The History of Gangster Rap: From Schoolly D to Kendrick Lamar, the Rise of a Great American Art Form

343 Pages·2018·24.25 MB·English

by  Soren Baker

Contents
Introduction
Foreword
Native Son
“Squeeze the Trigger”
Niggaz Wit Attitude
The Revolution Gets Televised
Ice Cube: “A Gangsta’s Fairytale”
“Say Hello to My Little Friends”: Gangster Rap Meets Scarface and the Geto
Boys
Gangster Rap Is the Name
California Dreamin’: The Aftermath
A Doggy Dogg World
Bangin on Wax: There Goes the Neighborhood
G-Funk Meets Mob Music
Death Around the Corner: The So-Called East Coast/West Coast Beef
It Ain’t My Fault: Master P and the No Limit Revolution
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg Reignite, Sending Detractors “Up in Smoke”
Your Life’s on the Line
Money Turned Boys into Men
Gangster Rap at Thirty
Acknowledgments
Works Cited
Photo Credits
Index of Searchable Terms
MC Eiht and Mack 10 on the set of Thicker Than Water in Los Angeles in June 1998.

Introduction
IN THE MID-1980s, GANGSTER RAP DIDN’T HAVE A NAME. BUT
VIRTUALLY EVERYONE WHO HEARD IT REALIZED ITS
POTENCY.
At the time, I was a pre-teen growing up in suburban Maryland, and gangster rap
made the stories I read about in the newspaper and saw on the evening news
come to life in a way I didn’t know was possible. Instead of watching or
listening to some stuffy, detached (usually white male) reporter recount the
violence ravaging black, urban America, I suddenly found myself listening to
Schoolly D, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, Just-Ice, Eazy-E, and N.W.A.
They had created a new style of rap, one that contained graphic, X-rated stories
of gangs, guns, violence, drugs, sex, and mayhem told in a brash, unapologetic
manner.
Gangster rap, as it came to be known in the late 1980s, started as first-person
street reporting from those living in, and surrounded by, America’s urban
warzones, and exploded in popularity once the focus became the lives of
gangbangers and the people around them. These typically profane, often
insightful, and sometimes horrifying stories from this group of disenfranchised
young, black men opened my eyes to the depth and complexity of America’s
atrocious racial legacy, and also introduced me to a new generation of
storytellers backed by mesmerizing music that resonated with me even more
than the other rap I loved. Gangster rap was the telling of a reality seldom seen
and rarely discussed in popular culture.
Dana Dane, the groundbreaking Brooklyn, New York, rapper whose 1985
song “Nightmares” and 1987 song “Cinderfella Dana Dane” are widely regarded
as two of the best story raps of all time, said that gangster rap swept through
New York and the music industry in the late 1980s with magnum force. “We had
hardcore rap, but now it was getting even deeper in regards to bringing the inner
city and the hood lifestyle to the forefront,” Dana Dane told me. “It made cats
like myself and Salt-N-Pepa, who were doing radio-friendly music, try to figure
out if we were still going to fit in. It raised the stakes.”
Given that this wave of gangster rap emerged from Southern California, New
York rappers, who to this point in the late 1980s had been the only driving force
of rap, were unprepared to be unseated as the culture’s leaders. They were also
unaware of the significance of this new type of rap, one that exponentially
ratcheted up the intensity, violence, profanity, and sexuality of the music,
reflecting the gang-related lifestyle of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Growing up on the East Coast in the mideighties, I soon noticed the cultural
bias that New York artists and (a few years later) New York–based journalists
typically had against rap that didn’t come from New York’s five boroughs. I also
noticed that once the labeling of this segment of rap evolved from street rap,
hardcore rap, and reality rap into gangster rap, there was a separation among rap
artists.
“We didn’t understand the culture at the time,” Dana Dane told me, “and
where it was coming from.”
This unfamiliarity bred contempt. Yes, early artists from Philadelphia, Los
Angeles, Miami, and Houston often mimicked the sound, style, and flair New
York rappers employed in their music, but when gangster rap took off
commercially, thanks to Ice-T, Eazy-E, and N.W.A, there was a division. These
so-called gangster rappers were viewed as lesser artists by other rappers because
they focused not on lyrical agility, per se, but on tales from the hood. Thus,
gangster rappers became, in effect, the disenfranchised among the
disenfranchised.
That’s also why the perception of hardcore rappers in Los Angeles, who were
labeled as gangster rappers, differed from their New York counterparts. Kool G
Rap, Fat Joe, The Beatnuts, and Mobb Deep adopted the same style and subject
matter as gangster rappers, but were not viewed by many artists, journalists, and
fans as gangster rappers, because they did not rap about Los Angeles gang
culture. This group of New York rappers also didn’t fancy themselves as gang
members, nor were they perceived that way by the outside world.
Indeed, the “gangster,” “street,” “reality,” or “thug” rappers not from Los
Angeles typically rapped about the blanket persona and habits of a traditional
gangster and the criminal lifestyle rather than gangbanging itself. Thus, I have
focused this book on West Coast artists, while also including extensive coverage
of The Geto Boys (based in Houston, they emerged before the West Coast began
its musical dominance, referred to themselves as gangsters, and operated under
the direction of gangster label head James Prince), Master P and his No Limit
Records (whose artists operated as a gang-like unit, carrying themselves as
“soldiers” while billing themselves as gangsters, included the gangster rap
superstar Snoop Dogg, and were based in Richmond, California), as well as 50
Cent (who, despite being from the New-York area aligned himself with Dr. Dre
and the Game, had his own G-Unit crew, and name-drops and raps about Los
Angeles gangs in several of his songs, most notably “What Up Gangsta”).
It was also important for me to include almost an entire chapter on Schoolly
D, whose music has been sampled scores of times, and whose lyrics and flows
have been incorporated by everyone from the Notorious B.I.G to Nicki Minaj.
Although many people think the genre started with either N.W.A or Dr. Dre,
Schoolly D is known by rap cognoscenti as the creator of gangster rap,. Most of
all, I wanted to write about the major players who pushed the music forward,
from lesser-known acts such as Schoolly D and Above the Law to more
recognized trailblazers such as Ice-T and Master P.
As I was working on this book, my friend Big Tray Deee, one half of the
platinum gangster rap group Tha Eastsidaz, provided an explanation of gangster
rap that served as my barometer: “We didn’t start gangster shit and we didn’t
start gangster rap. But the lifestyle that we push and espouse, and what LA
means to the gangster world overall, our voice has helped shape the lives of
many youngsters right now [who] call themselves Gs, gangsters, or what have
you.”
So, New York rappers such as Kool G Rap, Fat Joe, The Beatnuts, Mobb
Deep, Wu-Tang Clan, and JAY-Z, as well as Cleveland’s Bone Thugs-N-
Harmony, Miami’s Trick Daddy, and Memphis’s 8Ball & MJG and Project Pat,
among many others, could be, and are, considered gangster rappers by some. For
my purposes, though, they are all immensely talented and successful artists, but
they didn’t shape or redirect gangster rap itself. The artists I focus on in this
book did. They are the ones who are the heart of this book, the acts whose
words, music, style, and business shaped the genre.
I also wanted to hone in on the story of the music itself. Who made the
important singles, albums, and projects? Why were the artists and the art they
made noteworthy? How did their music lead to the next generation of artists and
the evolution of the genre?
That’s why I dedicate much of this book to focusing on the music and the
business that influenced the music. These are essential and untold stories, ones
not previously presented in a detailed context, that show how they intersect
creatively and commercially.
As a fan, music has always been the thing for me. That’s why The History of
Gangster Rap does not delve extensively into beefs, or diss records, other than
particular ones that changed the trajectory of gangster rap. That’s why the rivalry
between 2Pac and the Notorious B.I.G. is covered, as is Ice Cube’s beef with
N.W.A, but I don’t explore the Westside Connection’s feud with Cypress Hill,
for instance. The first two resulted in dramatic changes in the music being made
and how the rap music business evolved. By contrast, the latter resulted in a few
clever and searing songs, but not much else.
Enough time has passed since gangster rap’s inception in the mid-1980s for
me to get a broader view of how gangster rap has influenced everything from
music to fashion to film to American culture overall. I was fortunate enough to
be a listener and a fan during gangster rap’s infancy, and, as a journalist who has
written about rap (and gangster rap) for more than twenty-four years in such
publications as the Los Angeles Times, The Source and the Chicago Tribune,
I’ve seen its growing pains, its raw emotion, and its flashes of brilliance. Over
the years, I saw it develop its balance of intellect and chaos, something that
continues today through the material of popular Compton artists such as
Kendrick Lamar and YG, as well as the work of Bronx, New York, rapper Cardi
B, whose “Bodak Yellow” song title and lyrics pay homage to the Bloods.
Gangster rap remains vital because the societal circumstances that inspired it still
exist.
It is within these pages that I’ll explore those societal circumstances and how
a great American art form rose, and continues to rise, out of them. Thank you for
reading.
SOREN BAKER
April 2018
Foreword
WHEN I WAS A KID, I LISTENED TO RAKIM, PUBLIC ENEMY, LL
COOL J, THE GETO BOYS, N.W.A, DJ MAGIC MIKE, 2 LIVE CREW,
BIG DADDY KANE, KOOL G RAP, BOOGIE DOWN PRODUCTIONS,
THE D.O.C. . . . I LISTENED TO EVERYTHING.
But I identified with gangster rap because it spoke to my soul. The hard times,
the things I was witnessing, the things I was curious about, it seemed as though
the music that I was gravitating to had the answers.
As I look back on it now, gangster rap was the soundtrack to my life because
things were really rough for me as a kid. My parents were very religious. They
hated rap music, so they wouldn’t let me consume it the way I wanted to. I
couldn’t have it blaring in my room. My listening was very hush-hush. The
music was an outlet for my aggression and my anger, and discovering new music
began to be something my friends and I did together. That was dope to me.
I was really into Ice Cube when he broke away from N.W.A. I was drawn to
his writing and how he expressed himself. That was something that was mind-
boggling to me. When his first album, AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, came out in
1990, there was no Internet and I didn’t have access to MTV, so I didn’t know
the ins and outs, or the reasons why Ice Cube had split from N.W.A. I just
thought that he had a solo record. But then when you actually heard the record,
that was the Nigganet. That’s where you got the information that you were
looking for. I thought the album was crazy. I thought it was fanfuckintastic. I
wore it out because the production was so dope—my favorite production team,
the Bomb Squad, was involved; they’d broken through with Public Enemy. I was
like, “Wow.” Cube’s expressions, his voice inflection. I was in awe of all of it.
Cube was a storyteller. He killed it on that album. Other people told stories,
but not like Cube’s. You could visualize them. You didn’t have to see a video to
see what he was talking about—he was painting pictures you could see in your
mind. It was relatable content, and for the people that couldn’t relate, who were
curious about South Central, this was about as close as they were going to get to
it. They’d stay way the fuck away from there.
As I was listening to gangster rap as a kid, I had no idea I wanted to be an