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  Release Date: September 3, 2006
  Website: Heven & Hell Website
  Label: Independent – Unknown

Heven & Hell “A Day in Your Life” Album Review
A lot of people think that I hate gangster and thug-style street rap. And for good reason. Hip-Hop Linguistics definitely tries to push positive and introspective hip-hop to our audience, and as of late, the gangsters and thugs on TV and the radio just haven’t been saying much. Now as much as I’d like to blame them for this, in actuality I think it’s really just a problem of voice.

Almost two decades ago, street rap hit the scene with major mainstream acceptance. A bunch of urban thugs and drug dealers were, for the most part, talking about their real lives, and this caught the imagination of people around the world who were unaware that those ways of life existed. A new level of understanding and consciousness seemed to develop, as the rich started hearing the often dreadful survival stories of the poor first hand. Unfortunately, this did not last.

Due to the success of street rap, record companies flooded the market with it . finding anyone willing to act like a thug for the purpose of selling records, and marketing the hell out of their product. As the lifestyle was glorified and glamorized, kids all over America started imitating these street rappers in attempts to be cool. All of a sudden, storytelling urban poets were converted to pre-packaged made-for-TV images … and along the line, the importance of street rap lost its credibility while the real street philosophers lost their voice in hip-hop. Nowadays, the majority of “street rappers” on TV and the radio aren’t really from the streets, and therefore we’re not learning anything about life on the streets by listening to them.

But every once in a while, you’ll come across real urban and street poets who talk about underprivileged urban life in somewhat of a scientific manner. They study instead of glorify it. They use it to point out the wrongs in our world, our society, or our way of life. They use it to teach instead of just talk. They keep us aware. I think Heven and Hell is one such group, and their extraordinary album “A Day in Your Life” illustrates the stories, thoughts and feelings of cats that seem to have really experienced the positive and negative attributes of street life.

Drug Dealing as Necessity
Although Heven and Hell made many important points throughout the course of this album, there is one important viewpoint that was discussed at length. When speaking about drug dealing, the group often showed remorse that it may be only way to make a living in urban society:

I tell them shorties it’s a prO-cess
It ain’t the easy way out, cause drug running is the most stress
It’s what we gotta turn to when we hopeless
The quick way to make everybody notice
Cause being broke is embarrassing
You never been there, then you don’t know the comparison
Apparent when you see me scheme
For my dream
Even if it mean
I gotta make you scream
I sware that I don’t wanna do that
I sware on my life that I don’t wanna put you through that
But if it come down to you and the Jeep
And only one of us can get it, put your money on me
I play with nothing to loose
And I refuse
To wait for welfare, so I’m making some moves

Now although many of us grew up with seemingly unlimited opportunities, it is important to realize that many people do not. Growing up in poor urban environments, whether in the US or, in the case of Heven and Hell, Canada, often leaves people with no job or advancement opportunities. In many cases, the drug trade is the only way to make a decent living. Or as Heven and Hell might say, “it’s what we gotta turn to when we hopeless.”

Unfortunately, the mainstream doesn’t want to support artists that push such sociological and societal truths … probably because they show holes and failures in our society, economic system, and way of life. Instead, they’d rather display ignorant street rappers that glorify the negativity in their environments, which allows societies and governments to criminalize street thugs and make them completely responsible for their actions.

It’s our responsibility as the hip-hop generation to be able to read between these lines. Many street rappers are simply products of real urban environments, and could teach us a lot about our society if we simply choose to listen. So check out Heven and Hell’s “A Day in Your Life.” It just might open your eyes to the struggles people face every day in the city. Peace.