The Urban Entrepreneur Negro Coalition announced plans yesterday to launch a city-wide campaign to dissuade grown-ass men from pursuing a career in rap.

UENC’s [W]rap It Up campaign will encourage adult males to spend no longer than three years trying to transform their hip-hop fantasies into a reality. Over the next six months, UENC hopes to reach 70 percent of the struggle-rappers living in the city.

The recommendation is inspired by the NCAA eligibility rule which gives its athletes five years — from the start of enrollment at an institution — to participate in a maximum of four years of intercollegiate competition.

UENC asks aspiring adult rappers to give themselves a three-year window — from the first time they write, freestyle, or record music, with the intent to be a rapper — to create something which even remotely resembles a career.

Rappers with actual careers profit from the music they create. They get paid to perform it. And, they’ve built up some kind of buzz surrounding it.

“We need to combat the epidemic of grown men pursuing fruitless careers in shit they’ll never succeed in,” Khalid Williams, executive director of UENC, tells The Bluffington Roach. “We don’t want to murder ambition. But I mean…shit.”

[W]rap it Up will educate struggle rappers on the improbable odds of “making it” in the rap game.
“There’s really only like 20-30 rappers who are hot at any given time,” Williams says. “So, the roughly 2.5 million grown-ass men who fantasize about becoming rap stars need a wake-up call.”

While Williams is optimistic that the new recommendations will be a wake-up call for these grown-ass men, he could be underestimating their level of disillusionment.

A recent study conducted by the psychiatric unit at Cellevue Hospital revealed that 58 percent of black men, between the ages of 13-47, are harboring lifelong dreams of being successful rappers — without actually possessing any of the necessary talent.

Kareem Gates, 33, is an aspiring rapper from Whitesville, Clarkelyn. He prefers to be identified by his stage name “CokeReem DatDude-GotBars.” CokeReem, who’s been “spitting” for seven years now, has two kids, no job, no appreciable rap skills, but maintains a dogged passion for his craft.

“It’s simple my G, when you got a gift you don’t let shit hold you back!” CokeReem told BluffRo in his best Rick Ross Voice. “My nigga Cole said it the best G, all I got is a dollar and a dream.”

In conjunction with its city-wide campaign, UENC will provide a transitional program for those close to aging out of the struggle-rap system.

It will be a difficult task to pry these dreamers away from their illusion, but UENC plans to offer incentives to reel them — such as Retro Jordan’s, satin Gucci wife-beaters, Louis Vuitton testicle-hammocks, Versace-quilted toilet paper, and a bottle of Hennessy Black.

Thompson says that UENC originally sought to offer meaningful benefits — free job training, college financial aid, affordable housing placement, and other underfunded services. But, the organization quickly realized that a talent-less 33-year-old man who’s still chasing a spot in the rap game is not looking for the same kind of help that a reasonable person would.

So it settled on offering them nigga-shit, which is essentially shit that niggas don’t really need. As enticing as nigga-shit is to niggas, it may not be enough to dissuade every aging struggle-rapper from prolonging his inevitable failure.

“I ain’t gonna front, those satin Gucci wife-beaters is tough, but ya’ll niggas doing basic science. I’m on that two-digit multiplication wave. Yah dig?” CokeReem says. “Yeah I could get one satin Gucci wife-beater now, but once I blow, a nigga gonna be able to get like four, five of them shits.”

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