The accusation of linkage between creative work with criminality, is beside all lies and misinformation, is completely justifiable.
From the ol' good thiefs of Robin Hood, to legendary literature character Arsene Lupin. And old, new and anew gangsters and appear and reappear into Great Depression movies in LA to your newest Television that is streamed at our app for only 4.99$ per month, that is in no way undeniable.
But what tends to be, at least in my country, the main "problem" with that linkage is the supposed apology to criminal activity, specially in rap or media that covers slums/favelas, which no, not at all.
Crime is not sweet as said Brown. The display and demonstration of crime and criminals is first and foremost an inclusion that is made both as part of an identity, in the society of poor and socially excluded neighborhoods, and never in a positive light, but an realistic one.
Just like how Acauam Silvério de Oliveira incredibly wrote in the Preface of the book Sobrevivendo Ao Inferno. The criminal in Sobrevivendo Ao Inferno, and somewhat broadly in the hip hop scene in Brazil and internationally, is a critique to two types of stereotypes, almost opposites of one another.
The stereotype applied to the community as a whole of savage barbarians, which deserve nothing more then eighteen bullets shot. And the almost opposite stereotype of the victim of society, good faith criminal which only does so because that's what he can/knows, both extremely alarming.
The figure of the criminal becomes of another part of a flawed society in a flawed country. Guilty of own's chosen path, with good and bad reasons as to why so. Which in my opinion there's no better work to represent this situation then Capão Pecado. The detail, emotions and decisions that leads to one to such paths are both really empathetic and really tragic, that is the point of the figure of the criminal.
Instead of being rubbed as a single atom and called a problem by being a problem, it becomes a person with voice, feelings, struggles and flaws, which isn't supposed and doesn't apologizes to its crimes, but makes it a real figure, as judgeable, merciful and saint as any other figure, that is how a problem becomes a situation, and in doing so you see that its more of a symptom then a root cause.
It's easy to have wild and merciless solutions to someone that is something to you, a sin that can and is comitted by anyone regardless of belief or "side" in some sort of politic. Denying that a merciless murderer was once a small cute baby blinds you, just as how treating doubts of social movements as intrinsic reactionaries. In the end all it becomes is ways of dehumanizing the other.