By SABRINA PARKER

“American Gangster” director Ridley Scott’s tale of Harlem mobster Frank Lucas is No. 2 in the box office. Jay-Z’s “American Gangster”album is heading to No. 1 and predicted to sell 450,000 copies in its first week. I’ve contributed to both of these figures, but I can’t help but wonder why so many people love images of gangster life.

In the film, Denzel Washington plays a smooth, intelligent well-dressed gangster with a short deadly temper. The character is based on the real Frank Lucas, an African-American crime boss who had enough money to threaten and pay off corrupt New York City cops. Lucas killed people in broad daylight in front of witnesses, and he supplied the streets of New York with the purest (read: most destructive) heroin for the lowest price. The details of his rise to the top of the drug game are chronicled in the film. He smuggled drugs in coffins returning from Vietnam in the early ’70s. How hot is that?

Pop in Jay-Z’s new album and your head nods involuntarily to blends of silky Barry White and Isley Brothers samples under the spell of producers such as the Neptunes, Diddy and Jermaine Dupri. Gangster life sure sounds relaxing.

Publicity photo
Sabrina Parker says Jay Z’s album glorifies gangster life.

There’s nothing on the album that evokes the anxiety of knowing murderers are coming for you, nothing that gets your blood flowing like the prospect of years in jail, nothing as heartbreaking as visiting a relative in the prison. The consequences of gangster life are not conveyed in albums such as Jay-Z’s latest that are designed only to celebrate the street life.

I can understand that. Who wants to listen to songs filled with doubt and fear? The only problem is that people who idolize these figures may not realize that gangster life isn’t a nonstop party. Beyond that, the most notorious gangsters are lifted to a higher level than the thugs who make headlines every day, but they’re no different.

It’s easier to see the fear and pain of Lucas’s mother or wife in the “American Gangster” film that inspired Jay-Z’s album. The film shows the devastating effects heroin has on users and their families.

Publicity photo
Denzel Washington plays Frank Lucas in American Gangster.

Interviews have shown Lucas to be a pretty cold-hearted gangster. In a 2000 interview with New York Magazine Lucas laughed at memories of the day he murdered a drug dealer named Tango in front of onlookers. In the Hollywood version of his story, Lucas walks back to a diner across the street and finishes breakfast with his family after the shooting. It’s an ice-cold and unforgettable scene in real life and in the film, and it inspired the new Jay-Z song “Success.”

While Frank Lucas lives to tell his story, many wannabe kingpins who failed are dead or in jail. Their stories aren’t portrayed on the big screen and they don’t advance to president of a major record label.

It’s easy to say anyone who allows music or movies to influence them is an idiot. But it takes more intelligence to separate fact from fiction when the lines are blurred in projects like ” American Gangster” — the album and the movie.