Jeezy Says Hip-Hop Elders Failed Young Rappers Who Needed Help

Jeezy believes his generation of Hip-Hop leaders failed young rappers by hearing the anger in their music without paying enough attention to the pain underneath it.

The Atlanta veteran delivered that blunt assessment during a new All The Smoke conversation with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson.

The discussion turned to drill music, violence and the lack of trusted adults available to artists coming up in neighborhoods where survival often comes before long-term planning.

“I think they don’t got no outlets,” Jeezy said. He argued that many young artists also lack the older voices who once pulled him aside and challenged his choices.

Jeezy pointed to T.I., who once made him decide whether he wanted a future in music or the streets.

He also remembered Jay-Z giving him a hard business lesson when he needed one. Those conversations did not solve every problem, but they showed him that somebody with experience was paying attention.

He said the music young rappers make reflects the places around them. In his view, the problem is not simply that artists are choosing the wrong message. It is that violence can make a person feel important when the rest of the world has made him feel invisible.

Money can be earned again, Jeezy warned, but a lost life or a prison sentence cannot be reversed. That is why he wants veterans to do more than criticize the sound or shake their heads at the consequences.

“When they was telling us they was hurt, we wasn’t paying attention. And now they’re acting out,” he said.

The position is consistent with a responsibility Jeezy claimed more than a decade ago.

In a 2015 AllHipHop interview, he said, “It’s on me to give the younger cats the game, because when you got in this game I told you how to trap or die.”

His own path now includes family, books and a Las Vegas residency with a live orchestra. Jeezy presented that growth as proof the story doesn’t have to end where it began. His larger point was that established artists cannot wait until a tragedy to offer the guidance they had the power to give earlier.