There are a few things you should know...
Gangsta Rap is fake. Once any music genre breaks through to the mainstream it becomes as contrived as X Factor in the quest to shift units. Your Gangsta Rap heroes' urban cool is orchestrated down to each flash of their golden grillz and perfectly-placed pitbulls. In Hip Hop, there's a certain kudos attributed to having the worst possible start in life which is why many Gangsta Rappers lie about their roots. Celine Dion has got more thug in her left elbow than Tyga and Rick Ross.
There are a couple of bonafide ghetto superstars who came round the hard way but by the time their second album goes platinum they are no longer Gangsta. They are grown-ups with comfortable lifestyles. You swagger around with your low-slung jeans and bad attitude while your heroes are sipping herbal tea in the Hollywood Hills and from that lofty, privileged position they push drugs, guns and bigotry to impressionable kids like you.
I can see the initial appeal. Some Gangsta Rappers are undeniably brilliant at their craft, deft in rhymes and swift with the delivery but their messages are less than impressive. Someone who uses the word faggot on their album 213 times is woefully inarticulate and depressingly predictable. If you had the attention of twenty million people worldwide, what would you say? Tyler, The Creator uses it to slag off women and gay people. Such a blatant waste of a golden opportunity makes him a massive idiot.
Gangsta Rap is full of hate language. The rappers know words like nigger and faggot are offensive yet offer no convincing defence of their usage. The frequency and manner of how they use these words is a misguided attempt to appear edgy. Using hate language is not edgy, it's reprehensible and it doesn't go down too well in the real world. Gangsta Rappers belong to an exclusive club where people get away with being idiots because they're famous. You don't. If you use these words in real life expect to get challenged and when you do you'd better have a darned good justification. Saying you heard them on an Eminem album will not wash, you need to take responsibility and educate yourself. There are laws against using hate language, whether it results in a suspension from school, termination of a work contract or a punch in the face, don't find out the hard way.
Boys, The way rappers talk about ladies is not cool. Some of them are practically obsessive in their misogyny which speaks volumes. Guys who assert their masculinity by treating ladies disparagingly are riddled with insecurity. You become a man in many ways, being disrespectful to women is not one of them. That just makes you a dickhead.
Girls, if you listen to misogynistic music it just makes it popular so more will get made. If you play those tunes out loud from your phone on the bus, you are saying you are okay with woman-hating. Are you really? Don't justify it by saying you like the tune whilst wilfully ignoring the lyrics. A girl dancing to a song about date rape is never a good look.
Some of your thug heroes are older than your parents. Think about that. If your mum and dad started bitching about hoes and poppin' niggas in da club you would be mortified. The music execs behind the scenes are even older. These old dudes are promoting drugs and overt sexual imagery to twelve-year-olds. That doesn't make them heroes. If they lived on your estate, a lynch mob would have put their windows through by now. Scratch the surface and you will see fat old men with questionable ethics. Gangsta Rap is a business just like any other. All they're interested in is your money. Don't give it to them. Save up and get a bike or something instead.
Don't believe the hype.