(ThyBlackMan.com) Ackquille Jean Pollard, aka rapper Bobby Shmurda, is a homegrown terrorist. He promotes killing his own people by making them dependent on illegal, psychotropic drugs. He terrorizes the black community where he lives with gun violence and publicly denigrates black women. If he were a member of Al Qaeda he’d be public enemy #1.
But he’s not. In fact, had it not been for the exhaustive work of the New York Police Department this war criminal would still be out committing his unique brand of in-house terrorism. Why in-house? Quite simply his success as a terrorist has been facilitated by the sale of his material to the fans of this destructive, irresponsible and reprehensible demagoguery.
There are plenty of young black men who have fallen victim to a series of bad choices. Pollard was no different than many of them. Parents divorced, his mother moved him to a new surrounding hoping that it would be better for him. In interviews he admitted to being the kid that was always in the principal’s office, not caring about the consequences of his actions. A self-admitted drug user and dealer by the age of 10 years old his childhood was always filled with the negative influence of older peers who had made bad choices in their lives. Like them Pollard would too wind up incarcerated and addicted to the street life.
Most terrorists share the same type psychological and mental scarcity as Pollard. What typically drives them over the edge is that at some point they develop a burning desire to advance a principle or set of beliefs. This addiction becomes an affliction and eventually becomes the impetus behind all of their passion. In the case of Pollard it seems that his only impetus was money and power.
A terrorist benefits from having followers. After all it’s much easier to mass produce death and destruction when you’re not the only one doing it. Being at the driver’s wheel is a lot more effective than holding the detonation switch.
In order to produce a legion of followers Pollard employed the tried and true method of social media. It was there that he began to export his particular brand of mass mayhem and destruction. It took one regurgitated and un-original dance craze to get him noticed by a larger audience that extended beyond the disenfranchised black male subjects he so aptly preyed upon. Blending a not so original mixture of an electronic snare drum and police siren sample loop, in his signature song he delivers what can be best described as a slow motion grammatical assault on the English language. The music video is the visual equivalent of the CIA’s method of waterboarding an uncooperative enemy combatant.
And maybe that’s the genius behind it. Maybe he’s trying to make a greater point by being so completely devoid of any substance. Maybe we’re the ones not in on the joke. Maybe EPIC records know something that we don’t.
So, what is it that Ackquille Jean Pollard could be fighting for?
Maybe it’s his response to the double digit unemployment rate of the black community. Maybe he’s campaigning to create an environment where industry is going to want to invest in a burgeoning infrastructure that can support rapid economic growth in his community? That growth will in turn produce jobs that can sustain people and give them a dream outside of their immediate circumstances. Maybe all his talk about drug dealing and gun violence is really his ingenious method to turn around the cycle of poverty and violence in his community.
Or maybe all of the negativity towards women that he so proudly espouses is really for the purpose of uplifting their image to the world and improving their overall emotional and psychological well-being. After all, in the community that he “services” young black women have abortions at a higher rate than any other ethnic group. This type of behavior does not come from a community that feels good about itself or its future. Maybe what he’s really doing is trying to prevent future generations from ever being born in the first place and thus not having to deal with the hopeless cycle of violence.
Then again maybe his cause is more ideological. Perhaps he is saying that black people need to return to a belief system that is ultimately going to save them from the evil and hostile world they live in. The appeal for a moral center that doesn’t find solace in material happiness is an attractive message to a people who seem to have lost their way. Maybe his constant reference to money and death to those who try to prevent him from making money is really a style of method acting, behavior that is completely separate from how he conducts his personal life.
Predictably none of this is the case. In the case that the Ney York Police Department has spent a year compiling against him, it seems that the real life antics of Pollard are in fact the very things that his alias Bobby Shmurda talked about in his lyrics.
And this is where Pollard got caught. Talking slick is one thing, but committing the multitude of crimes that you’re talking about in your lyrics is not only dumb, but it’s the same thing that terrorist do when they broadcast their manifesto’s to their intended targets.
All of the social reasons why he turned out the way he did fall on deaf ears. To say that not having a dad or a stable home life, to say that growing up in poverty and witnessing violence from a young age made him this way assumes too much. It assumes that there’s no way out of those circumstances, and that’s simply not true. There’s always a way out. What Pollard did was choose wrong. His choices got him to where he is today, and that’s prison, which makes sense because most terrorists have short shelf lives.
Staff Writer; Steven Robinson
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