Part of this was a question I started a long time ago on the GOM forum, is gangsta rap partially responsible for the degradation of society? Which posed a further question, does life imitate art, or does art imitate life?
In this 90's and 00's babies like Rasan said, these kids are growing up and this is all they're going to know in Chicago. This IS life to them, they won't know any other way. But in other areas that aren't as bad, and definitely weren't as bad, some fools tried to make it worse than it actually was to validate their street cred and actually ended up making their home areas worse for real.
Chicago is getting waaaaaaaay outta hand though. Like 40 water said, "lookin over my back, checkin over my shoulder blades, hella nervous cause them niggas got grenades." Fools got rocket launchers???????? I'm cool.