Lupe Fiasco appeared on MTV’s RapFix Live and became emotional after host Sway Calloway showed 6-year-old footage of the Chicago rapper in an episode of “My Block.”

Following the conclusion of the footage, a choked-up Lupe Fiasco was lost for words. After some time to collect himself, Fiasco told Sway that “some of the dudes” in the video were “dead.”

“Chicago the murder capital,” the rapper said. “The dudes in that video in a prison, a couple fed cases, then there’s ghosts.”

There’s people that ain’t there, he added.

Chicago being the country’s “murder capital” may be an understatement. Chicago has reached 300 homicides thus far in the year, according the statistics compiled by Red Eye Chicago. The Huffington Post wrote an article with a disturbing title stating Chicago’s homicide rate is worse than Kabul, Afghanistan.

Where is the media and hip-hop community’s support for Lupe Fiasco?

As Lupe said, “It’s not just Chicago.”

The rapper, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco, said the black homicide and incarceration rate is an issue “everywhere.”

“I see it in New Orleans,” he said.

African Americans are being incarcerated and murdered at alarming rates in urban communities around the country.

Though Lupe was able to make it out of his old Madison Terrace neighborhood on Chicago’s gritty West Side, he revealed many of the youth from his community would suffer a sad fate.

Some of those kids, he said, are not going to make it out of there.

Rap songs are heavily embedded with destructive lyrics. With many popular rap songs mentioning murder and crime, it is hard to defend the art form that once told stories of the ghetto plight rather than glorify it.

The hip- hop community has been known to band together when tragedy and important issues arise. During Hurricane Katrina nearly seven years, many in the hip-hop community mobilized to offer aid to those affected the storm. The world saw an outpour of support from the community after the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, with rappers Rick Ross and Plies being the most vocal.

More recently, many Hip Hop artists showed support for R&B singer Frank Ocean after the singer penned a letter announcing his bisexuality.

But when will this community band together to stop enforcing and glorifying black-on-black crime? Genocide is underway in many urban black communities across the country and many family members are left planning funerals for loved ones.

If the hip-hop community doesn’t step in to put an end to black-on-black homicide, the black community’s fallen will be nothing more than “ghosts.”

As Lupe said, “It hurts to speak to ghosts.”

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