Does Gangsta Rap Get a Bad Rap?

Ben Westhoff's book Original Gangstas: The Untold Story of Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, Ice Cube, Tupac Shakur, and the Birth of West Coast Rap might be a little too involved, comprehensive, and detailed to be considered light reading, but if you want the whole tragic  story-- all the ins and outs and what-have-you's-- that led to the murders of Tupac and Biggie, then this is it.

Suge Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, is prominent-- and representative of the oddball mix of artistic ingenuity, ambition,  dynamism, and street ethics that came to a head in the 90's hip-hop world. The book is also a reminder of how much money was involved-- artists were still selling millions of CDs.

Because of the money, there are a lot of hip-hop artists involved in the East Coast/West Coast gangsta rap panoply. For example, here are the MCs and the Lil's from the index:

MCs

MC Breed, MC Domino, MC Hammer, MC Ren, MC Roxanne, MC Scarface, MC Shan, MC Eiht

Lil's

Lil' 1/2 Dead, Lil' Cease, Liil' Coco, Lil' Coco, Lil' Kim, Little Shawn

There are so many conglomerations of artists and bands that the plot gets daunting, but in the end, the takeaway is this: a lot of these artists got into hip-hop to escape the streets, and many of them-- especially Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Snoop, and Tupac-- were incredibly talented, but the East Coast/West Coast silliness actually reversed cause and effect and these artists became more and more "gangsta" when they achieved their ambitions. The money and the entourages and the drugs and sex and hedonism, the attempts to "keep it real," and the influence of gang members all led to a wild intersection of cultures . . . and real violence. The other takeaway is that Eazy-E had ten kids by eight different women. Impressive (but he dies of AIDS, which . . . not so much).

Westhoff doesn't think Tupac and Biggie's murders will be solved. The investigations were rather shoddy-- especially when the police conspiracy was debunked-- and now most of the key witnesses are dead (often by violence).

Russell Poole said, "If this was Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra who got murdered, there would have been arrests a long time ago." He's probably right.

As a dude from the suburbs, gangster rap fascinates me. It's raw and wild. It's certainly left our popular culture more crass and sexual and violent. It's often sexist. But, as Westhoff concludes, "gangsta rap also helped disenfranchised people gain a voice . . . the prevailing wisdom was black entertainers were supposed to act proper, and that same logic applied to black people generally.Even if the situations they grew up in were marked by poverty, crime, injustice, and squalor, they were expected to present themselves as if nothing was wrong . . . they took the experience of the inner city and made it understandable to people who had never set foot there. Gangsta rap, more than any other art form, made black life a permanent part of the American conversation."

Reading the book will inspire you to go back in time and listen. I constantly had my phone out, and switched between The Chronic, N.W.A., Snoop, Souls of Mischief, and Pharsyde. But no Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. Worst name and I really don't dig their music, though they kept cropping up in the book.

Anyway, go back and listen to some of it. You'll cringe, but the beats are great, the flow is fluid, and this may be the art form that defines our times.