Many media outlets have recently pointed out a lack of coverage of the #BlackLivesMatter movement by black voices. The conversation has, in part, suggested that musicians and other people of color with a platform have not fulfilled an inherent duty they have as public figures in the line of those earlier acts who spoke out and spoke up for their people; a disproportionately voiceless one at that (though some writers have taken issue with that idea).

But few have considered what has changed. In a recent interview with NPR, J. Cole stated how once he became encapsulated by the world of fame, his concerns changed. His body of work, which once earned him that ever-ambiguous label of a “socially-conscious” act, quickly became altered by his more lavish lifestyle and superficial concerns: On last year’s “Cole Summer” he even lamented not being able to spend as many thousands in a strip club when relaxing with Drake.

Because he was no longer happy with that level of celebrity, Cole deliberately removed himself from the typical patterns of touring and press coverage most would be subjected to following an album release, and moved back home to Fayetteville, North Carolina. He reconnected with his mother and redeveloped his previous worldviews. Those became the foundation for his summer leak, “Be Free,” one of few rap songs that addressed the events in Ferguson, on which he sings, “All we want to do is break the chains off / All we want to do is be free,” and his new album, 2014 Forest Hills Drive, which discusses the falsity of the American ideal that success in a capitalist society leads to happiness.

It’s no surprise that artists like Cole and D’Angelo (whose phenomenal Black Messiah dropped early last week, his first public emergence in nearly 14 years), who have isolated themselves from pop celebrity, are two of the black community’s loudest voices speaking out against matters of racial injustice, capitalism, and economic inequity.

Hip-hop’s inner-circle celebrities, our Jay Zs and Drakes, have endorsed the same outcomes of Reaganomics that rendered their people such a disenfranchised one; a political move that grew tremendously, as did its audience.

While the current epidemic of police brutality and the lack of indictments may be quite reminiscent of a time when powerful black voices were, themselves, marginalized, the widespread merge of hip-hop and pop music that has occurred in the 26 years since Straight Outta Compton has greatly altered the culture framework. Rap music and capitalism, from an outsider’s perspective, are as intermixed as ever; there’s even a subgenre that Spotify recognizes as “pop-rap.”

Earlier this week Drake released a new posse cut, “Schemin’ Up,” with OVO pals OB OBrien and P. Reign, in which he raps, “Tell these high school kids keep dreamin’ / ’Cause they sure do come true.” I have nothing against providing kids with optimism—I’m a teacher after all—but it’s the definitiveness of that message, “sure do come true,” that we now see so often in popular music—as if there aren’t thousands of others who didn’t find success in this market as they did; as if their success should be regarded as proof that the American Dream is in fact alive and well.