Does Crime Really Give You Cred? Probably Not.

Hip-hop culture has often been said to be inextricably bound together with thuggery and crime, and the genre’s biggest stars are also frequently the ones with the longest rap sheets. It’s all about the mysterious notion of “credibility,” a measure of personal and professional success considered vitally important to American rappers. But the conventional wisdom probably misses the point about hip-hop’s crime connection, and so, too, do many rappers: “if your rhymes don’t ring true to begin with, an arrest will probably just make matters worse… For a rapper, having your name printed in the police blotter is likely merely to reinforce whatever perceptions fans already have.”