I have been thinking about Chubb Rock’s “Treat ’Em Right”. Maybe it is because I keep hearing people talk about hip-hop as though an entire generat
I have been thinking about Chubb Rock’s “Treat ’Em Right”.
Maybe it is because I keep hearing people talk about hip-hop as though an entire generation of Black music can be summarized by the worst words anybody ever said on a record. Sometimes I even hear versions of this from people who worked inside the industry, and that leaves me stunned. So you had the front-row seat to a genre of music that has had a monumental social impact, and this is what you came away with?
Because I was there, too. I wasn’t sitting where you were, of course.
I am Gen X. We are the children of people who fought through the Civil Rights Movement. Some of our parents marched. Some integrated schools and workplaces. Some simply survived America while Black, raised their children, went to church, worked two jobs, joined unions, served in the military, built neighborhoods and tried to hand us enough wisdom to get home safely.
We carried some of that history onto the dance floor with us.
Listen again to “Treat ’Em Right.”
Chubb Rock made one of those records that could move a whole room, yet tucked inside all that bass and swagger were instructions about how to live. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart in 1991. And right there inside this enormous party record, Chubb Rock was talking about children, drugs, guns, racism, humility, community, responsibility, and a murdered Black boy named Yusef Hawkins.
We heard the beat and a message from Chubb Rock.
A more precise description would be Jamaican-American rapper from Brooklyn. He came of age culturally in New York and became part of the late-1980s/early-1990s New York hip-hop generation.
(In the music video, you notice Black people showing love to one another while expressing different aspects of Black ethnicity. )
1. Children are listening. Never forget that.
Chubb Rock pays attention to children throughout the record. They are not scenery. They are part of the audience he feels responsible to.
By the end, he makes his position explicit. He says his dream was not built around pornography and tells us, “Decency started from the crib.” He follows that by saying children do not need to hear everything adults might put on a rap record.
Think about that for a minute.
A rapper at the height of hip-hop’s rise was considering what children heard from him.
For those of us who work with Survivors, there is something worth carrying forward from that. Adults create the atmosphere children breathe. What we normalize around them becomes part of the world they learn to navigate.
Our influence deserves our attention.
2. Young people deserve a future longer than one bad night.
The first verse is almost a conversation with young people.
Stay away from crack. Leave the knife alone. Leave the gun alone. Resist what can pull your life sideways. Then comes one of the hardest thoughts in the song: you are too young to end up in a casket.
And where does Chubb send them instead?
Toward their friends. Toward music. Toward dancing. Toward fun.
There is something tender underneath that.
Go live.
For every Survivor who has spent years living in anticipation of somebody else’s anger, this is still a beautiful instruction. Your life is allowed to contain pleasure. Your friends. Your music. Your ridiculous dancing in the kitchen. Your laughter that gets too loud.
Joy belongs among our survival skills.
3. Remember Yusef Hawkins.
Then Chubb Rock does something that makes this song impossible for me to hear as empty entertainment.
He names Yusef Hawkins.
Hawkins was only 16 when he and friends traveled to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in August 1989 to inquire about a used car. They encountered a group of white youths, some carrying baseball bats, and Hawkins was shot and killed in what authorities identified as a racially motivated attack.
This was fresh history when Chubb Rock made this record.
He tells his listeners, “In your hearts and minds never forget Yusef Hawkins.” When he tells listeners to remember Yusef Hawkins, he is participating in a distinctly Black New York conversation about racist violence while also bringing a Caribbean-American strand into that Black cultural world.
A Black child murdered by racist violence had been placed inside a hit rap record so that young people dancing in clubs, skating rinks, house parties and bedrooms would carry his name with them.
That is cultural memory.
Hip-hop was helping us remember our dead.
4. Racism belongs in the conversation.
Chubb Rock does not mention Hawkins without context. He talks about racial conflict causing pain immediately before invoking him.
For our generation, this was not ancient history.
Hawkins was killed in 1989. Young Black people watched what followed, including demonstrations through Bensonhurst where protesters encountered racist taunts.
Our music absorbed what was happening around us because we were absorbing it too.
This is one reason I resist shallow histories of hip-hop. Listen carefully enough and you can hear pieces of the Black American historical record hiding in plain sight.
Sometimes history had a beat.
5. Violence inside our own communities deserves our attention too.
Chubb Rock turns the lens inward as well. After remembering racist violence, he warns about violence among Black people and keeps returning to leaving guns behind.
That combination feels deeply familiar to me as the daughter of the Civil Rights generation.
Love Black people enough to defend us from racism.
Love Black people enough to care when we hurt one another.
Both can and do live in the same heart in our communities.
For Survivors, that principle travels even further. Love does not require silence about harm. Community does not require pretending everything happening inside the community is healthy. We can belong to people and still tell the truth.
6. Success does not give you permission to become cruel.
This may be my favorite part now that I am older.
Chubb Rock talks about the children around St. James Place in Brooklyn who recognize him. He describes speaking to them, signing autographs and refusing to act like some unreachable superstar. Then he acknowledges something artists sometimes forget: those kids buying records helped put him where he was.
So he owes them some consideration.
Success reveals how you handle power. So does popularity. So does having more money, more followers, more authority or simply having the upper hand in a relationship.
You never have to become smaller so somebody else can feel powerful.
And when power finally comes into your own hands, you can decide what kind of person will be holding it.
7. Give people their flowers while they can receive them.
Listen to how many people Chubb Rock acknowledges in the song. Friends, collaborators, family and people around him get called by name.
That was part of hip-hop too. Shout-outs. Community. Acknowledging that I am not here by my own strength and resolve against all the obstacles lined up around me.
We sometimes treated them like filler because we were waiting for the next verse. Looking back, I hear community. I hear somebody saying: I did not arrive here alone.
There is wisdom in remembering who stood beside you.
Survivors especially can spend so much time cataloging who hurt us that we forget to keep another list somewhere safe: who believed us, who sat beside us, who made us laugh, who answered the phone, who opened a door, who gave us information, who told us we could make it.
Remember those names too.
8. Reciprocity is the heartbeat of the whole thing.
Then comes the simplest message in the record.
“Treat me right / I’ll treat you good.”
That line probably flew through millions of speakers because it was catchy.
I hear more in it now.
Relationships need reciprocity. Communities need reciprocity. Friendship needs reciprocity. Love needs care traveling in more than one direction.
Women especially are handed endless instructions about giving. Understand more. Forgive more. Explain more. Accommodate more. Carry more. Try again.
Black peoples are constantly expected to be armies for people who will not genuinely, openly, and authentically call anyone to duty for our needs and concerns.
There is another question worth asking.
How am I being treated?
That question can change a life.
You are allowed to notice whether the kindness you pour out ever makes the return trip home.
We were listening. We were learning. And yes, we were dancing.
Hip-hop contains misogyny. It contains slurs. It contains violence. Those truths deserve continued serious examination and challenge.
It ALSO contains history, humor, political education, warnings, neighborhood reporting, grief, resistance, tenderness, memory, Black language, Black argument, Black joy and people trying to teach children how to survive long enough to become adults.
Reducing all of that to derogatory words requires ignoring an extraordinary amount of what Black artists actually said.
“Treat ’Em Right” is sitting right there in the record.
Leave the drugs alone. Leave the gun alone. Remember Yusef Hawkins. Reject racial hatred. Care about Black life. Respect the children listening. Appreciate the people who support you. Stay humble when success comes. Have some fun. Come home alive. Treat people well and expect good treatment in return.
All of that was riding on one beat.
Some of us were children of the Civil Rights generation, coming of age inside another chapter of the same long Black American story. Our elders had sermons, marches, freedom songs and front-porch conversations. Our generation carried some of the lessons forward through turntables, boom boxes, house parties and headphones.
So when somebody tells me all they heard in hip-hop was a slur, I believe they are telling me what THEY heard.
They are NOT telling me everything that was there.
I was there too.
And I remember us dancing to the message.
Called Out of Our Names: When Did Respect Become Too Much to Ask? (audio ep) – WE Survive Abuse
Affirmations Inspired by “Treat ’Em Right”
I can enjoy my life and still understand the world around me.
I deserve relationships where care travels both ways.
My kindness does not require me to accept mistreatment.
I can remember those who were harmed without surrendering my joy.
I will pay attention to what children learn from the adults around them.
I can love my community enough to celebrate it and tell the truth about harm within it.
I do not have to become arrogant when life finally opens doors for me.
I will remember the people who helped me along the way.
I can leave violence behind and choose a life that has room for music, friendship, laughter and peace.
I am allowed to ask one simple question when something feels wrong: How am I being treated?
Fun Facts
In 1991, Billboard named Chubb Rock’s “Treat ’Em Right” the No. 1 rap single of the year. America’s No. 1 Billboard rap song of 1991 was telling young people to leave crack alone, leave guns and knives alone, think about racial violence, remember 16-year-old Yusef Hawkins, value children, respect the people who supported you, stay humble, enjoy yourself, and treat people right. The lyrics support those themes directly.
Billboard ranked “Treat ’Em Right” the No. 1 rap single of the entire year for 1991. Chubb Rock was Billboard’s No. 2 rap singles artist of the year, behind LL Cool J.
During its regular chart run, “Treat ’Em Right” reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot Rap Singles chart and stayed there for three consecutive weeks in March 1991. A contemporary Billboard page from March 16 actually shows it sitting at No. 1 for its third week.
It crossed into several other markets too. It reached No. 33 on Billboard’s R&B singles chart, No. 32 on the dance/club chart, No. 11 in dance/maxi-single sales, and No. 95 on the Billboard Hot 100. The EP itself reached No. 73 on the Billboard 200 and No. 22 on the R&B albums chart.
It even crossed the Atlantic, reaching No. 67 on the UK Singles Chart in January 1991.
