Katie Got Bandz, Gunplay, “Hittaz” & Chicago’s Rising Death Toll Posted by Lucas Garrison on 06/17/13 | Filed under Opinion, Videos, Katie Got Bandz

Any other day and we'd probably not be posting the new Katie Got Bandz song at all, but every once and a while, its good to have a discussion that goes beyond who will sell the most records, who is the best rapper alive, and boobs. Katie teamed up with Maybach’s Gunplay (apt name) to bring us a video remix of “Y'all N***az Ain't Hittaz”. The song is beyond awful, but instead of making this a funny piece it’s a good jumping off point for a serious discussion, especially considering what happened in Chicago this weekend.

At least 33 people were shot — six of them fatally — Saturday afternoon through Father's Day Sunday, stretching from 94th Street and Loomis Avenue on the South Side up to about North Avenue and North Pulaski Road on the Northwest Side, according to authorities. The youngest person who was killed during one of the bloodiest weekends in Chicago this year was 16….Shootings from Friday afternoon into Saturday left another 13 people shot, 1 fatally. The combined tally resulted in 46 people shot, and seven killed this weekend. Last year at about the same time, there were 53 people shot, nine fatally in one weekend.

“46 people shot, and seven killed this weekend”...For many, myself included, it can be hard to even fathom these kind of numbers. In one weekend the death toll in Chicago was only one less than the Santa Monica shooting and the Boston Marathon Bombing combined; it by no means makes any of them less horrifying or less important, but when you consider how much airtime and attention as spent on these stories, its amazing to me that these Chicago shootings do not get the same treatment. On Fathers Day weekend, seven people lost a family member—maybe a father or a son or daughter—and countless more families were too affected yet there is very little coverage. Just a day removed from one of the more violent weekend in Chicago recent memory, Katie Gat Bandz dropped the visuals for “Y'all N***az Ain't Hittaz” which along with lines like “leave a hole in her face” are littered with guns.



The burden doesn’t just rest on Katie, she is not the first, and will definitely not be the last rapper to tote guns and act hard, but it feels fitting, especially after the Windy City’s rough weekend, to start a discussion about violence and guns in hip-hop. Some people might say well, “art imitates life”, but if this art (if you can even call it that) doesn’t really imitate life, it take a small section and glorifies it. If Katie really wanted to imitate life, she would have made a song about what happens after the shooting to give people who live this everyday an escape, not more of the same. This feels like an attempt to present a persona to sell records rather than create “art”. Even if this song doesn’t directly lead to homicide, it allows a culture to pervade where this kind of thing is seemingly fictional or a grand display and not reality.

The danger in that is for people in these ailing Chicago neighborhoods, gun violence is a daily occurrence and something everyone lives with. In addition to other factors like institutionalized racism and media bias, these kind of stories don’t get just attention because for the outsider, it becomes the norm. Its hard for the 16 year old suburban white to fathom 46 people getting shot in the first place and it doesn’t help when people like Katie and Gunplay not only trivialize violence, but glorify it, making it seem like thing to be proud of and something "cool". Why should a kid from Oklahoma care about gun violence in Chicago, when Katie, a Chi-town native doesn't seem to mind and even thinks its cool? Again, songs like "Y'all N***az Ain't Hittaz" are not solely responsible for gun violence nor are they solely a reaction to violence. I can’t help but feel like they go hand in hand. The gun violence exists outside of hip-hop but it perpetuated because rappers are so quick to throw guns in their video to look hard or masculine.

As powerless as you might feel as a consumer, it is up to you to change this culture, If you see a rapper who is all about guns and violence, don’t buy their album or download their mixtape, don’t watch their videos, and don’t follow them on twitter. The industry doesn’t give two s**ts about you as a person, what the care about is your wallet. If we show we don’t support this type of rap by not buying it, you better believe they will change the tune.

See Also:  Violence In Hip-Hop Rising, French Montana Shooting Becomes Latest Incident
See Also:  Snoop Lion Recruits Drake & His Daughter For His Anti-Violence Cut “No Guns Allowed” (Listen)