And oh, was I right. Bobby was mere feed to the digital machine; the culture vultures began scavenging at his Black bones in several channels of typeface massacre.

If we know the music industry can break people of color like toothpicks, and has provided a long list of examples that qualify the juxtaposition of slave narratives, how could we possibly celebrate Bobby Shmurda making the song of the summer on what feels like an accident?

For one: I will never defer celebrating when a person of color gets the opportunity to get the fuck out of the hood from music. This is not a conscientious choice to ignore the reverberations of patriarchy and stereotypical portrayals of the Black experience, but a mere acceptance of a gravely simple question: would you rather someone sell drugs and kill others, or have someone rap about selling drugs and killing people?

With a back pressed against the wall, I’ll always choose the latter answer. The even graver truth of matters like these is simple: the narrative of Shmurda, and the thousands of Black men like him who participate in these lifestyles, don’t disappear once we tweet our disgust and close our eyes.

From a supply-and-demand standpoint, Bobby is speaking truth to power for hoods in Brooklyn and beyond. A major label denying that market would be foolish for business, especially when narratives like Shmurda’s are candy in the cavities of spectators and white-boy bloggers who have never moved a pack or touched a key and will never have to.

But from a standpoint of agency, how can we find ourselves arrogant enough to strip trap artists of their narratives? As Bobby speaks truth to power for hoods in Brooklyn and beyond — an odd vignette in hip-hop’s cataloguing of the oppressed — compartmentalizing his music is an effort of silencing his existence. This is done in coded language: Shmurda makes “nigga music”, is “on some nigga shit”, is “just another nigga” slavin’ on the white man’s dollars.

The term “nigga music” is a key way of asserting one’s privilege and intelligence over these individuals; a self-segregation of being a smart individual in comparison to these dumb niggas makin’ music for other dumb niggas to shuck and jive to. It is the modern rendition of house vs. field in this music industry; the flawed logic that will make someone miss “real hip-hop”, and reference Common and Talib Kweli so quickly, the Soul-Glo will drip out of that person’s Jheri curl.

I’ve done it, I’ve lived by it, and I’m learning to fucking dismiss it at all costs. I’ve seen too many critics become too comfortable in their educated skins. The middle-class tyranny of the rap blogosphere (which I, by default, am contributing to) will either blindly champion the sounds of the oppressed for the fun of it, or condemn these children in recycled slavery metaphors that aim for profundity, but really only repeat what we already know while completely missing the institutional issues that even enable Bobby Shmurda to exist or have an audience.

More often than not, the people covering this music look nothing like the people represented; it hurts even more when people who share the pain of this dark skin dare operate from a pedestal and breathe life into a digitized self-hatred that looks down on those who are obviously smart enough to move hundreds of thousands of people in a way that these writers cannot do from a WordPress slate.

How do we unpack this? Learning. Remembering that this has been done before.

Remember when Chief Keef was the apple of our eyes? You could find his music, and the music of his GBE counterparts, in damn near every rap opinion section in 2012 and 2013. It made Nightline. It inspired that Vice series on “CHIRAQ” where Thomas Morton watched Keef ride around high on an ATV.

The same criticisms I’ve seen of Shmurda were placed on Keef’s crucifix just two years prior, when “I Don’t Like” was the “Hot Nigga” of its time.

Jimmy Iovine snatched Keef off the O-Block and put him front-center in our earlobes. There was no rap setting where you wouldn’t hear “I Don’t Like” go off, from frathouse to festival, and god knows it was an awkward time to be a Black person whenever it came on.

In the not-too-distant future, Keef’s Interscope ink is in shambles, he hasn’t had a retail release since “Finally Rich”, and he’s been in trouble with rehab, evictions, guns on Instagram, beefing with Migos, friends dying around him… you know, being the nigger the world crowned him to be.

Congratulations, young world: we made Keef our nigger. And we were right, weren’t we? We called it like we saw it? The young Black boy from the O-Block, Almighty So, the CHIRAQ shooter ran out of juice now that we don’t see him in every tabloid?

Shut the fuck up.

The music industry is not engineered for long-term success. The labels are fucking scrambling for dollars. The increasing democratization of music distribution, paired with a dismal sales market where 100,000 copies sold in the first week may as well be reinstated as the new platinum, has created the niche landscape for Bobby Shmurda to succeed from one nation, under Shmoney, doing it for the vine. Epic Records would love to keep Bobby Shmurda for 10 years and profit from this investment, but the likelihood has been lower than ever.

Hip-hop consumers and critics have adopted a conveyor-belt mentality similar to this industry that disposes of these figures in the court of public opinion. Young MCs, particularly young Black men, spend their lifetimes being chewed by a system of white supremacy and capitalism, forcing a lot of them to defy the laws of a society that wants them dead or in prison to put food on the tables of their households.

Yet every time a Keef or a Bobby appears — finally finding a moment to celebrate leaving the pain and poverty of their homie situations to become champions of American airwaves — they are spit upon, shit upon, and marginalized by waves of individuals who abide by their own pretentions and load their pain into the context of music that soundtracks pockets of our generation that we wouldn’t dare touch up-close.

Now wake the fuck up.

These chosen chocolate children are funneled through shit’s creek, but are never afforded the luxury of coming back up clean. That is what these young men are no matter where you stand: children, thrust into the limelight and projected to combust in front of us all. As this cycle continues — there isn’t a single sign of slowing down — we are feeding the idea that Black children don’t get a second chance after fucking up.

Keef surely didn’t get that luxury in the public eye, so we already failed him. But as of now in the microwaveable-thinkpiece-hip-hop-blogosphere, Bobby still has that avenue wide open.

Art is not a one-way channel for us to Shmoney on until it is impaled into the concrete; this is a collective game we’re sliding our hands into every time a waveform touches our earlobes. Hip-hop, should you choose to accept it, is dictated by our downloads. With that said, I’ve devised four of an endless stream of possibilities for the young Shmurda:

1. We stop talking about Bobby Shmurda, he moves no units, Epic drops him, he moves back to Brooklyn to die (obviously an assumption of his perceived lifestyle).
2. Bobby Shmurda remains a phenomenon for another summer or two, his relevancy fades, and his career follows suit.
3. Bobby Shmurda catches a charge at some point in his career (did the gun charge disappear?) and is sent to a private prison one of the big three labels may or may not own stock in.
4. Bobby Shmurda stays relevant for 10 years and makes enough money to never return to the hood again. Furthermore, he lives to realize the error of his ways and how the industry has corrupted people like him, and becomes a mentor to another young upstart MC to not make the same rookie mistakes.

I know capitalism is the devil, but since we’re already drowning in it, I want to see Option 4 become a reality. I want Bobby Shmurda to make music, and succeed, and live long enough to see the way this machinery moves. Imagine Bobby with a GS9 imprint where he can sign Rowdy Rebbel, Hood, Abillion, and Dwagavelli to propel them from their situations with the knowledge and expertise necessary to help his people avoid mistakes as well.

Is that feeding the machine, or is that an actual empowerment that gives people jobs and results in less bodies catchin’ bullet holes? The universe will tell us so. Regardless, that cannot happen without the proper people around Bobby to ensure that he doesn’t blow through his advance, steers clear of trouble, and complies with Epic for however long that situation remains in play.

With major label stardom and a megahit that was a megahit before Epic even touched it, who’s to say Bobby has no shot on an independent circuit where he can keep his money and the rights to his music while continuing to work with high-profile artists who already respect him for the feat he’s accomplished? And why should we strip Bobby of the opportunity to become a role model when he’s just seen 18 years old and has the whole game at its knees?

Do not rob him of his opportunity to grow, to evolve, to become a better man. Your 24-hour thinkpiece cycle does not dictate anything in this world.

I spent 75% of my summer in HOT 97: the hip-hop radio behemoth located inconspicuously on Hudson Street in the middle of booming SoHo. I was an intern living in NYU’s Goddard Hall — where Donald Glover once spent his days rapping in the basement — on West 4th St., a mere 15 minutes from the Mecca of my rap nerd salvation. For four days a week, I moonlighted on the lowest rung on the top floor of an industry full of smoke, and mirrors, and street-meat halal.

One morning, I jogged into the Hudson Street fortress hoping no one would notice all of the fifteen minutes I wasn’t being an underling. I glance to my left, and Bobby Shmurda and Rowdy Rebbel were pacing through the studio with a kiddish excitement that automatically centered my morning, day, and possibly my existence. They sipped champagne from plastic cups. Rolling papers sat, unrolled and stuffed with weed, above my desk. It was 10:30 a.m. and everyone became the celebration.

Bobby and Rowdy shook hands, took selfies with staffers, and could not stop smiling. They imitated Jamaican accents with Shani Kulture, another respected jock. Yogie, a sound engineer and one of my supervisors, did the Shmoney Dance with them after they saw a tribute of his own from the HOT 97 Facebook. They did promo spots for the station and toured the whole studio as if they never wanted to leave this land of majesty. They were just happy to be there.

Bobby and Rowdy gave us the official tutorial on the Shmoney Dance on that fateful morning in SoHo. The initial rock, followed by the hat, accompanied by the flail. We all complied in our own ways, camera phones manned to document our places in this footnote. It was an empowerment I may never know again. My tardiness no longer mattered and my senses were glazed with a gratefulness I could not shake the rest of my tenure in that office. I was grateful to be an intern, a nobody, alive.

“Hot Nigga” blared from every trunk in every borough that summer. On that July morning, I remember Bobby and Rowdy practicing their raps with gun fingers and clenched teeth in an overjoyed aura that jolted me back into reality. They’re my age. And they were no longer on a screen, existence reduced to pixels. I could no longer tap on the glass of the murder show for seconds at a time.

If the whirlwind ended that day, I would go back to a dorm, a school full of white kids singing “Hot Nigga”, a middle-class Black boy existence — and they would go right back to catching bullet holes.

All I can do now is pray for that not to be the case. And take every necessary step to ensure that their blood is not at my fingertips.