Well, maybe this will get your attention post no-collusion Sunday. The real enemy of poor people is not gentrification, something that has no quantitative measure, but inflation, something that does. Prices are going up. Yes. They are. That’s real. But why? It isn’t because white people are pushing black people out of certain neighborhoods. But if you listen to the narrative in popular culture, it is not scarcity of housing that drives up prices but white people buying up black neighborhoods. I’ve already looked at the numbers. Yes, the Central District has seen a white increase while black people’s numbers have dropped. But the city, overall, is less white, with other neighborhoods like Delridge and Lake City are seeing big gains in black and other minority populations. This weekend I was introduced to OG Swaggerdick. He has a great rap called F**k Gentrification. Here’s a bit more about him:

OG is one of a handful of up and coming Boston rappers who have united in the last two years to make up what is becoming the city’s most exciting hip-hop scene in recent memory. Traditionally, Boston has been a place that subscribes to an outdated notion of what rap music is supposed to sound like—poe-faced, reductive boom-bap, indistinctive and indebted to New York. So when OG and his peers (Michael Christmas, Cousin Stizz in particular) all claim a shared love for Lil B is what brought them together, it’s kind of mind-boggling. It’s especially so considering how different each of their music is—theirs is an attitudinal alliance rather than a stylistic one, allowing their individuality to shine in a city that classically has defined itself in terms to New York, rather than celebrating what makes its rappers unique. Christmas’s sound falls somewhere between the everyman charm of Curren$y and the technique of Earl Sweatshirt. Stizz is more of the traditional street rapper. And the 22-year-old OG Swaggerdick is, well, he’s something else.

I have a lot of respect for this guy based on what I saw of the video and his write ups. And here’s the thing, he’s right about one thing, inflation (adult language ahead!).

Fuck raising prices,
Put them chips back,
They was 50 cents before,
Now they’re 59 cents,
They was a dollar before,
Now they’re a dollar sixty-nine, man,
Hey, fuck gentrification

Now you know this space has hosted Burke and Virgil. I welcome OG Swaggerdick. But I think he’s picking on the wrong thing. It’s inflation he’s mad about and that’s what he’s angry about. The greatest enemy of poor people is inflation, not the resentment of “gentrification,” something without a measure and therefore no solution.

Swaggerdick says this, something I sympathize with:

We was already slaves
Bad enough we ain’t got shit
Y’all just take it away

I completely agree. But it isn’t the shibboleth of gentrification we hate and oppose together and what takes things away, but the real threat of inflation, what happens when there is short supply of something in high demand. If Swaggerdick focused his lyrics and talents on shaming white single-family home owners who benefit when housing is scarce maybe we’d get somewhere. I think that will happen. Our common enemy is inflation, something created by predominately white single-family homeowners looking to keep equity “skyrocketing” for their homes.

Here’s the official video.