On the heels of the news that rapper Ja Rule has accepted a plea deal for a two-year prison sentence for illegally possessing a gun, David Dennis wrote an article about the fact that for Ja Rule “jail isn’t what it used to be.”

My first pet peeve is that people in this country have no idea what the difference is between jail and prison. If you are in jail, you are there pre-adjudication and if you are in prison you have been convicted of a crime. Can we please get this straight people? For real… People in jail are being detained before or during consideration of their case. People in prison have been found GUILTY of some crime.

Now that this is off my chest, I can return to Mr. Dennis’s article. His point seems to be that pre-2005, rappers who were arrested could expect to increase their “street cred” and as such their careers were less likely to be adversely affected by conflicts with the law. Today, according to Dennis, “getting arrested for a rapper is the same as getting arrested for a teacher, janitor or politician. It’s a bad move.”

His explanation for this sea change is as follows:

The fact is, and please don’t be disappointed by this spoiler alert, Hip-Hop is mainstream. The genre is a multi-billion dollar industry that’s much more integrated into the American lore than it was 15 years ago. When 2Pac went to jail, he faced album pushbacks and a couple of lost movie roles. T.I. went to jail and he lost endorsements, movie roles and likely millions of dollars in other opportunities. When T.I. went to jail for smoking weed in his car, he was seen as an idiot.

I find this thoroughly unpersuasive. Hip hop is mainstream today but it was also mainstream in 2000. Using T.I as an example to prove this point also makes little sense to me. Sure he lost movie roles and endorsements during his year-long incarceration in 2009 but he was still in the top 20 rap earners pulling in $8 million just $3 million behind Snoop Dog who wasn’t incarcerated that year. He was listed as the #16 top earning rapper of 2009. Dennis then informs the reader that when T.I. went back to jail this year, “he was seen as an idiot.” I have no idea if this is true or not but I would not attribute that view (if it exists) to the mainstreaming of hip hop. I would attribute it instead to the fact that Americans are pretty unforgiving as a rule and that our culture is a punishment-oriented one. Those are larger cultural forces that have little to do with hip hop.

Next Dennis takes on Ja Rule’s latest misfortune:

Which brings us to Hip-Hop’s most recent inmate-to-be, Ja Rule. When the news broke that Ja was sentenced to two years in jail, nobody really cared. It was just another sign that Ja’s career was over. The former star had it all at one point: starring in movies, multi-platinum albums and writing melodies for J. Lo. A poorly-executed beef with 50 Cent and a drastic decline in music quality resulted in an epic career homicide. There was a time when a rapper’s arrest could have provided a shot in the arm for a career. While it’s clear that there isn’t much that will give Ja any level of relevance, jail definitely won’t do the trick. Instead, it’s just the final casket close to a career that ended years ago.

Well this is supremely unhelpful and amazingly snarky. I like snarky, do not get me wrong. However, in this case, it seems warranted to ask why Dennis didn’t bother to address the fact that black rappers and athletes seem to be disproportionately targeted by the criminal legal system with weapons violations.

One of the most popular posts that I have written is titled “Why Does It Seem That Black Men Are The Only Ones Jailed For Owning Guns?‘” In the post, I reference the case of Plaxico Burress who is currently behind bars for illegally carrying a gun. Plaxico makes the point in an interview that he was sent to prison “for owning a gun” and that he didn’t “commit a crime he broke a law.” This bears repeating. Many of us are law breakers (how many of us have jaywalked?) but we are not “criminals” and we should definitely not find ourselves behind bars.

If it is true that “nobody seemed to care” that Ja Rule was heading to prison, this seems to me again more a function of the fact that the entire culture has become desensitized to mass incarceration. It hardly even registers for the general public. What’s one more black man going to jail when there are over 850,000 of them there already? Besides didn’t Dennis spend several words informing us that Ja Rule was already washed up before his latest misfortune?

Wesley Snipes was also recently imprisoned for tax evasion and I don’t think that many people were exercised over that. When you are out of the public eye for a while, you are just another black man headed to the pen. This doesn’t warrant much interest in the culture. That is tragic but true. So again this is not specific to hip hop.

Dennis’s reference to a “final casket close” for Ja Rule’s career seems particularly gratuitous and morbid as this man heads to prison. Did Ja Rule steal Dennis’s milkshake? What did he do to this man? He ends his article with these words:

He took to his Twitter: “minor setback for a major comeback”. If only it were that easy. Jail means it’s over for Ja.

It’s a shame that the clink isn’t the career boost it used to be. But there is a bright side: we’re all worried about the influence Hip-Hop has on our kids. Granted, our children’s idols going to jail as often as they go to the club isn’t the best-case scenario, but having these stars come out of it sans millions and testifying to the fact that the experience was horrible, will act as much more of a deterrent than the “yeah, I served that time without a problem” attitude of the Hip-Hop Medieval Times. Maybe Ja Rule can find solace in his ability to act as an example for the youth. Especially once he realizes he’s unlikely to find it in hopes of a reborn music career.

Look is it unseemly for Ja Rule to tweet “minor setback for a major comeback” to his fans on his way to serving a two-year prison sentence? Sure. But give the man a break! False bravado is not a crime otherwise half of the world’s male population would be behind bars. Let’s be real about this.

Then Dennis brings in the “children.” Lord help us.

It is well-known that I have no patience for the narratives that some rappers construct when they leave jail or prison. I have written about how damaging I felt Lil’ Wayne’s portrayal of his time behind bars was. I don’t want rappers or anyone else to glamorize prison because I know that prisons are actually brutal, oppressive, and counter-productive. Telling the truth in this instance matters.

If Mr. Dennis was going to write about hip hop and incarceration, I wish that he would have taken the time to present a cogent and most importantly well-researched article. Here’s what I would like to know:

1. What are the sociological reasons that black and brown rappers find themselves behind bars?
2. Do white rock and roll performers find themselves behind bars at the same rate? If no, why not?
3. What are the re-entry challenges for rappers once they are released from jail or prison? Is T.I. typical in terms of the fact that he found himself returning to prison less than a year after being released?
4. Are the prison experiences of these rappers similar or different from the general population of people who go to prison? What accounts for the differences or similarities?

I could go on with a series of questions that would have provided more light on this topic than we got from Mr. Dennis’s effort. Perhaps someone else will write the article that I hope to read on this subject soon….