When Hip Hop Fought AIDS

There are records you make for the chart and records you make because something is on fire and you have a microphone. America Is Dying Slowly — released in 1996 through the Red Hot Organization — was the second kind. And I am proud of it in a way that goes beyond music.

The AIDS epidemic was devastating Black communities at a rate that mainstream America was barely acknowledging. The Red Hot Organization had been using music to fight the disease since 1990. When they assembled hip hop's voices for this project, they weren't looking for a hit. They were looking for truth-tellers.

"Hip hop has always been the CNN of the streets. On this record, we had a responsibility to be the CDC too — to warn, to educate, to demand that people pay attention."

The lineup was extraordinary: Wu-Tang Clan. Coolio. Fat Joe. Biz Markie. Genius/GZA. And me. Artists from different corners of hip hop, united around a public health crisis our communities needed to hear about — from voices they actually trusted.

The Source magazine called it a masterpiece. I don't bring that up for vanity. I bring it up because it proved what hip hop can do when it decides to take its cultural responsibility seriously. We had reach that health clinics didn't have. We had ears that public service announcements couldn't get.

That record is a reminder I carry everywhere: the platform you build as an artist is only valuable if you're willing to use it for something bigger than yourself. Whenever I wonder if what I do matters — I think about that album, and I remember that it does.

— Chubb Rock  |  The Chubbster