People jumping from windows. 90 year old woman commits suicide. A man killing his entire family and himself from fear that he would not be able to meet his fiscal obligations. While these are extreme examples of America’s uneasiness, they are actual incidents that happened out of the recent economic woes that have risen on a global scale.No one seems to be immune to this crisis from the boardroom to the block and rappers are no exception. East Coast, West Coast, Durty South, old school, or new school, our lives are all affected and AllHipHop took a moment to talk to your favorite rappers in regards to the economy. Below are their responses unedited and uninterrupted and in raw audio. between the nahmeans and nahmsayings there is actually some pretty solid responses. You be the judge. Peace.Big Boi “Right now I think..right now it’s definitely a need for something new to get in there. Somebody that’s gon’ really do something for the people and not just for the rich. Hopefully we can get Obama in there to clean it up and see what’s going on because it’s definitely a mess right now.”Bun B “I think it’s terrible man. The government is getting ready to print up $700 Billion dollars of worthless paper. It has no value, it has no commodity to back it. I mean there’s no gas, there’s no oil behind this money;they just printing paper. The dollar is already devalued as it is. All they doing is making it harder to be an American right now. They really need to get their mind right. I’m very sad that they passed that.”?uestlove “I want to know all the ballers in Hip-Hop, how are they affected? We’re fine, our FDIC, our stuff is cool, but I want to know, I want to see that Forbes top 20 list if they’re still alive.”Mac 10 “It’s a recession, huh? I mean you gotta change your hustle up;you gotta diversify. You gotta do a couple thangs; a couple different thangs. You just can’t be one thing anymore, you gotta have four or five different things going. We gotta eat; we can’t quit eating no matter what state the world is in. We gotta get money”Fat Joe “It’s terrible. It’s a recession, which means we gotta vote for Barack Obama if we want to change what’s going on in this country economically. Eight more years of the Republicans means I move to South America, Ciao!”Juelz Santana & Jim Jones “It’s bad out there; It’s hard out there, it’s hard for a pimp. I hear they about to cut that $700 Million dollar check though. We need that stimulus badly.”Uncle Luke “It’s serious; It’s real bad right now. Everyday I look at the news, you know I’m a news junkie anyway; a political junkie. It’s just serious but just like any bad football team or bad basketball team or bad baseball team, they always give the job to a Black man and he’ll fix it.”B-Real “It’s ridiculous man, they need to come up with a solution fast and hopefully one of these guys that gets in has some sort of plan to get us out of the problems going on right now. Republicans have done some pretty bad damage the last eight years so it’s gotta get cleaned up. So good luck to whoever has that responsibility on their back.”Trugoy of De La Soul “Oh man! I can feel the money jumping out my pocket right now. It’s crazy out there. It’s unfortunate that we’re in the situation that we’re in. All we can do is hope and work towards and vote towards a change. We’re going through a lot. We all know where we are. It’s about now doing something about it. So being active and putting the right person in office and hopefully we’ll find a way.”Gym Class Heroes “I’m rich…nah, I’m just kidding, I’m not really. It’s kind of sad that right before you know Bush knows he’s on his way out, he’s like ‘Oh, yea, I’m gonna close a bunch of banks and we owe a lotta money.’ It’s like oh yeah why didn’t you tell us this a long time ago, you know so that we could have tried to fix it ourselves? But now, I mean, at the same time it’s things like this that I feel like… I’d like to feel we had control of it but at the end of the day, it’s out of our hands, and it’s a sad situation but hopefully somebody will get into office and we can clean it all up.”Q-Tip “Well the $850 Billion that the Senate put forth [Ed note-only person that night with an accurate dough count] bill passed, I mean it’s tricky man. It’s a very, very trying time. I just hope that the people that have small businesses, the people who are staying employed, who pay their taxes, they work hard. They want to fill their gas tank. They want to put a lil’ something aside yunno, to send their kids to school or whatever will still have the opportunity to do that her in this country. I mean we’ve been dealing with the last 15years, 20 years the greed of a lot of the executives on Wall Street and then all these corporations and businesses swoop in putting extra 0’s on they checks and just expenditures that didn’t need to be and now we, the people are paying the price of it. It’s not fair. The American people should be angry.”Cee-lo “It’s unfortunate but it’s our reality and you have to deal with reality head on, so there’s no denying it. We all are affected by it;we’re all suffering from it, so we need a solution and we need it to be put in effect as soon as possible. Of course we know solutions, as all things, are a process, you know? So we are growing and I think we’re feeling growing pains.”Too $hort “I feel like the greed has finally caught up to us. It’s not even a point of how it can be fixed in my mind, it’s just more or less, I just kinda felt like something wasn’t right about how we want to have all these things that we didn’t buy; that we don’t really own and we want to borrow and make payments in it and I just remember a few years back, when it was a lot of talk in the air that a little money will get you anything yunno? Flip you some paperwork and you can get whatever you can get for just anybody.I just head somebody say really if you get behind on some payments in a house where you had no equity then what would you do? You just move out. You wouldn’t care about the loan. We feeling the afteraffects of all that lust and greed and all that giving away invisible money. It’s kinda messed up. And you add that with the afteraffect of September 11th, with the war and the gas prices and everyone affected by the gas prices it’s just…it just makes me feel like I’m.. I’m all for a change of party in the White House. I am.” Busta Rhymes “I think it’s horrible. I think it was done intentionally so that they can start introducing and implementing new things like the AMERO and the national ID card and things like that. They doing things right now and I hope people pay closer attention to what’s going on. A long time ago, Mexico, Canada, and the United States became one. So they trying to one world government this side of the planet and all that.I don’t want to get into the conspiracy talk but you know I’m good for that. I’m good for that, you know what I’m saying. Ever since The Coming album in ’96, when I told people it was only 5 years left. 2001 you saw what happened downtown, that was 5 years later. In 1998 the cover of Extinction Level Event was what happened downtown, so it’s like the information is out there, it’s just people don’t pay attention to it because at the time, if you pay attention too early, they try to make you look like you bugged out ;you crazy or something’s wrong with you. You’re just a conspiracy theorist.I just feel like you know, it’s time the people see that things come to pass. Don’t ignore anything. Even if they may not come to pass, pay attention to it because at the end of the day, it’s better to be safe than sorry. So you can look at these things and be like “What If?” Pay attention to the ‘What Ifs?'”Additional reporting by Gina Torres
