Get just about every rapper who was someone on one track, lamenting negative images and black-on-black crime. Think you’d be able to put something like that together these days? Not with Young Jeezy-types littering the hip-hop scene. At any rate, this Gold single reads like a who’s who of golden-age hip hop: Doug E. Fresh, Stetsasonic, Heavy D., Public Enemy, Kool Moe Dee, MC Lyte (whose verse was written by LL Cool J) and the Stop the Violence Movement’s founder, KRS-ONE.
Not only was Self Destruction one of the first (and still one of the best) posse cuts in hip-hop history, but it was for a good cause. KRS founded the Stop the Violence movement in response to the senseless death of his Boogie Down Productions partner Scott LaRock, and for a while, it was almost impossible to find a hip-hop album cover without the Stop the Violence logo on the back. Of course, part of what gives hip-hop its’ allure these days IS violence. Ah well, can’t get the glory days back, but at least we’ll always have this video.
