No, this is not about King Kendrick. Mr. Lamar represented hip-hop and social justice simultaneously at the Grammy Awards this year, as he was nominated for 11 Grammys for his latest album To Pimp a Butterfly. Although he took home five out of the 11 nominations, His performance became the highlight of the award show for many. To Pimp a Butterfly is raw, filled with jazz, blues and melodies of gospel music. Many fans are clamoring for a duet album with J.Cole, who many also know to be lyrically sound.

Hip-hop has never been short of its lyricist. Take Rakim, Tupac, Notorious B.I.G, Jay-Z, Eminem, Drake, Kanye West, Taleb Kweli, Nas, Lupe Fiasco, Tech-9, Lauryn Hill, Nicki Minaj and Ice Cube, to name a handful.

Hip-hop is a cultural place setting in 2016. Its lyrics, style, moxie and swagger have reshaped clothing, car designs, professional athletics and crept inside of the White House. Hip-hop has grown consistently like a beautiful tree in the middle of America. The leaves on that tree have given us beautiful colors of music to lean on during moments of bliss and chaos.

After the Sugar Hill Gang released a vibe we now call rap music into the world, artists from all over the country joined the platform to share stories. Stories from the brown, blue and gray eyes of their life. Tales from the hood of poverty, crime, disease and family traditions are vivid examples of the daily lives of  a black human in America. Rap music was the Youtube for the mind: Witty wordplay used to paint graphic pictures of emotional portrayals and intense moments of heroism and sadness. You learned from LL Cool J how to be Bad. Nas taught us how to be a Street’s Disciple while Queen Latifah crooned with a mellow richness on U.N.I.T.Y. The movement of rap music spread from the West Coast all the way to the Dirty South. Six-Fours’, Crips and Bloods, ATL, Shawty, Swangin, Chopped and Screwed, and Wood Wheels became a part of our vernacular.

The Midwest jumped in while Bone Thugs-N-Harmony took us down the streets of my hometown with their debut album Creepin on ah Come Up. Nelly showed us that it was getting “Hot in Herre” all while rocking Air Force Ones with the gum bottom. Jay-Z, Dame Dash, Kanye, and Cam’ron exemplified the Dynasty of Roc A Fella Records, but artists such as Jean Grae, Taleb Kweli, Common, Tech N9ne, Immortal Technique and Little Brother showed us our consciousness through poetic rhymes.

Today we are blessed with many amazing young artists who continue to keep hip-hop pushing forward. Kendrick, J.Cole, Drake, Big Sean, Schoolboy Q, Wale and more. Pause. Please refrain from reading the previous line again. More than likely your favorite artist wasn’t included. Let me swan dive into the reasons for their omission.

I grew up listening to hip-hop. It has taught me about pursuing success, how to carry myself with confidence, grieving through issues and a laundry list of other adjectives. I remember the days of begging my mom to buy tickets for the Hard Knock Life Tour and bobbing my head back and forth to Joe Budden’s “Walk With Me” and Cam’ron “Come Home with Me” during prom in 2002.

And a few facts to mention: I am a former undercover police officer. Before Black Lives Matter and Tamir Rice were hashtags, I recall struggling with my job. Arresting poor people, people who looked like who me in color but separated by class caused internal me to have conflict. Not because of our race alone. But because of how law enforcement perceived black people before they encountered these individuals. Plenty of nights were spent arresting men for pissing behind dumpsters in the hood, which is a misdemeanor but allowed us to check them for warrants. If you know anything about the criminal justice system, you are aware of the exorbitant fines that can decimate those on the fringes of poverty. Many people don’t show up for court or pay the mandatory fines merely because they don’t have the money. They are forced to spend a weekend in jail because they didn’t take care of a previous court appearance. As a rookie officer, I didn’t have much opinion on the whereabouts of our nightly patrol. Most rookies jobs are to sit, be alert, act and learn.

We worked a county that encompasses suburban and inner city neighborhoods. Often we would take a different stance on people of color than those in the majority race in America. The lights were starting to come on inside my brain. Some of my police partners would speak as if the people we arrested were almost devilish, versus our interactions with those in the suburbs who often got the benefit of the doubt. Why such a vastly different approach? Why were they so captivated to arrest black people and perceive them as criminal minded?

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Music and movies have always been synonymous with violence, sex and drugs. Scarface, The Godfather, Boyz n the Hood, Terminator, Menace to Society and so forth. Rap music, in particular, was pegged as the black sheep of music. In the early ’90s, rap came under heavy fire for its harsh lyrics of tales from the street life. At the same time, hundred million dollar businesses were springing up from coast to coast. Death Row to Roc A Fella to No Limit Records to Bad Boy to So So Def — the music business was flourishing, but what did this new money mean to the stories told?

Arguments have been made from those outside the culture that rap is a deviant to the ears of the innocent. “Hogwash!” you say. The truth is,  I agree with you. Rap in its pure essence is a musical genre much like rock ‘n’ roll. Provocative and edgy but fit for the younger audience. As rappers gained influence economically, the tales they shared didn’t deviate far from their first rhymes.

Although Jay-Z has always seemed to be rich, rapping about Cartier watches and Range Rovers from 1996 through present day, many rappers continued to speak about the street life as if they were still selling dope on the block. The common defense is that rap is just a musical visual for what we see on the streets in the hood. In the song “Represent,” Nas lathers the beat with this lyric.

Nas entered the rap game before his 20th birthday and since has matured along with his lyrics. I guess I became bothered by a recent Rick Ross lyric from his latest album “Black Market.” On the song “Carol City,” Ross speaks on the introduction of the song saying “You know where I’m from woe? I shoot ya in the head you say Miami Gardens.” Lyrics like those have no place in the stories of hip-hop. (Which leads me to my title “Death to Murder Rap.”) Not when Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Samuel Dubose, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, and so many others are losing their lives at the hands of police.

Who, by the way, see this corner of black culture and stigmatize black men as dangerous human beings. We have provided a pass long enough to rappers. Rick Ross is wealthy with a estimated net worth of about $35million dollars.

He has never been convicted of a felonious violent crime. I imagine he doesn’t travel without security as well. He doesn’t have to face the impending dangers of so many young men who bob their heads to his music. The inner city thrives on the freshest music. Having a nice car with a decent stereo and being the first to play the hottest single means something. We blast much of this powerful music at decibels high enough to get fined for it by police. But what are we blasting? Is it lyrical dynamite in communities that beg to be rebuilt? Can it be words of wisdom? Nah, you don’t hear much music from Common, Taleb Kweli or even old school rap on a sunny afternoon on Martin Luther King Blvd.

Many times these lyrics lead young people into trouble their superstar hip-hop artist can’t get them out from under.

Take a recent situation — in February of 2014. An Allegheny County, Pa., a judge sentenced 19-year-old Jamal Knox to two to six years in prison based on a rap video he and another defendant posted on YouTube that allegedly threatened two police officers. As Jamal Knox told the judge in Pennsylvania during his sentencing, “As a rapper, you have to put on an image. Like, my business is my product.” He added, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “I don’t want you to look at us as gangsters or anything. We just make music.” This past summer, I had the chance to work at a summer program for inner-city youth. During the eight-week camp, I discovered how rooted rap was to these impressionable young minds. Rap was intertwined in their vernacular, swag and approach to dealing with other classmates.

In the past, hip-hop detailed vivid and personal stories from the streets. Lyrics that painted pictures of poverty, fatherless homes, gold chains, drug dealing, hope, God, love, family and heartbreak.