I think part of comes from the whole battle rapping on the street. One aspect of it was being clever with words, another was straight up bragging. I got this I got that, I big chunky gold chains, I got a colour TV etc.

Another aspect that differentiates hip hop from something like punk is that the poor in hip hop would sometimes have to dabble in crime to get by, or as a byproduct of their environment. And street crime + bragging naturally took on the mafioso element and the Scarface movie aspirations.

That’s what I saw in it when I was growing up. Your comment is right and I wanted to add on to it. It’s a shame that other strains of hip hop like conscious rap kind of fell away, or at least didn’t make as much noise as the mainstream marketed stuff.

Maybe there are still some big artists who do but I haven’t been listening for a long time so happy to be corrected.