The Gangster Rap Prison Conspiracy

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Flexible fits move naturally with your swing Our fabrics workick sweat and block UVs for hours in the sun And refined cuts carry you well into the nineteenth pole Shop golf gear in stores and online at lululemon. com This has happened to you There's something in the news, an odd fact that grabs your attention Maybe a friend mentioned something It's strange, upsetting might even make you mad It's one of those things that just can't be a random act of the universe It has to be the result of organized, malevolent forces working to destabilize, conquer, and destroy Lee Hary Oswald couldn't have acted alone in the JFK assassination. Nine hundred and eleven had to be an inside job trails of condensed water vapor behind airplanes in the sky,' Kem trails The earth is flat. The moon landing never happened There are UFOs and aliens stored at arerea fifty one. All of these beliefs stem from wanting to make sense of what appears to be senseless things. Powerless when something bad happens finding a reason might help us regain control and a feeling of safety O maybe by connecting all the dots We reveal a truth one else sees making us feel unique and superior. And if we find others who believe the same thing We're no longer alone with our fears Conspiracy theories have always been out there as we attempt to understand why. We want to restore order. We want to reclaim clarity And the more complex the world becomes and the more people that can connect online The more conspiracies appear Wake up, she Can't you see what's really going on I'm Ellie Cross, and this is episode sixty eight of Uncharted Cime and Mayhem in the music industry And we're about to embark on a journey through music's greatest conspiracies Let me tell you something Have I got some wild stories to tell you Conspiracy theories have been with us for thousands of years It's possible that the first widespread such theory emerged in ' sixty four AD with the Great Fire of Rome under Emperor Nero It was said he needed space for a giant palace, a monument to himself There was no room in Rome So he started a fire to clear space That was the rumor spread throughout the emmpire To combat that Nero launched a counter conspiracy theory He blamed early Christians, and when Nero died four years later, Conspiracies contended that he'd actually faked his own death and was soon going to launch a military takeover the empire from the East The first time the term conspiracy theory appeared in print was eighteen sixty three, when the author Charles Aster bristed had a letter published in the New York Times that contended British aristocrats ively working to sabotage the Union during the American Civil War The goal, he said, was to advance their own financial interests exactly a hundred years later Conspiracy theory was the term thrown about by the CIA as a way to discredit their official narrative of the JFK assassination the music world has its own conspiracies, and we can probably start with Mozart When he died at the age of thirty five, on december fifth, seventeen ninety one, probably due to a strep infection, which led to heart and kidney failure In the two weeks before his death He had a high fever, rashes, body aches, and severe swelling of his hands and feet Of course, there were no modern autopsies back then, but given these symptoms and his spiral to death have led medical experts to believe he suffered from post strepococal glomone neuronephritis. Kidney inflammation and bronchial pneumonia He already had suffered from related bouts of rheumatic fever, something that plagued him all his life. The medical treatment of the day didn't help eith He was prescribed bloodleting to ease the fever and swelling, something that just weakened him further But what about the popular rumor that his jealous rival, the composer Antonio Salieri, poisoned him You've had Mozard Mercury and Asenic And didn't he confess after suffering a nervous breakdown brought on by the guilt of what he did It's all there in the movie Amedeus, right Well, no Much of this comes from gossip that ripple through Vienna after Mozart died. Sellieri did sputter something about being responsible for Mozart's death But he was in the middle of a nervous breakdown He had attempted suicide in november eighteen twenty three, and for the last eighteen months of his life he suffered from severe dementia Decades after Mozart died Around the same time, the chattering classes of the German and Italian music circles whispered the same thing Yes, Saliari and Mozart were very public rivals and may have said or written mean things about each other Sali Aari was actually quite well off financially There's even evidence that he supported Mozart In fact, Salieri took on the task of educating Mozart's son who was born four months after his father died Okay, so let's just ask the question Was Mozart poisoned by Celliari The whole idea has been declared ridiculous by scholars. That conspiracy theory has been debunked Mozart was felled by strep infection the years before antibiotics Let's skip ahead to the two conspiracies connected to Robert Johnson, the great and mysterious blues musician The first has to do with what seemed to some has a sudden, supernatural ability to play the guitar In the nineteen twenties, he struggled with the instrument and was often ridiculed when he asked to play with more accomplished musicians. And then, sometime in nineteen twenty nine, after a spell living in Robinsonville, Mississippi He dropped out of sight And when he appeared somet timee later, accounts differ, but two years seems to be the sweet spot. He'd become a master of the Bues guitar with a style that no one had ever heard or seen before But the legend is that one summer's night at midnight Johnson encountered the devil at a crossroad someomewhere in the vicinity of the Dock Rree pllantation in the northwestern part of the state beast of Johnon's guitar, tuned it, and then played a few songs to test it out The devil then returned it to Johnson, saying that he was now a master guitarist payment All Johnson had to do was hand over his soul for all eternity upon his death Great story, but the same thing was said of Delta Blues musician Tommy Johnson. No relation to Robert Over the decades, the tales were embellished, especially after a larger audience discovered Johnson's music through some compilation records in the late nineteen fifties Rtellings only reinforce the myth. The concept of someone selling their soul to Satan in exchange for earthly powers and riches has been around for centuries, so Robert Johnson's tle was probably just a copycat tale though, seems to be rather mundane Johnson simply set up more accomplished players and asked for lessons. One such teacher was a bluesman named Ike Zimerman It appears that he met with Johnson In a series of graveyards at night, Not because of anything supernatural, but because it was quiet and no one would disturb them John was a good student and after two years of lessons and diligent practice He turned out to have real talent No Satan required. Johnson's death on august sixteenth, nineteen thirty eight is also the subject of conspiracy talk. There was no autopsy, and the death certificate didn't contain any helpful information. And into this vacuum poured speculation and rumor. One, had Johnson murdered by a jealous husband Johns had been flirting with his wife at a dance at the Three Forks Club in the town of Itabena When he asked for a drink, the woman gave him a bottle of whiskey be don't to either of them whiskey had been laced with stryp nine pooison. A few hours later, Johnson fell ill and was helped back to his room. Over the next three days, he got sicker and sicker and sicker He was in tremendous pain and suffered convulsions and seizures He vomited blood constantly. And then he died But was it Stict name? It has a strong smell and a very bad taste. Even straight whiskey wouldn't be enough to cover that up If the whiskey was doasted with stryict nine, a fatal amount would have killed him within hours, not days Another possible poison could have been dissolved mothballs, which contain the chemical napyalene. In the deep South, a lot of nuisance people were removed that way There were also stories about the man who poisoned the whiskey, allegedly, was tracked down and eventually confessed. Maybe. But we never did get a name The truth seems to be a little less conspiratorial Johnson was a dog and likely had congenital syphilis A doctor had also diagnosed Johnson with severe stomach ulcers He also had something called esophageal virasis, which can be brought on by excessive drinking, cirrhosis, and acid reflux Something happened during Johnson's last days, which caused those veins in his esophagus to hemorrhage which explains the abdominal pain, the vomiting, and all the bleeding from the mouth Poison whiskey have been the trigger to all that Well again, maybe But no one has been able to prove that he was poisoned What we have is a couple of great stories and the foundations of modern music's fascination with the occult If you want to go deeper into the lifetimes' death of Robert Johnson Check out episode thirty of Crime and Mayhem in the music industry. And because he died at the age of twenty seven, Robert Johnson is also part of the twenty seven Club Theory. I discuss that conspiracy in detail in episode twenty eight. The best conspiracies are those that have an element of truth to them And here's an example During the Cold War, the US government sponsored a series of cultural exchange programs with the Soviet Union American performers would be sent to the USSR, and the Soviets would do the same in return It was cultural diplomacy during these very tense political times Such was the atmosphere at the time, that it's one hundred percent certain that each side had spies embedded in their respective tours The conspiracy lies with who those spies were. It is suggested that the musicians themselves were enlisted to do a little espionage on the side This included names such as Dukellington, Disney Gillespie, Nina Simone, and Louis Armstrong They were known as jazz ambassadors and were sent out internationally to show America's greatness when it came to music and culture Farfetched, right Well No. Jazz really was weaponized by the United States These tours were used for spying, the gathering of intelligence, and opportunities to destabilize regimes that the U.S didn't like For example In november nineteen sixty, Louis Armstrong was on one of these diplomatic tours through Africa One night in Leopoldville, the capital of the newly independent Congo Larry Devlin, his host to dinner that night. turned out not to be a political attache, but the head of the CIA in the country Devlin was in the Congo to sort out what was happening in the breakaway province of Katanga. an area where American companies had mining interests for vast stores of uranium ore It was arranged for Armstrong to tour through Katanga, accompanied by Devlin Armstrong was used as cover for Devlin and his agents to spy on what was actually going on Meanwhile, Delin and the CIA were also on a mission to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first democratically elected prime minister because he seemed a little too friendly to the Soviets Again, with Armstrong' cover Devlin was free to do his snping. To months later, after Armstrong was back in the States, Numumba was murdered in Katenga provroince and replaced with a military chief named Joseph Desier Mobutu who was firmly on the side of the CIA and U. S. corporate interests At the time, the CIA and the American government denied any involvement in the coup. The story started coming out in nineteen seventy five, fifteen years later And more recently documents about an agent named Yy Rogue was very involved in Lumbumba's killing We've since learned that the CIA was probably involved in a coup in Ghana And maybe even the imprisonment of Nelson Mandela. For his part, Armstrong maintained that he knew nothing of how he'd been used He eventually helped write a musical entitled The Real Ambassadors, which referenced what had happened to him in the early nineteen sixties He said, Though I represent the government, the government don't represent some of the policies I'm for If you want more information on how jazz was unwittingly used to pursue nefarious interests by the US. government, There are several books on this subject, along with a documentary entitled Soundtrack to a coup d Tas In a moment Let's just say that this is not the first time the CIA or its counterpart, the KGB implicated in some kind of music conspiracy For example Did you know that punk rock was invented by the KGB Wake up, she. That story is next And we're live from the living room as Doug eyes up the match they spread He's reaching for the buuffalo wing. Perfect Hang on, what's this? Oh, he's good for Can of Pepsi too. 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One of the most powerful weapons in conflicts between nations is soft power No guns, no bombs, no aerial attacks, no troops on the ground Soft power is the ability of one nation to influence another without the need for bullets or any obvious violent coercion It's kind of like propaganda, but it's so deeply encoded, it doesn't really look like it The government of one country may seek to destabilize the situation in another through the use of culture If the population of the target country is sufficiently enticed by the cultural offerings of the enemy, Th then perhaps the people will slowly be persuaded to start questioning the quality of life at home and begin demanding more from their home government. Thus internal change and even regime change is encouraged and the enemy falls, or at least changes their way, popular uprising The variation on that is to encourage a counterculture in the target country, one that will generate hostility toward the ruling elite, resulting in big trouble for them. It is a fact that the KGB did whatever they could to weaponize the Western counterculture of the nineteen sixties. Psychological warfare operations were launched to take advantage of youth anger over the Vietnam War They wanted to throw gasoline on racial tensions and otherwise find ways to destabilize Western democracies from within. There were disinformation campaigns agents in the field were charged with stirring things up at rallies and protests There was the whole useful idiots strategy where the KGB covertly funded radical anti government organizations Of course, the US and other Western nations did the same in the opposite direction They were also highly opportunistic And music was one way the West hoped to corrupt the youth of the Eastern bloc Wh music for Ms of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were outlawed There were efforts by Western governments to smuggle that music in. It is true that Soviet Pmier Nikita Krushchev hated rock and roll Here's a quote from nineteen sixty two Take these new dances which are so fashionable now Some of them are completely improper Wiggle a certain part of your anatomy, if you'll pardon the expression, It's indeccent He believed that music and art would ennble the individual and arouse him to action That's what soft powerower can do One way the West did this was through radio beamed into the easastern blog via short wave, medium wave, and long wave broadcasts The other way was to somehow get records across tight borders to the kids dying to hear them There were some really bizarre attempts to counteract this In nineteen fifty nine, the East German government was alarmed by rock and roll and the endless stream of dance crazes coming from the West Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerred L Lewis. We're seen as vulgar, uncivilized, and not within the values of the revolution The Stasi the East German Secret pololice attempted to stunch this flow of Western soft power by inventing its own dance. It was called The Lipy The Lipy was created by party committees as a bulwark against American rock and roll and its shameless sexualized dancing Dance if you must, the message was, but our youth will do so while remaining pure and innocent Lipy had some very rigid rules. No movement of the hips was allowed because that was too sexual And dancers were required to keep a minimum distance from each other East German teenagers laughed at this attempt and the whole thing was a flop. Meanwhile, in the USSR, Soviet hippies Yes, they existed and were known as stillagi, which can be translated as style hunters We're under constant surveillance Every once in a while, there would be a violent crackdown and hippies and stalagi would be thrown in jail Sent to a Gulog or worse In nineteen sixty eight, the state commissioned the creation of an official rock band They were a clean cut bunch called, belieieve it or not y guys and they sang songs that said the world is fine and the USSR is especially great. I did work Then the authorities had an epiphany and stop Rck They could at least try to limit its bite controld its musicians and fans alike while under KGB supervision So starting in nineteen sixty nine, the KGB got into the club business That was a failure Again Here we have examples of how a modoticum of truth will lead to wilder claims of conspiracy These theories come in people begin to suggest that foreign forces invented aspects of Western counter culture In the nineteen seventies, Britain was in a rough state. Its economy was in shambles, everyone was going on strike, and there was tremendous income inequality. And on top of that There was the British class system Your lot in life was determined largely from the moment you were born And this obviously did not sit well with millions of undemployed young people who felt that they had no prospects of anything whatsoever Out of this demographic, economic and social stew came punk rock A reaction against all the powers that be from the monarchy on downown causes of punk were many and complex But some people believe all the work of the KGB. Here is a story told by an alleged retired KGB agent named Alexandrov Verinikov Volition. He claimed that the entire punk rock movement of the nineteen seventies, from the Ramones to the sex pistols to the Clash was invented and financed by forces within the Kremlin goal, he said was to create utter chaos and to pervert Western youth to nihilist, anti establishment, and anti American ideologies. He also claimed that many punk songs were written by teams of propagandists and psychologists. Wh were experts in psops, psychological warfare Their goal was to increase cynicism promote revolutionary thinking, in the communist sense of the revolution, and to encourage heavy drug use among Western youth Here is a quote Our mission was to use teenage ans to our advantage and turn the baby boomer generation of the West into a decadent pro drug and anti establishment culture that would create uprisings and bring Western democracies into utter chaos even infiltrated mainstream radios to promote their music and reach millions of people every day for many of us in the KGP Infiltrating the nineteen seventies punk scene was one of the USSR's most successful experiments of propaganda to date All right, so now you might start connecting some dots Remember the shocking iconography of British punks in the nineteen seventies? That included things like swastikas and hamers and sickles There was opposition to the monarchy, the hatred of the class system, and all the violence that went along with it be that all this was encouraged and financed by the KGB Well, Hold on There is no such person as Alexandrov Vernkov Volishian This entire story came from a site called World News Daily Report, which is very much like the onion. It's fake, it's satire But every few years, this story circulates again online before it has to be debunked again A lot of people believe that there are elements to this plot that are true Here's another story Crass was a band, but also an anarchistic collective based out of the UK And they love to poke at the establishment with a pointed stick. Their story goes like this It is said that in the early nineteen eighties, they met a former skinhead who had become a sailor who had just returned to England after a tour of duty in the Falkland Islands He told stories of how crazy things had been, and some of what he said was genuine classified information, material that was being kept secret from the public The members of Crass were fascinated and wrote everything down This guy said Let's cut together some speeches of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to make it sound like we had a leaked tape of a phone call between them They then released this tape to an unsuspecting world Let's have a list . We are expering within . It' a your now. I' got it. Newspapers all over Europe got a copy of that tape It was news for a while But then Cass was exposed and the joke was over. Or was it continued to be discussed by the CIA and MI five. What were Krass's real motivations Could they have had contact with Russian agents? Were they being financed by the Russians And some in the spy community believe so And if it wasn't the Soviets, it had to be operatives from Argentina country the UK fought over the Falklands A dossier was opened on the band and was kept secret for thirty years The members of Cass had their phones tapped Intelligence specialists from the CIA also looked at the tape and opened an investigation Than Shortly after the hoax was uncovered Krass was invited to a meeting at what was supposedly a Russian literary magazine in London Why? by who stop Crass was qued by all sorts of shady organizations, including the real KGB Reps from Germany's vicious Batter Meinhof group turned up in their back garden Let's have a talk, he said. What else could they offer? Did they need any assistance? Do you know anything else that could be of interest to us Even the Irish Republican army Sent word. That crass should not worry because they were watching their backs The crass admits that they were terrified. Their prank had turned into something genuinely dangerous to them and also their country and the West. Remember It's not nice to fool with a country's national security apparatus I have one more story involving the CIA. Do you like gangster rap and you're going to love this. How does a surgeon harm patients and not face prison? Underneath St Helena's volcanic lush scenery is a shocking, ongoing scandal. They did the damage to you make our life harder than it used to be. A surgeon came to help devastation behind I'm Luke Jones. After the Pitcn trials, I headed to a different isolated community to investigate Listen to the surgeon of S. Helena Introducing Taco Bell's new jalapeno citrus salsa with bright citrus, real red jalapenos, guailo chiles. Usually, you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled quesadilla, not a rolled quesadilla anymore Now it's a sauce shovel. Tac Be'salifeeno citrus salsa. Get it with any item on the canantina chicken menu. while it's here. They participate in US Taco Bell locations for a limited time only while supplies last, contact store for availability Youeed a laptop that's built to perform and designed to last all day? Select Windows eleven PC's starting at four do ninety nine doll n ninety nine cents are now at Best Buy. Learn more at bestestby dot comot Best Buy. Imagine that. There is and always has been, immense distrust of all forms of law enforcement in the inner cities of America And the black community has often been a target There was every reason to be suspicious and angry The FBI established a program called Co Intel Pro in nineteen fifty six Its mission was to infiltrate, surveill, and then discredit and destroy black political organizations. The targets were the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Junr., and Malcolm X Co IntelPro was a real thing It existence was made public through government hearings in nineteen seventy five And while he was officially discontinued the FBI continued their efforts in other ways Meanwhile, There were suspicions that secret government forces were looking to keep block communities from getting too powerful You may have heard theories that some shadowy government forces deliberately introduced crack cocaine into these communities. This also involved the CIA, which allowed Cra rebels in Nicaragua free reign in South Los Angeles in exchange for support back home As an aside, Gary Webb, a journalist who broke the story died in two thousand four from two gunshots to the back of the head this was ruled of suicide Interesting The drug problem, along with the AIDS epidemic, which some say was also perpetrated by the government resulted in widespread poverty violence and gang warfare And those were the conditions that led to the rise of gangster rap, music that told of the realities of living in places like South Central Los Angeles And here's where the conspiracy begins sometime in nineteen ninety nine, an anonymous letter started circulating on the internet, which was still very new to a lot of people This letter was supposedly written by a music industry insider claimed to have been at a secret meeting of two dozen music bosses in nineteen ninety one No names are given Everyone at the meeting was told this You will be given exclusive contracts to create and distribute a new form of music that was harder, more extreme, more violent, and more anihilistic than any hip hop or rap that currently existed We whoever we was will'll make sure that this music gets everywhere, radio stations, video channels, record stores, music magazines And this, they said, will generate an insane amount of money for you For us, us was It will keep black communities destabilized And that will provide a steady source of inmates for the increasingly privatized American prison system So Everybody wins, right Be clear This letter was anonymous, and it was never attributed to anyone No one who is allegedly at this meeting has ever spoken about it And the source of the sluer has never been discovered. But the internet being the internet This was evidence of a government and music industry conspiracy. It spread everywhere and it still circulates today Some theories allege to make sure that everybody got along Prison companies purchased shares in major record labels There's the incentive for the record labels beyond the sales of music more young black man jailed profitable all these investments became. In other words The record industry and the private prison industry work together to manufacture crime fund the culture. arrest and imprison people who participated in this culture and then make money off their incarceration as well as their record sales. And yes, the private prison industry did take off in America in the nineteen nineties, and those prisons continued to be disproportionately populated a young bllack manen. Some tendrils extend to Shug Kight, the notorious head of Death Row Records and home to Tupac Shakur Some contend that financing for Death row came from sources connected to the U. S. intelligence community. Why because Death Row specialized in some of the most violent, anti policed and nihilistic rapid existence. So it was perfect for the aimes Whoever was behind this scheme As proof, conspiracy theorists point out that gangster rap went on to become one of the defining sounds of the nineties, pushing socially conscious hip hop The margins. There is no documentation to any of this, nor has anyone anywhere ratted out this plot However, people like Chuck D of Public Enemy, Rapper KRS one, and others have said that hip hop and rap were manipulated by the music industry, especially when it came to making sure socially conscious and political music took a backseat to this violent stuff. I mean, how else could you explain the sudden rise of gangster rap and the rapid decline of socially conscious material Let's unpack this. Gangster rara. definitely reflected the reality of living in certain parts of America The records released by groups like NWA, ICT and the Ghetto Boys struck a nerve with audiences of their own free will. esides The CIA and the FBI aren't that powerful when it comes to this kind of social engineering across a large population over many years. And this theory assumes bllack artists were puppets and were manipulated into doing something by some shadowy government department instead of being creators documenting their life experiences It all comes down to this. Considering what governments have done and continue to do Shing like the gangster rap conspiracy really that crazy the existence of cointntel Pro is a fact connection between the CIA and cocaine smuggling is real And there are a lot of private prisons with black men and see why this has legs And we're not done here. Plenty more conspiracies that we need to talk about. And we will continue these investigations on our next episode of Uncharted Crime and mayayhem in the music industry You're gonna love this stuff You can catch up on all episodes of Uncharted by downloading them from your favorite podcast platform. They're all free for the taking If you have any questions or comments about anything you hear in this podcast, email me at Allen at Allencross. ca We can meet up in all the social media sites along with my website, a journal ofmusical Things. com which is updated with music news and recommendations every day It also comes with a free daily newsletter filled with music news, opinion, and music recommendations And there's my other podcast, The ongoing History of New Music, which deals with rock music and alternative music throughout the decades. There are hundreds and hundreds of episodes that you can enjoy all for free See you next time for more conspiracy stories of crime and mayhem in the music industry Episodes arrive every two weeks Techical productuctions by Rob Johns I'm Al N Cross