There's been a lot of talk in recent years about the state of hip-hop—and rightly so, as the music has been utterly abysmal. Creativity has given way to mind-numbing odes to booze, booty, and bling. Violence has never been more pronounced; countless rappers have been arrested for a myriad of serious offences; misogyny has become increasingly vicious. Hip-hop, to its credit, knows it's deeply troubled and has been casting about, searching for a saviour. And it may well have found one. It looks like it's not going to be a rapper or a record producer who revives the flagging art form, but a president. I'm referring, of course, to U.S. president Barack Obama.

The ills of hip-hop, after all, can all be attributed to a lack of hope. Rappers, by-and-large, come from low-income, inner-city, single-parent homes. They've spent their lives watching their moms—who tend to play by society's rules—struggle endlessly. Exhausted and humiliated by their jobs, these women get neither respect nor financial stability. Their backbreaking labour doesn't achieve much for their children, either. Health care is elusive. Schools don't educate their kids and employers don't hire them. Neighbourhoods are unsafe.

The message hip-hop has taken from this? Delayed gratification is for suckers.

In response, many in the hip-hop generation have turned to crime, which can be counted on to pay the bills. The problem is that it eventually kills you. And in the meantime, it crushes your spirit and destroys your community. This heartbreaking narrative is all tangled up in the music, and in the lives of even the most rich and famous rappers, who battle the street's reach for years after they move out of the neighbourhoods that raised them.

The crisis is, as political rap duo Dead Prez has steadfastly insisted, much bigger than hip-hop. Obama is the first American president who fully understands that. “I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets in Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago's South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair,” the president wrote in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father.

What's more, it seems he plans on doing something about it. “A huge proportion of young people in the criminal justice system are dropouts, illiterate, didn't have educational opportunities,” Obama told famed hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang of Vibe magazine. “[They] didn't see a vision for their lives beyond the street corner. The more we invest in the front end, the less we're going to have to spend on building prisons.”

Obama knows government must bear the brunt of the responsibility. But that doesn't mean hip-hop gets a free pass.

“We're all consumers of this culture and there's nothing wrong with us sort of saying, ”˜You know what? Some hip-hop is terrific and some of it is junk,' ” Obama pointed out to Vibe. “There's no doubt that hip-hop culture moves our young people powerfully, [but] some of it is not just a reflection of reality, it also creates reality.”

The healing of hip-hop, then, involves letting go of some long-held beliefs. Obama, by virtue of who he is, began that work for hip-hop culture the day he was sworn into office. Obama is an African-American man from a single-parent home who has, without wealth or family connections, managed to get elected to the top office in the most powerful country in the world. The president has succeeded through hard work and integrity. He is embraced by people of all ages and political stripes, all races and religions and nationalities.

Not insignificantly, he is unabashedly, head-over-heels in love with his wife, Michelle. Their partnership flies in the face of the reigning sexist mentality in hip-hop, the lie that says women are nothing but a piece of ass.

Obama's presence in the Oval Office forever alters the landscape of hip-hop. Suddenly, so much more is possible—and delayed gratification isn't looking quite so bad.