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“It ain’t just you a Blood when it’s convenient, cause you got a camera and it looks cool.”

While gang life is feared by many that are on the outside and do not represent a particular sets, gang affiliation is heavily promoted within Hip-Hop by rappers.

Sporting rags, throwing up hand signals and shouting distinct cries in music videos, some feel as though there is a misrepresentation of gangs, especially Bloods.

During an interview with Complex Magazine, rapper Nipsey Hussle spoke on how gangs are portrayed in the rap game and he actually pays attention to.

“My concern is the N***as that are really in the Isht. I’m more focused on giving solutions and inspiration more than anything. But to answer your question, I feel like it’s fraudulent. Straight up. If you ain’t put on to this s**t, you wasn’t courted on, you ain’t going to the back of the buildings to fight, your homies didn’t get put on, you not from a gang. Not only are you not from a gang, if you ain’t press a line and put in work, not necessarily kill nobody but you know, put yours on the line.

If you 35, 28, or 30 years old, and you decide you’re gonna pick up a rag and start bangin’, and you can look yourself in the mirror and you still feel like you’re a man? That’s cool, do your thing.”

Hussle also established exactly what it means to really live the gang life.

“When you around 100 Crips, you still a Blood. When 40-Glocc and them run up on you, you still a Blood. And I ain’t talking about Wayne. I got respect for they movement and I like the dude as an artist. But I’m just saying on some gangbang Isht, when you go to the county jail and you walk in the court tank and it’s 50 of your enemies, you still gonna say the 60s (Rollin 60 Neighborhood Crips)  or you not a gangbanger.”

In an industry where imaginary players outweigh real people, it’s hard to draw the line between the real and the fake, but some find means in obtaining a person’s credibility when it relates to repping the set.