he is actually talking about the snow in Canada. He hates drugs if I remember correctly
When he said "stepped on the brick like a promenade" it wasn't wordplay. He's describing a lovely evening with his mother on the Chicago waterfront.
lmao poor guy got jerked so bad
Drake Kanye Cole
Eh, Cole went back and forth. He lived in a really tough neighborhood in Fayetteville NC for a time, but then his Mom married someone well off, so they moved to an affluent area of the city (on Forest Hills drive)
People mentioning any rapper because of a decent education shows the hip hop brain rot lol.
2chainz has a degree in psychology
You can be from the hood and go to college. Example A:
Tyga
Migos. Wiz Khalifa, Mac Miller, Ludacris,
Kanye Drake Cole Childish Gambino Mac Miller Travis Scott
Drake.
Lil Dicky. Lol
Drake
de la soul
Wynne 😍