I came off the porch in 2004, which is effectively between the "now" (17 years ago from today) and "then" (13 years after Po's arrest) eras you brought up...
Snitching always carried a stigma back in the mid-00s, and I never got the impression it was a "new" stigma. You heard stories from guys from the 90s and 80s eras, and especially when I went up you were actually doing time with guys from even older than the 80s era. Not to mention at the time I started living that way, you had old ass rappers like Scarface dropping multiple anti-snitch tracks:
Brad himself is from that 80s era of street politics; these songs came out when I was a teenager in the mid-00s and fit right in with what guys I knew or knew of were saying---->I think I've mentioned before I was a huge Face fan as a teen so not for nothing but alot of his shyt gonna pop to me more than most lol...
Then you had Game with the G-Unot/Stop Snitching, Stop Lying campaign, you had the rumors of 50 being a snitch (Fif himself being from the 90s era), and I can't even count or recall the number of convos or scenarios I came across where snitching was a topic. So nah, I do not think it was more of a stigma before me, or during my introduction to that culture...
If anything I would say it's the reverse, snitching is more accepted today and applauded even. You couldn't vocally support snitching in years past, the snitch apologists today are up there in number with the anti-snitch crowd, it's damn near a 50/50 split. But also years ago people didn't talk about shyt as matter of factly that they weren't involved in; you didn't discuss street politics if that isn't how you were living...
I don't know if this is the explosion of so many mediums that heightened the spotlight on street culture or what, but I do know there was nowhere near this many snitch supporters...
I think what you're also noting with Alpo and Azie is something I've touched on prior, which is within street culture there's always been choosiness with the consistency of who gets away with what. There are guys who are known rats who cats defend and vouch for and live/allow to live amongst the public like it's nothing, Po and Azie were hardly the only ones of their kind. There are child killers, pedos, rapists, all kinds of cats who do deplorable shyt where in many instances those dudes are greenlit, but there's always a percentage of those guys who are defended and some who even live free and comfortable...
The fascination with street culture that has helped turn it into a hip-hop subgenre of entertainment over the decades has blurred the lines between reality and fiction, because people who were never intimately involved publicly have these assumptions that when ethics are broken (I use "ethics" lightly, obviously these are unethical lifestyles!), there is immediate and sinister consequences and retribution....
And it was never like that. Not in the United States of America. But this subgenre is consumed by mostly people who are on the outside looking in, or people who may have been connected in only the most basic, borderline ways, so lines get blurred. Alpo and Azie weren't the first known snitches to get voraciously supported and defended. Clearly not the last either...
You can be a legend and go out bad, that's real life. That really happens outside, it's part of the sport...
Lastly I don't know the Jim Jones/Alpo interaction, brush me up on that!
