WingsOfAnAngel
Banned
ill o.g.
Battle Points: 3
PART 1
"When we started, they said none of this would last six months."
Grandmaster Flash, 2003
Spend a few minutes watching MTV or listening to Top 40 radio, and what you find, over here, is some whiny, faceless rock group that still sounds like 1992 and, over there, a party going on with bad-boy MCs, hot models, shiny rims and more hooks than the school gym lockers.
It's no wonder the kids wanna party with Ludacris. It's no wonder rap is starting to dominate the music culture. And they said it wouldn't last. They said rap music would go the way of disco in short time. Like with rock, they were wrong.
We're 25 years past rap's first hit single, and the party is only raging harder. Last year, the biggest sensation and No. 1-selling artist was hardcore gangsta 50 Cent, leading a rap scene that accounted for half of the top 20 Billboard Hot 100 artists. This year, rap's reach extended well into the top categories at the Grammys, where it ran away with Album of the Year (OutKast). And remember when Top 40 stations used to boast that they didn't play rap? Well, they're not saying that now. In fact, they've co-opted it from the "urban" stations who used to just slip it in with the R&B.
And while we're not stopping the presses with this one, it's worth noting that hip-hop culture is not just what's booming out of iPods and car stereos. It's the Reebok G6 sneaker from 50 Cent, it's the "crunk" energy drink from Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, it's Jay-Z's Roca Wear and Nelly's Vokal line. It's Ice Cube and Eminem on the big screen and terms like "bling-bling" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Rap's long road to mainstream respectability has been a vibrant and turbulent one that has changed not only black culture but world culture. Rap music has spoken for community and given back to the community. It's offered style and fun and hope and protest and countless good things. It's also kept the police, the FBI, the moral watchdogs, the president and even the Rev. Al Sharpton awake at night.
The rap culture then and now has nurtured its share of well-meaning artists, "freeing," as rap legend KRS-One once said, "the minds of inner-city people."
But what is troubling to some is that for every Talib Kweli, there are 10 like Ludacris (not that the dude isn't a riot). In 2004, the party gangstas and thugs rule the school, drawing the wrath of both veteran artists and social activists concerned about their effect on young people.
Bakari Kitwana, a lifelong hip-hop fan and author of Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture, says that what was once a subculture in hip-hop has worked its way to center stage.
"At some point, what's being said is debilitating and dehumanizing. I don't ever accept that the n-word has been divorced from its historical roots, no matter how many times people use it. People who believe [it's OK] are deceiving themselves. They want to say that 'pimping' is a style of clothes. I don't believe that. When I hear young kids on the playground refer to young girls as bitches and know that they got it from listening to this music, that's inexcusable to me."
Two years ago, Sharpton wrote that when he asked rappers why they used so much profanity and misogyny in their lyrics, they said they were like "a mirror to society." The reverend responded, "Well, I don't know about you, but I use a mirror to correct what's wrong with me."
Last year, Chuck D, of Public Enemy, denounced the gangsta scene in a speech to students at UCLA, saying, "At the end of the 'hood is jail and death. And we're gonna put it to the music? That's vile."
Nelson George, veteran journalist and author of Hip Hop America and Post-Soul Nation, thinks we've already settled that argument. Asked if he was concerned about content, he said, "Why would I be? It's too late to be. I was troubled by the content of N.W.A. and Snoop back in 1993. It's a little late for me to be worried about it now. These guys aren't saying anything new. That's the problem, that they're not saying anything new. Lyrically, 50 Cent's album could have been made in '93. There's nothing really new about the guy."
George believes that while the business of rap is growing, artistically, it's hit a plateau, at least in America. "It's all become dance music. Nothing wrong with that. It just means that a lot of the artists who are having the biggest hit records have the least amount to say. MC skills are less and less important. I think that's a huge difference. It was a goal to be a great MC then. Now, being a great MC is OK, but having hit records is more important."
And the turnover for hitmakers in rap is ruthless -- ask anyone from Chuck D to MC Hammer to Ja Rule. There are no Springsteens, Stones or U2s in the rap game. There's no vehicle for the elders to guide the way. Those who continue to create are relegated back to the underground (Public Enemy, KRS-One) or, like, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah and LL Cool J find a second life on the screen.
Even current chart-toppers are watching their backs. Jay-Z and DMX shocked fans late last year by announcing they would retire after less than seven- or eight-year reigns, declaring they would rather go out on top.
Why is the career span of the rapper so fleeting? Is the hunger for the next big thing even stronger than in rock? Is it a lack of loyalty in a culture where touring is less common and singles reign over albums? Is it the lack of radio stations cranking out classic rap?
Or, is it just that rap, as Chuck D said, is the "CNN of black culture," making yesterday's rap song yesterday's news.
"Hip-hop is a very 'now' art form," Kitwana says. "There was just an interview with Ice Cube in The New York Times where they were asking about the N.W.A. period, and he didn't apologize for anything. He said it was a time capsule of where he was. It's a brilliant way of phrasing it. Hip-hop is a series of time capsules. Most times artists are products of their time, and they can't escape it."
"In rap," says Sway Calloway of MTV News and the long-running syndicated radio program The Wake Up Show the turnover is so fast, you have to still appeal to the younger part of the demographic to sustain some longevity. Once you lose it -- be it that you made a few albums, you have nothing else to talk about, your social, economic status changes so you don't have the same hunger, the same passion -- you kind of fade away."
For nearly three decades, the world has watched a parade of artists black, white, violent, peaceful, sexy, funny, dope, whack, political, criminal, beautiful, beastly, too phat, too short, good-cred, no-cred, villainous and revolutionary. The history shows that there's always a fresh face to take your place, which might be one of the reasons that it hasn't gotten stale for new generations.
It's a tough way to go but, as Will Smith once said, "It's all good."
PART 2
According to SoundScan, 70 percent of the paying (and downloading) audience of hip-hop is white kids from the suburbs. That's a long way from the South Bronx, circa 1973.
Although it may have seemed like it, rap didn't come out of nowhere. Its seeds could be heard in African griots, Chicago blues, bebop scat, Jamaican toasts, the beat poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and even the verses of Muhammad Ali, but the credit for hip-hop -- the culture that encompasses rap, graffiti art, DJing and break dancing -- usually goes to Clive Campbell, aka DJ Kool Herc.
Around '73, a time when black Americans had made civil rights gains but were still suffering from high crime and unemployment rates, the Jamaican-born DJ threw block parties in rec centers and basketball courts, where he would experiment with what he called "breakbeats" on classic funk records.
"Kool Herc started playing music at Cedar Park in the Bronx," says legendary rapper KRS-One. "It was a community thing. Like, 'I'm doing this for the love of doing it. I'm doing this because I have to do it.' "
Grandmaster Flash, with his sequined suits and wizardry with electronics, joined the party to perfect the art of turntable scratching and introduce the MC or rapper, who would battle one another to create the best rhyme and eventually steal the spotlight from the DJs. Afrika Bambaataa, a DJ and gang leader who had grown tired of the violence, traded in the Black Spades for Zulu Nation, a youth organization that started nurturing young MCs. He combined his positive Afrocentric hip-hop with far-out techno beats, eventually on the hit "Planet Rock."
Although rappers and DJs were rhyming, battling and cutting tapes for years, an overnight sensation from New Jersey, the Sugarhill Gang, beat them to the punch. In the dying days of disco, a former R&B singer named Sylvia Robinson assembled the Sugarhill Gang, who borrowed the beat from Chic's "Good Times" and rapped out the playful "Rapper's Delight" in October 1979. When it went to No. 4 on the R&B charts, rap was suddenly out of the hood.
"When 'Rapper's Delight' sold 2 million records in 1979," said KRS-One, "all the attention was placed on rap music as a selling tool, not on hip-hop as a consciousness-raising tool, as a maturing of the community. When hip-hop culture got discarded for the money to be made into rap product, we went wrong right there."
Kurtis Blow, a former break dancer and block-party veteran, followed the Sugarhill Gang to the charts a few months later with "Christmas Rappin'" and topped it with the smash rap-rock crossover "The Breaks" in 1980, giving him the early line on King of Rap. Kool Moe Dee, another pioneer from the old school, mastered the MC boast with his crew, the Treacherous Three.
Although fans of The Clash did not react well to Grandmaster Flash as tour openers, rockers couldn't ignore rap for long after Talking Heads spin-off the Tom Tom Club ("Genius of Love"), Blondie ("Rapture") and The Clash ("The Magnificent Seven") all cut irresistibly catchy rap-infected singles in late 1980/early 1981.
Aptly, it was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, under the Sugarhill wing, who created the blueprint for rap as a medium capable of addressing social issues. In 1982, Flash and lead MC Melle Mel delivered "The Message," with a chorus that became the hip-hop mantra: "It's like a jungle sometimes/it makes me wonder/how I keep from going under."
"That was the point at which hip-hop demonstrated that it could be used as a means of social and political critique," says Todd Boyd, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and author of The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop. "Early '80s, Reagan era, you have a point about living in the inner-city at that time and the conditions for poor and working class people. It indicated that hip-hop could be more than boasting and bragging and rhyming to be funny, which is all cool and part of hip-hop, but 'The Message' indicated hip-hop could be serious as well. Grandmaster Flash took the game to the next level."
The Furious Five set the stage for a hardcore rap outfit that would drive the music further into the heart of America. In 1983, Run-DMC, a trio from Queens, started dropping singles, beginning with "It's Like That" and "Sucker MCs (Krush-Groove 1)," that would take rap to the house.
Though middle-class, Run-DMC looked street in their black hats and thick chains and hit it like rockers with harder beats, metallic guitar samples and overlapping deliveries. Under the banner of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin's Def Jam, they brought the whole package: They were the first rappers embraced by MTV, the pioneers of the rap "album." Even their shoes -- Adidas, of course -- were for sale. Their media was multi -- from their appearance in the cult classic and Def Jam bio "Krush Groove" to their explosive pairing with Aerosmith for a "Walk This Way" remix in 1986.
"In New York," George says, "people saw hip-hop as a Harlem-Bronx thing. Queens, at that point in time, was like coming from Kansas. These guys from the suburbs, like Run, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, they extended the style and the lyrical content of the music. Maybe because they had more distance from the chaos of the inner city, they brought an artistic sophistication to the music that wasn't there before."
Run-DMC fever was so high, it became dangerous. The group's 1986 Raisin' Hell tour was marred by melees that would lead to some cities -- including Pittsburgh -- to seek a ban on rap shows, a stigma that would go on for years.
Raising hell right along with Run-DMC were the Beastie Boys, three middle-class Jewish punk rockers who fought for the right to party -- and won. In '86, Licensed to Ill, to the dismay of black rappers, became the first rap album to hit No. 1. The Beasties, also helmed by Rick Rubin, took some heat for their rap-rock dabbling, but no one denied them their cleverness and creativity, which haven't run out yet.
Hot on the heels of Run-DMC came two other hard-hitters that defined the so-called Golden Age of Hip-Hop: Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, both arriving in 1987.
Nothing -- before, after or probably ever -- sounded like Public Enemy. Bringing the noise, the chaos and the militant style and agenda, Public Enemy stormed the scene as the "the prophets of rage," the most political and important group in the history of hip-hop. Mind you, at the time, rock's biggest hit-makers were Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis and Starship. Led by the commanding Chuck D and comic foil Flavor Flav, Public Enemy considered rap "the CNN of black culture" and dropped bombshells on the status quo like "Bring the Noise," "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Fight the Power."
"Public Enemy, that was the voice of the culture, the voice of the streets," Calloway says. "And it was educated. It had direction. It wasn't a sellout. It was passionate, it was from the heart, it was angry, it was edgy and innovative. Chuck D to this day is my hero. People say, 'Who is your hero?' Hey man, Martin Luther King is definitely a hero, but Chuck D directly affected me."
Public Enemy's message didn't sit well with everyone. Chuck D caused controversy when he called Louis Farrakhan a "prophet," and Professor Griff was briefly dismissed from PE for associating Jews with "wickedness." Despite that, PE's commercial heyday lasted through Fear of a Black Planet and Apocalypse 91.
BDP was KRS-One (Kris Parker) and beatmaster Scott LaRock, who incorporated Jamaican elements and attacked with a style that left you wondering if they were educators or gangstas on Criminal Minded.
"I would say it was 50-50," KRS says. "Yeah, it was 50 percent glamorizing of thug life. And the other 50 percent was to bring light to thug life with some possible solutions. The reason I'm called contradictory and even arrogant is I walk this thin line between 'Criminal Minded' and 'Stop the Violence.' "
LaRock took a bullet in '87; KRS-One used that grief to become "The Teacher" and is still making consciousness-raising hip-hop.
Not all of the New York rappers were hell-bent on revolution. LL Cool J, another Def Jam star, made a career out of walking the line between tough and tender, street and sell-out. A former b-boy who started writing when he was 9, LL delivered the first rap ballad with "I Need Love," and when it seemed as if he was down, he met the challenge of the West Coast gangstas with "Mama Said Knock You Out" in 1990. The tally so far on LL Cool J is a half-dozen platinum albums, a sitcom and a Hollywood career that's even survived "Rollerball." He also helped set the stage for future battles between Biggie & Tupac, Nas & Jay-Z and 50 Cent & Ja Rule by sparring with Kool Moe Dee, who accused him of ripping off his style.
While LL was romantic, the roots of a sleazier booty rap could be found in 2 Live Crew, a Florida outfit so controversial, it spent as much time in court as on stage. In 1987 a record store clerk in Florida was charged with (and later acquitted of) a felony for selling a copy of "The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are" after it was ruled by court to be obscene. The group's follow-up, "Move Somethin,' " was the first rap album issued in a "clean" version.
The East Coast in the Golden Age isn't complete without mention of Eric B and Rakim, known for their eloquent flow and James Brown samples they were actually sued for; Big Daddy Kane, for his aggressive lover's rap; Doug E. Fresh, for being the first human beatbox; The Fat Boys, for 750 pounds of comic novelty; De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, for introducing an alternative style of bohemian jazz-rap; and Salt-N-Pepa, for being the first big female crew to break through the boys club.
"The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived," Calloway says of the Golden Age. "Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new. That era followed the original code, the unspoken code, the groundwork laid in hip-hop culture that everyone followed and knew about. It wasn't like a constitution or something you could look up in the library. It was something you discovered, which was to not be a "biter," no matter what you do. If you were a DJ, a b-boy, having integrity, making music that counted, with an agenda, that's what was important.
"The financial? It wasn't about that. With that atmosphere, the music that came out was fresh and new."
PART 3
Rap may have been nothin' but a New York thing for most of the '80s, but the West Coast was about to rise up, and it didn't sound anything like the Eagles.
In 1988, the New York hip-hoppers were sucker-punched by the Left Coast with the release of N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, ushering in a more decadent era that produced countless imitators and added fuel to rap's critics.
Led by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, N.W.A. (N **** z With Attitude) reported on and exalted gang life -- from street violence to drugs to the denigration of women. N.W.A. issued brutal anthems like "Gangsta Gangsta" and "[F] Tha Police," which declared, "A young n - - - - on a warpath/And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath/Of cops, dyin in L.A." Even the FBI took notice, issuing them a stern warning to watch their step.
"Even though N.W.A. said 'gangsta,' they were speaking about a mentality that plagued the inner streets, the ghettos," says Sway Calloway of MTV News and the Wake Up Show. "When they said 'F the Police,' it was just a common sentiment that was shared by youth in Los Angeles at the time, because, when you look back now, there was a lot of corruption in that police department. They spoke about what took place in their community. I saw it as rap about reality, not so much gangsta rap."
"When N.W.A. came out," says Bakari Kitwana, author of Hip Hop Generation "mainstream black political leaders were not talking about paramilitary policing in black communities and high incarceration rates. A lot of that stuff was still under the radar. When N.W.A. came out with 'F the Police,' it was very striking. What you're seeing is a snapshot of a generation of young people locked out of the mainstream and having no vehicle to channel their rage and their dissatisfaction with the failure of society to bring them up in a respectable way."
The outrage started with the name and worked up from there.
"The fact that they would use the n-word as they used it, at that moment in hip-hop, it was groundbreaking, and it wasn't a cliche," Kitwana says. "Now, 15 years later, it's a cliche. Hip-hop in that regard has become a parody of itself, even when it's not trying to be."
Money battles within N.W.A. sent Ice Cube on his way to a solo career, taking a lot of the "Attitude" with him. Ice Cube made his peace with the East Coast by teaming up with Public Enemy's Bomb Squad to produce AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and expanded into film with Boyz N the Hood, launching a new career that seems to have no limit.
Although he started out on party rap, the talented and intelligent Ice T toughened up his act considerably with 1991's O.G.: Original Gangster, a chilling take on street life -- meant as a caution -- that also introduced his rock band, Body Count. A year later, Ice T hit with the most controversial song in the history of rap, "Cop Killer." Arriving in the wake of the Rodney King incident and just before the L.A. riots, it was written from the perspective of a man out to "get even" for police brutality. Ice T claimed he was playing a character in the song. "I ain't never killed no cop," he said at the time. "I felt like it a lot of times."
Ice T became Public Enemy No. 1 to police and watchdog groups calling for a boycott. The song was removed from his album and eventually he was removed from Warner Bros. Records. In one of the most ironic examples of outlaw culture being assimilated into the mainstream, Ice T now plays a cop on NBC's Law & Order.
As for Dre, he was never considered Cube's match as an MC, but it's not a stretch to call him rap's greatest producer. A 1992 landmark, The Chronic established Suge Knight's Death Row Records and the emergence of Dr.Dre' s G-funk sound, rooted in a cool '70s funk-soul groove and sampling the likes of Parliament, Isaac Hayes and Donny Hathaway.
The Chronic also introduced rap's next superstar. Unlike the aggressive '80s rappers, Snoop Dogg had a lazy drawl that made him sound like a close friend of the chronic indeed. Along with the weed, he was also into the "Gin and Juice," preferably behind the wheel. Snoop could never be accused of playing a role -- not when he was arrested for his alleged connection in a drive-by shooting during the making of his 1993 debut, Doggystyle.
"Doggystyle" became the first debut ever to hit the charts at No. 1, and singles like "Murder was the Case" and "What's My Name?" took it to four times platinum. If you're wondering why they're saying "my shizzle's gone fazizzle" in an Old Navy commercial, you can trace it back to "Tha Shiznit" on that record. As for the murder case, he was cleared, and though he hasn't matched the success of "Doggystyle," Snoop has yet to fazizzle. As a side note, he's become a peewee football coach, adding a new twist to his pimp image.
PART 4
Snoop was sharing the West Coast spotlight with a more energetic rapper on his way to building an even more energetic rap sheet. Tupac Shakur, born in jail as the son of a Black Panther, was a side rapper and dancer in the Digital Underground who went solo in late 1991 with 2Pacalypse Now taking on political and gangsta themes in an angry, poetic style. Then Vice President Dan Quayle called for a ban on the record, declaring "it has no place in our society"
Tupac's film career was in full swing when his second record came out, but by the time his third record, Me Against the World,hit the charts at No. 1, he was serving time for sexual assault. Chuck D once said of Tupac, he was "someone headed in a speeding car toward a brick wall for somebody's entertainment."
Tupac found an East Coast rival in Biggie Smalls, or the Notorious B.I.G., a street hustler from Brooklyn. Biggie was aligned with record executive Sean "Puffy" Combs, who made him the focus of his new Bad Boy label. Building his hype with guest spots on Mary J. Blige singles, Biggie went gold in 1994 with the ominously titled Ready to Die, a debut that revealed a super-size talent, an MC who was dark, funny and adept with a rhyme.
But Biggie's career was troubled. There were brushes with the law, a car accident that left him briefly disabled and an accusation by Tupac that Biggie was partly responsible for an attack on him. Tupac also taunted him with the song "Hit 'Em Up," on which he claimed to have slept with Biggie's wife, Faith Evans.
In September 1996, the same year of his fourth CD (and Death Row debut), All Eyez On Me, Tupac was shot and killed coming out of a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. As for Biggie, six months later and three weeks before his Life After Death dropped, he was the victim of a drive-by shooting in L.A. -- thought to be a retaliation for Tupac's shooting. Both deaths are unsolved, but both careers are thriving. In fact, Tupac's Resurrection recently hit No. 2 on the charts -- it features a duet with Biggie.
A year after the shooting, Combs, who had the golden touch as a producer for rappers such as Biggie and pop groups such as TLC, produced his own solo debut, No Way Out, which borrowed the Police's "Every Breath You Take" for the tender Biggie tribute, "I'll Be Missing You." The song and record seemed to own 1997, even if nobody was ready to declare Combs a top-notch MC. He is credited, though, for one of rap's hedonistic anthems, "All About the Benjamins." "The gangsta thing became a pose," says Nelson George, author of Hip Hop America. "It became like wrestling very quickly."
Ice Cube, one of the godfathers of gangsta rap, would say in 1998, "Hip-hop's not what it was when I got in it. Now people are in it for the money and the fame. It ain't about having skills or trying to say something to make any kind of difference, and that's what makes it frustrating."
Of course, there was more to the gangsta scene than the Biggie-Tupac drama. There was a New York empire known as the Wu Tang Clan, which became the biggest group of the decade in more ways than one. Wu debuted in 1993 as a loose collection of nine smart and menacing MCs working their hardcore raps over spare beats, with plenty of martial arts themes. Enter the Wu-Tang set the groundwork for solo careers for Wu members Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, RZA, Genius, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, among them. After a slow build with the debut, the second Wu record, Wu Tang Forever, debuted at No. 1 and introduced Cappadonna.
None of the Wu members individually would match the intensity or star power of two East Coast MCs who would step into the Biggie-Tupac void: DMX and Jay-Z.
PART 5
With his fierce presence and even fiercer voice, DMX came off like one of his pit bulls. An abused street kid from Baltimore, DMX debuted at No. 1 in 1998 with It's Dark and Hell is Hot, and all of his subsequent records hit No. 1 as well. And Then There was X, featuring "Party Up (Up in Here)" sold more than 5 million copies. DMX's work balances gangsta style with a fiery spiritual side.
To Nelson George, DMX is a prime example of the lines in rap being blurred. "I don't there's such thing as positive or negative hip-hop. Take DMX: Some people would say he's negative, but I think he's made some really interesting records that are about the complexity of guilt. He's an interesting artist because he feels guilt and remorse, something that hip-hop is not big on."
No MC seems more comfortable on the mic than Jay-Z, another of rap's best and more complex characters. A hustler from the projects in Brooklyn, Jay-Z has proven to be adept as both rapper and entrepreneur. He's a pure freestyler who combines the gangsta bravado of Biggie with an easy pop sense and the upbeat vibe of a "consciousness" rapper. He's one of the few who could get away with a line like, "I dumbed down for my audience, doubled my dollars." Rather than signing with a label, Jay-Z formed his own Roc-A-Fella Records, with Dame Dash, and in 1996 released Reasonable Doubt,a classic that tells his back story with humor, cockiness and flow.
Through his nine records, Jay-Z has worked with the finest producers -- Timbaland, The Neptunes, Just Blaze, etc. -- to become one of hip-hop's most respected hit makers. As an example of rap's potential, he rose from ghetto drug dealer to "CEO of the R-O-C," where he's broken rappers such as Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek, launched a fashion line, worked for charity and wooed pop star Beyonce. Jay-Z says The Black Album, a career-peaking effort that debuted at No. 1 in December, will be his last record, but there are millions of fans who are hoping that isn't so.
"I think Jay-Z is at the top of the game," says Todd Boyd, who teaches a course on hip-hop at the University of Southern California. "I love Big ... but there's not a large enough body of work there. When you look at Jay-Z's body of work, you're talking about three of the best albums in the history of hip-hop -- Reasonable Doubt, Blueprint and The Black Album -- not to mention the amazing commercial success while maintaining street cred. So he's got something for the masses and true hip-hop heads. Jay-Z is untouchable."
Jay-Z found a worthy rival in Nas, a very wordy street poet and son of world musician Olu Dara, who also issued a classic debut in 1994's Illmatic. He lost some of his street cred with subsequent poppy records, but regained it when he struck back at Jay-Z's taunt on Stillmatic and followed with the acclaimed God's Son.
Reflecting on the hardcore style of rap's gangstas and street reporters of the '90s, Nelson George says, "What was really serious was the fact that crack was overwhelming all these neighborhoods. That was really serious. The actual records about what was going on with crack was just a symptom. People say, 'Look at these evil rappers'..... No. They were writing about the fact that kids had automatic weapons and crack was turning girls into crack hos and undermining the police in those cities as well, turning cops corrupt. All of those records were the result of a nasty period in American cities, and Americans wanted someone to blame."
NOTE:
*In the midst of DMX and Jay-Z rising to fame...the world of Hip Hop would lose 3 soldiers.Harlem rapper..Big L was on the verge of being a star. He recorded "Ebonics" a breakdown of street slang. The single was blowing up , people and record labels like Rocafella Records.. were startimg to notice his talent . Unfortunately his strive for success was cut short. Big L was murdered on the very streets where he grew Up. He was shot 7 Times in the head and chest on February 15, 1999.
*Big Pun was the first latin rapper to ever go platinum with his debut album..Capital Punishment.Unfortunately Pun was battling with a chronic weight problem and died of a heart attack and respiratoy failure.
*Freaky Tah, a member of the Lost Boyz, was shot and killed in the New York borough of Queens after leaving a party.The group released 3 albums together but later disbanded after Freaky's death.Group member Spigg Nice is in jail for life
PART 6
I'm tired of people judging what's real hip-hop/half the time, it be some [n----s] whose album flopped."
Nelly on his song "#1".
Nelson George says he was working at Billboard as late as 1990 and people were still asking the question: "How long will this thing last?"
The answer seemed to come with rap's ability to diversify and cross over with rock, R&B, jazz, soul and world music. Todd Boyd, who teaches hip-hop at the University of Southern California, says of the early '90s, "It was the era that indicated that hip-hop was going to be around for a long time, and there was going to be different varieties of styles and representation available."
Although gangstas stole the headlines in the '90s, it was also the decade when rap proved it could fly off in infinite directions, from the "jiggy wit it" style of Will Smith to the worldly vibe of the Fugees to the funky boys of the Dirty South.
Rap also continued to mix with rock, whether in the politically charged Rage Against the Machine, the thuggish Limp Bizkit, the blunt-crazy Cypress Hill or the white-trashy Kid Rock.
Far from the thug side was MC Hammer, who had no worries about clean versions. A onetime mascot for the Oakland A's, Hammer pounded home the pop potential and pop folly of rap. With his genie pants and "Super Freak" sample, he hit to the tune of 10 million copies in 1990, rising to the point where he became the poster boy for sellout and was over by 1994.
And yet, Hammer was Melle Mel compared to Vanilla Ice, who topped the chart the same year by swiping the bass line of "Under Pressure" for "Ice Ice Baby." The Miami native came packaged with a gangsta past that no one seemed convinced of, prompting white group 3rd Bass to beat up a likeness of Vanilla Ice (played by Henry Rollins) in its video for "Pop Goes the Weasel."
Will Smith managed to parlay his bubblegum rap into a serious acting career. Smith first appeared as the latter half of Philly's DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, a group that spoke to junior rap fans in the late '80s. They went multi-platinum and actually won the first-ever rap Grammy with "Parents Just Don't Understand." Smith went on to star in the sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and went solo in 1997 with Big Willie Style, adding "jiggy wit it" to the mainstream vocabulary.
Naughty By Nature, discovered by Queen Latifah, had it both ways, hitting big with "O.P.P." in 1991 while still holding on to an underground following. P.M. Dawn, a group that came out of the bohemian De La Soul school, became a favorite among the college crowd with a blend of hip-hop and soul. The tension between pop and hardcore rappers peaked when KRS-One, reacting to a P.M. dis, stormed the stage at a P.M. Dawn concert and took over the show with his own crew.
Somewhere between the pop and hardcore rappers were the people of the Native Tongues movement, originated by Afrika Bambaataa in the '80s to celebrate a positive and spiritual side of hip-hop, without losing its edge or party vibe. It was a modern version of Zulu Nation, and its followers included critical favorite De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, of whose record the Village Voice said, "You could play it in the background when you're reading Proust."
Also signing on to Native Tongues were Queen Latifah and Brand Nubian, an Islamic trio so aggressively Afrocentric they were branded as reverse racists. Native Tongues inspired New York jazz-rap fusionists Digable Planets and Arrested Development, who rose out of the South in 1992 with a breezy acoustic style of hip-hop.
The Fugees, a trio with a soulful singer from New Jersey and two members of Haitian descent, worked the socially conscious side of hip-hop, slowing down the beat with reggae, R&B, soul and folk. The Fugees' second album, 1996's The Score, sold an unprecedented 17 million copies. When the Fugees split soon after, Lauryn Hill went on to win five Grammys in 1999 for her solo work, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Wyclef Jean became one of hip-hop's most ambitious innovators.
The Fugees were also the kingpins of the Smokin' Grooves Tour, which restored rap's standing as a touring genre. Smokin' Grooves shined the light on alternative acts such as Busta Rhymes, The Roots and Black Eyed Peas, who actually sneaked a topical song, "Where is the Love?," into the mainstream last year.
Following that lead, artists such as Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli take on a broader range of topics and emotions -- anger to joy -- with a jazzy or funky flow that's not as burdened by the hook. On his top-notch Quality, Kweli raps on the proliferation of weapons, the politics of Sept. 11 and the birth of his daughter without ever sounding soft. At one point he raps, "Kurt Loder asked me what I say to a dead cop's wife/Cops kill my people every day, that's life."
Def and Kweli both reject the "positive" and "conscious" label of rap. Kweli told the PG last year, "It gets overwhelming to have those prefixes in front of you. I get labeled a lot. But I try very hard not to become preachy in my music and just paint realistic pictures."
KRS-One says that keeping the likes Def and Kweli off the radio in favor of bling-bling rap is that same "sense of denial and apathy [that] is destroying this country."
PART 7
When producer Dr. Dre heard Eminem on tape, he issued a simple order: "Find him. Now." He didn't even know he was white. But, sure enough, in 1999, rap found its Elvis in Marshall Mathers, one of the most talented, disturbed and disturbing figures in all of pop music. The kind of kid who grew up on government cheese, he's got a voice that can cut through white bread. Eminem earned his respect in Detroit freestyle battles and then at the 1997 Rap Olympics in Los Angeles with white-hot rage and staccato flow.
Violence, homophobia and misogyny are taken to extremes on The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, which include fantasies about killing his wife and references to his own mother as a "slut." That, combined with various violent real-life escapades, made Eminem's damaged psyche an American soap opera.
Oddly enough, between his Grammy duet with Elton John, his fatherly songs on The Eminem Show and his sympathetic portrayal in 8 Mile, columnists were soon writing that he was loved even by soccer moms. Eminem has sold more than 20 million records, of which he's rapped, "Let's do the math/if I was black/I would have sold half."
The extent of his skills is a hot-button issue. Andre 3000 of OutKast and MC Sway rank him among the best. Bakari Kitwana, author of Hip-Hop Generation,says, "I think he is exceptional, but people are so surprised and stunned that he's white and can rap so well, they are quick to elevate him above black rappers."
One thing's for sure. Eminem is one of 50 Cent's favorite white boys. . The Eminem/Dre camp, known as Shady/Aftermath, introduced 50 last year with a gangsta back story to beat all -- the dude's bulletproof! Yet another onetime dealer, the toned, tattooed rapper from Queens was signed to Columbia and already infamous for "How to Rob" -- a single detailing how he'll stick up a whole host of rap stars -- when, first, he was stabbed at the Hit Factory and then was shot nine times with a 9 mm.
He lived to talk about it but was too hot for Columbia, which dropped him. Eminem put up seven figures to sign him, and the investment paid off as his retro-gangsta debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin', sold more than 5 million last year on the strength of "In Da Club" and "P.I.M.P," songs that even pre-teens seem to love.
"Musically, in his delivery, he is an exceptional rapper," says Kitwana. "The content of what he's saying, sometimes, I find offensive. It continues to push black people into these stereotypes. In 'P.I.M.P.,' he's making this association of black people as pimps, bitches and hos. Black people have to realize that it may just be a song to them, but there's some kid in Europe and Japan, and it's not just a song. [It's] representing black people in America."
"When we started, they said none of this would last six months."
Grandmaster Flash, 2003
Spend a few minutes watching MTV or listening to Top 40 radio, and what you find, over here, is some whiny, faceless rock group that still sounds like 1992 and, over there, a party going on with bad-boy MCs, hot models, shiny rims and more hooks than the school gym lockers.
It's no wonder the kids wanna party with Ludacris. It's no wonder rap is starting to dominate the music culture. And they said it wouldn't last. They said rap music would go the way of disco in short time. Like with rock, they were wrong.
We're 25 years past rap's first hit single, and the party is only raging harder. Last year, the biggest sensation and No. 1-selling artist was hardcore gangsta 50 Cent, leading a rap scene that accounted for half of the top 20 Billboard Hot 100 artists. This year, rap's reach extended well into the top categories at the Grammys, where it ran away with Album of the Year (OutKast). And remember when Top 40 stations used to boast that they didn't play rap? Well, they're not saying that now. In fact, they've co-opted it from the "urban" stations who used to just slip it in with the R&B.
And while we're not stopping the presses with this one, it's worth noting that hip-hop culture is not just what's booming out of iPods and car stereos. It's the Reebok G6 sneaker from 50 Cent, it's the "crunk" energy drink from Lil Jon and the East Side Boyz, it's Jay-Z's Roca Wear and Nelly's Vokal line. It's Ice Cube and Eminem on the big screen and terms like "bling-bling" in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Rap's long road to mainstream respectability has been a vibrant and turbulent one that has changed not only black culture but world culture. Rap music has spoken for community and given back to the community. It's offered style and fun and hope and protest and countless good things. It's also kept the police, the FBI, the moral watchdogs, the president and even the Rev. Al Sharpton awake at night.
The rap culture then and now has nurtured its share of well-meaning artists, "freeing," as rap legend KRS-One once said, "the minds of inner-city people."
But what is troubling to some is that for every Talib Kweli, there are 10 like Ludacris (not that the dude isn't a riot). In 2004, the party gangstas and thugs rule the school, drawing the wrath of both veteran artists and social activists concerned about their effect on young people.
Bakari Kitwana, a lifelong hip-hop fan and author of Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African-American Culture, says that what was once a subculture in hip-hop has worked its way to center stage.
"At some point, what's being said is debilitating and dehumanizing. I don't ever accept that the n-word has been divorced from its historical roots, no matter how many times people use it. People who believe [it's OK] are deceiving themselves. They want to say that 'pimping' is a style of clothes. I don't believe that. When I hear young kids on the playground refer to young girls as bitches and know that they got it from listening to this music, that's inexcusable to me."
Two years ago, Sharpton wrote that when he asked rappers why they used so much profanity and misogyny in their lyrics, they said they were like "a mirror to society." The reverend responded, "Well, I don't know about you, but I use a mirror to correct what's wrong with me."
Last year, Chuck D, of Public Enemy, denounced the gangsta scene in a speech to students at UCLA, saying, "At the end of the 'hood is jail and death. And we're gonna put it to the music? That's vile."
Nelson George, veteran journalist and author of Hip Hop America and Post-Soul Nation, thinks we've already settled that argument. Asked if he was concerned about content, he said, "Why would I be? It's too late to be. I was troubled by the content of N.W.A. and Snoop back in 1993. It's a little late for me to be worried about it now. These guys aren't saying anything new. That's the problem, that they're not saying anything new. Lyrically, 50 Cent's album could have been made in '93. There's nothing really new about the guy."
George believes that while the business of rap is growing, artistically, it's hit a plateau, at least in America. "It's all become dance music. Nothing wrong with that. It just means that a lot of the artists who are having the biggest hit records have the least amount to say. MC skills are less and less important. I think that's a huge difference. It was a goal to be a great MC then. Now, being a great MC is OK, but having hit records is more important."
And the turnover for hitmakers in rap is ruthless -- ask anyone from Chuck D to MC Hammer to Ja Rule. There are no Springsteens, Stones or U2s in the rap game. There's no vehicle for the elders to guide the way. Those who continue to create are relegated back to the underground (Public Enemy, KRS-One) or, like, Ice Cube, Queen Latifah and LL Cool J find a second life on the screen.
Even current chart-toppers are watching their backs. Jay-Z and DMX shocked fans late last year by announcing they would retire after less than seven- or eight-year reigns, declaring they would rather go out on top.
Why is the career span of the rapper so fleeting? Is the hunger for the next big thing even stronger than in rock? Is it a lack of loyalty in a culture where touring is less common and singles reign over albums? Is it the lack of radio stations cranking out classic rap?
Or, is it just that rap, as Chuck D said, is the "CNN of black culture," making yesterday's rap song yesterday's news.
"Hip-hop is a very 'now' art form," Kitwana says. "There was just an interview with Ice Cube in The New York Times where they were asking about the N.W.A. period, and he didn't apologize for anything. He said it was a time capsule of where he was. It's a brilliant way of phrasing it. Hip-hop is a series of time capsules. Most times artists are products of their time, and they can't escape it."
"In rap," says Sway Calloway of MTV News and the long-running syndicated radio program The Wake Up Show the turnover is so fast, you have to still appeal to the younger part of the demographic to sustain some longevity. Once you lose it -- be it that you made a few albums, you have nothing else to talk about, your social, economic status changes so you don't have the same hunger, the same passion -- you kind of fade away."
For nearly three decades, the world has watched a parade of artists black, white, violent, peaceful, sexy, funny, dope, whack, political, criminal, beautiful, beastly, too phat, too short, good-cred, no-cred, villainous and revolutionary. The history shows that there's always a fresh face to take your place, which might be one of the reasons that it hasn't gotten stale for new generations.
It's a tough way to go but, as Will Smith once said, "It's all good."
PART 2
According to SoundScan, 70 percent of the paying (and downloading) audience of hip-hop is white kids from the suburbs. That's a long way from the South Bronx, circa 1973.
Although it may have seemed like it, rap didn't come out of nowhere. Its seeds could be heard in African griots, Chicago blues, bebop scat, Jamaican toasts, the beat poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and even the verses of Muhammad Ali, but the credit for hip-hop -- the culture that encompasses rap, graffiti art, DJing and break dancing -- usually goes to Clive Campbell, aka DJ Kool Herc.
Around '73, a time when black Americans had made civil rights gains but were still suffering from high crime and unemployment rates, the Jamaican-born DJ threw block parties in rec centers and basketball courts, where he would experiment with what he called "breakbeats" on classic funk records.
"Kool Herc started playing music at Cedar Park in the Bronx," says legendary rapper KRS-One. "It was a community thing. Like, 'I'm doing this for the love of doing it. I'm doing this because I have to do it.' "
Grandmaster Flash, with his sequined suits and wizardry with electronics, joined the party to perfect the art of turntable scratching and introduce the MC or rapper, who would battle one another to create the best rhyme and eventually steal the spotlight from the DJs. Afrika Bambaataa, a DJ and gang leader who had grown tired of the violence, traded in the Black Spades for Zulu Nation, a youth organization that started nurturing young MCs. He combined his positive Afrocentric hip-hop with far-out techno beats, eventually on the hit "Planet Rock."
Although rappers and DJs were rhyming, battling and cutting tapes for years, an overnight sensation from New Jersey, the Sugarhill Gang, beat them to the punch. In the dying days of disco, a former R&B singer named Sylvia Robinson assembled the Sugarhill Gang, who borrowed the beat from Chic's "Good Times" and rapped out the playful "Rapper's Delight" in October 1979. When it went to No. 4 on the R&B charts, rap was suddenly out of the hood.
"When 'Rapper's Delight' sold 2 million records in 1979," said KRS-One, "all the attention was placed on rap music as a selling tool, not on hip-hop as a consciousness-raising tool, as a maturing of the community. When hip-hop culture got discarded for the money to be made into rap product, we went wrong right there."
Kurtis Blow, a former break dancer and block-party veteran, followed the Sugarhill Gang to the charts a few months later with "Christmas Rappin'" and topped it with the smash rap-rock crossover "The Breaks" in 1980, giving him the early line on King of Rap. Kool Moe Dee, another pioneer from the old school, mastered the MC boast with his crew, the Treacherous Three.
Although fans of The Clash did not react well to Grandmaster Flash as tour openers, rockers couldn't ignore rap for long after Talking Heads spin-off the Tom Tom Club ("Genius of Love"), Blondie ("Rapture") and The Clash ("The Magnificent Seven") all cut irresistibly catchy rap-infected singles in late 1980/early 1981.
Aptly, it was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, under the Sugarhill wing, who created the blueprint for rap as a medium capable of addressing social issues. In 1982, Flash and lead MC Melle Mel delivered "The Message," with a chorus that became the hip-hop mantra: "It's like a jungle sometimes/it makes me wonder/how I keep from going under."
"That was the point at which hip-hop demonstrated that it could be used as a means of social and political critique," says Todd Boyd, an associate professor at the University of Southern California and author of The New H.N.I.C: The Death of Civil Rights and the Reign of Hip Hop. "Early '80s, Reagan era, you have a point about living in the inner-city at that time and the conditions for poor and working class people. It indicated that hip-hop could be more than boasting and bragging and rhyming to be funny, which is all cool and part of hip-hop, but 'The Message' indicated hip-hop could be serious as well. Grandmaster Flash took the game to the next level."
The Furious Five set the stage for a hardcore rap outfit that would drive the music further into the heart of America. In 1983, Run-DMC, a trio from Queens, started dropping singles, beginning with "It's Like That" and "Sucker MCs (Krush-Groove 1)," that would take rap to the house.
Though middle-class, Run-DMC looked street in their black hats and thick chains and hit it like rockers with harder beats, metallic guitar samples and overlapping deliveries. Under the banner of Russell Simmons and Rick Rubin's Def Jam, they brought the whole package: They were the first rappers embraced by MTV, the pioneers of the rap "album." Even their shoes -- Adidas, of course -- were for sale. Their media was multi -- from their appearance in the cult classic and Def Jam bio "Krush Groove" to their explosive pairing with Aerosmith for a "Walk This Way" remix in 1986.
"In New York," George says, "people saw hip-hop as a Harlem-Bronx thing. Queens, at that point in time, was like coming from Kansas. These guys from the suburbs, like Run, LL Cool J, Public Enemy, they extended the style and the lyrical content of the music. Maybe because they had more distance from the chaos of the inner city, they brought an artistic sophistication to the music that wasn't there before."
Run-DMC fever was so high, it became dangerous. The group's 1986 Raisin' Hell tour was marred by melees that would lead to some cities -- including Pittsburgh -- to seek a ban on rap shows, a stigma that would go on for years.
Raising hell right along with Run-DMC were the Beastie Boys, three middle-class Jewish punk rockers who fought for the right to party -- and won. In '86, Licensed to Ill, to the dismay of black rappers, became the first rap album to hit No. 1. The Beasties, also helmed by Rick Rubin, took some heat for their rap-rock dabbling, but no one denied them their cleverness and creativity, which haven't run out yet.
Hot on the heels of Run-DMC came two other hard-hitters that defined the so-called Golden Age of Hip-Hop: Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, both arriving in 1987.
Nothing -- before, after or probably ever -- sounded like Public Enemy. Bringing the noise, the chaos and the militant style and agenda, Public Enemy stormed the scene as the "the prophets of rage," the most political and important group in the history of hip-hop. Mind you, at the time, rock's biggest hit-makers were Bon Jovi, Huey Lewis and Starship. Led by the commanding Chuck D and comic foil Flavor Flav, Public Enemy considered rap "the CNN of black culture" and dropped bombshells on the status quo like "Bring the Noise," "Don't Believe the Hype" and "Fight the Power."
"Public Enemy, that was the voice of the culture, the voice of the streets," Calloway says. "And it was educated. It had direction. It wasn't a sellout. It was passionate, it was from the heart, it was angry, it was edgy and innovative. Chuck D to this day is my hero. People say, 'Who is your hero?' Hey man, Martin Luther King is definitely a hero, but Chuck D directly affected me."
Public Enemy's message didn't sit well with everyone. Chuck D caused controversy when he called Louis Farrakhan a "prophet," and Professor Griff was briefly dismissed from PE for associating Jews with "wickedness." Despite that, PE's commercial heyday lasted through Fear of a Black Planet and Apocalypse 91.
BDP was KRS-One (Kris Parker) and beatmaster Scott LaRock, who incorporated Jamaican elements and attacked with a style that left you wondering if they were educators or gangstas on Criminal Minded.
"I would say it was 50-50," KRS says. "Yeah, it was 50 percent glamorizing of thug life. And the other 50 percent was to bring light to thug life with some possible solutions. The reason I'm called contradictory and even arrogant is I walk this thin line between 'Criminal Minded' and 'Stop the Violence.' "
LaRock took a bullet in '87; KRS-One used that grief to become "The Teacher" and is still making consciousness-raising hip-hop.
Not all of the New York rappers were hell-bent on revolution. LL Cool J, another Def Jam star, made a career out of walking the line between tough and tender, street and sell-out. A former b-boy who started writing when he was 9, LL delivered the first rap ballad with "I Need Love," and when it seemed as if he was down, he met the challenge of the West Coast gangstas with "Mama Said Knock You Out" in 1990. The tally so far on LL Cool J is a half-dozen platinum albums, a sitcom and a Hollywood career that's even survived "Rollerball." He also helped set the stage for future battles between Biggie & Tupac, Nas & Jay-Z and 50 Cent & Ja Rule by sparring with Kool Moe Dee, who accused him of ripping off his style.
While LL was romantic, the roots of a sleazier booty rap could be found in 2 Live Crew, a Florida outfit so controversial, it spent as much time in court as on stage. In 1987 a record store clerk in Florida was charged with (and later acquitted of) a felony for selling a copy of "The 2 Live Crew Is What We Are" after it was ruled by court to be obscene. The group's follow-up, "Move Somethin,' " was the first rap album issued in a "clean" version.
The East Coast in the Golden Age isn't complete without mention of Eric B and Rakim, known for their eloquent flow and James Brown samples they were actually sued for; Big Daddy Kane, for his aggressive lover's rap; Doug E. Fresh, for being the first human beatbox; The Fat Boys, for 750 pounds of comic novelty; De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest, for introducing an alternative style of bohemian jazz-rap; and Salt-N-Pepa, for being the first big female crew to break through the boys club.
"The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived," Calloway says of the Golden Age. "Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new. That era followed the original code, the unspoken code, the groundwork laid in hip-hop culture that everyone followed and knew about. It wasn't like a constitution or something you could look up in the library. It was something you discovered, which was to not be a "biter," no matter what you do. If you were a DJ, a b-boy, having integrity, making music that counted, with an agenda, that's what was important.
"The financial? It wasn't about that. With that atmosphere, the music that came out was fresh and new."
PART 3
Rap may have been nothin' but a New York thing for most of the '80s, but the West Coast was about to rise up, and it didn't sound anything like the Eagles.
In 1988, the New York hip-hoppers were sucker-punched by the Left Coast with the release of N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton, ushering in a more decadent era that produced countless imitators and added fuel to rap's critics.
Led by Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, N.W.A. (N **** z With Attitude) reported on and exalted gang life -- from street violence to drugs to the denigration of women. N.W.A. issued brutal anthems like "Gangsta Gangsta" and "[F] Tha Police," which declared, "A young n - - - - on a warpath/And when I'm finished, it's gonna be a bloodbath/Of cops, dyin in L.A." Even the FBI took notice, issuing them a stern warning to watch their step.
"Even though N.W.A. said 'gangsta,' they were speaking about a mentality that plagued the inner streets, the ghettos," says Sway Calloway of MTV News and the Wake Up Show. "When they said 'F the Police,' it was just a common sentiment that was shared by youth in Los Angeles at the time, because, when you look back now, there was a lot of corruption in that police department. They spoke about what took place in their community. I saw it as rap about reality, not so much gangsta rap."
"When N.W.A. came out," says Bakari Kitwana, author of Hip Hop Generation "mainstream black political leaders were not talking about paramilitary policing in black communities and high incarceration rates. A lot of that stuff was still under the radar. When N.W.A. came out with 'F the Police,' it was very striking. What you're seeing is a snapshot of a generation of young people locked out of the mainstream and having no vehicle to channel their rage and their dissatisfaction with the failure of society to bring them up in a respectable way."
The outrage started with the name and worked up from there.
"The fact that they would use the n-word as they used it, at that moment in hip-hop, it was groundbreaking, and it wasn't a cliche," Kitwana says. "Now, 15 years later, it's a cliche. Hip-hop in that regard has become a parody of itself, even when it's not trying to be."
Money battles within N.W.A. sent Ice Cube on his way to a solo career, taking a lot of the "Attitude" with him. Ice Cube made his peace with the East Coast by teaming up with Public Enemy's Bomb Squad to produce AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted and expanded into film with Boyz N the Hood, launching a new career that seems to have no limit.
Although he started out on party rap, the talented and intelligent Ice T toughened up his act considerably with 1991's O.G.: Original Gangster, a chilling take on street life -- meant as a caution -- that also introduced his rock band, Body Count. A year later, Ice T hit with the most controversial song in the history of rap, "Cop Killer." Arriving in the wake of the Rodney King incident and just before the L.A. riots, it was written from the perspective of a man out to "get even" for police brutality. Ice T claimed he was playing a character in the song. "I ain't never killed no cop," he said at the time. "I felt like it a lot of times."
Ice T became Public Enemy No. 1 to police and watchdog groups calling for a boycott. The song was removed from his album and eventually he was removed from Warner Bros. Records. In one of the most ironic examples of outlaw culture being assimilated into the mainstream, Ice T now plays a cop on NBC's Law & Order.
As for Dre, he was never considered Cube's match as an MC, but it's not a stretch to call him rap's greatest producer. A 1992 landmark, The Chronic established Suge Knight's Death Row Records and the emergence of Dr.Dre' s G-funk sound, rooted in a cool '70s funk-soul groove and sampling the likes of Parliament, Isaac Hayes and Donny Hathaway.
The Chronic also introduced rap's next superstar. Unlike the aggressive '80s rappers, Snoop Dogg had a lazy drawl that made him sound like a close friend of the chronic indeed. Along with the weed, he was also into the "Gin and Juice," preferably behind the wheel. Snoop could never be accused of playing a role -- not when he was arrested for his alleged connection in a drive-by shooting during the making of his 1993 debut, Doggystyle.
"Doggystyle" became the first debut ever to hit the charts at No. 1, and singles like "Murder was the Case" and "What's My Name?" took it to four times platinum. If you're wondering why they're saying "my shizzle's gone fazizzle" in an Old Navy commercial, you can trace it back to "Tha Shiznit" on that record. As for the murder case, he was cleared, and though he hasn't matched the success of "Doggystyle," Snoop has yet to fazizzle. As a side note, he's become a peewee football coach, adding a new twist to his pimp image.
PART 4
Snoop was sharing the West Coast spotlight with a more energetic rapper on his way to building an even more energetic rap sheet. Tupac Shakur, born in jail as the son of a Black Panther, was a side rapper and dancer in the Digital Underground who went solo in late 1991 with 2Pacalypse Now taking on political and gangsta themes in an angry, poetic style. Then Vice President Dan Quayle called for a ban on the record, declaring "it has no place in our society"
Tupac's film career was in full swing when his second record came out, but by the time his third record, Me Against the World,hit the charts at No. 1, he was serving time for sexual assault. Chuck D once said of Tupac, he was "someone headed in a speeding car toward a brick wall for somebody's entertainment."
Tupac found an East Coast rival in Biggie Smalls, or the Notorious B.I.G., a street hustler from Brooklyn. Biggie was aligned with record executive Sean "Puffy" Combs, who made him the focus of his new Bad Boy label. Building his hype with guest spots on Mary J. Blige singles, Biggie went gold in 1994 with the ominously titled Ready to Die, a debut that revealed a super-size talent, an MC who was dark, funny and adept with a rhyme.
But Biggie's career was troubled. There were brushes with the law, a car accident that left him briefly disabled and an accusation by Tupac that Biggie was partly responsible for an attack on him. Tupac also taunted him with the song "Hit 'Em Up," on which he claimed to have slept with Biggie's wife, Faith Evans.
In September 1996, the same year of his fourth CD (and Death Row debut), All Eyez On Me, Tupac was shot and killed coming out of a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas. As for Biggie, six months later and three weeks before his Life After Death dropped, he was the victim of a drive-by shooting in L.A. -- thought to be a retaliation for Tupac's shooting. Both deaths are unsolved, but both careers are thriving. In fact, Tupac's Resurrection recently hit No. 2 on the charts -- it features a duet with Biggie.
A year after the shooting, Combs, who had the golden touch as a producer for rappers such as Biggie and pop groups such as TLC, produced his own solo debut, No Way Out, which borrowed the Police's "Every Breath You Take" for the tender Biggie tribute, "I'll Be Missing You." The song and record seemed to own 1997, even if nobody was ready to declare Combs a top-notch MC. He is credited, though, for one of rap's hedonistic anthems, "All About the Benjamins." "The gangsta thing became a pose," says Nelson George, author of Hip Hop America. "It became like wrestling very quickly."
Ice Cube, one of the godfathers of gangsta rap, would say in 1998, "Hip-hop's not what it was when I got in it. Now people are in it for the money and the fame. It ain't about having skills or trying to say something to make any kind of difference, and that's what makes it frustrating."
Of course, there was more to the gangsta scene than the Biggie-Tupac drama. There was a New York empire known as the Wu Tang Clan, which became the biggest group of the decade in more ways than one. Wu debuted in 1993 as a loose collection of nine smart and menacing MCs working their hardcore raps over spare beats, with plenty of martial arts themes. Enter the Wu-Tang set the groundwork for solo careers for Wu members Method Man, Ol' Dirty Bastard, RZA, Genius, Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, among them. After a slow build with the debut, the second Wu record, Wu Tang Forever, debuted at No. 1 and introduced Cappadonna.
None of the Wu members individually would match the intensity or star power of two East Coast MCs who would step into the Biggie-Tupac void: DMX and Jay-Z.
PART 5
With his fierce presence and even fiercer voice, DMX came off like one of his pit bulls. An abused street kid from Baltimore, DMX debuted at No. 1 in 1998 with It's Dark and Hell is Hot, and all of his subsequent records hit No. 1 as well. And Then There was X, featuring "Party Up (Up in Here)" sold more than 5 million copies. DMX's work balances gangsta style with a fiery spiritual side.
To Nelson George, DMX is a prime example of the lines in rap being blurred. "I don't there's such thing as positive or negative hip-hop. Take DMX: Some people would say he's negative, but I think he's made some really interesting records that are about the complexity of guilt. He's an interesting artist because he feels guilt and remorse, something that hip-hop is not big on."
No MC seems more comfortable on the mic than Jay-Z, another of rap's best and more complex characters. A hustler from the projects in Brooklyn, Jay-Z has proven to be adept as both rapper and entrepreneur. He's a pure freestyler who combines the gangsta bravado of Biggie with an easy pop sense and the upbeat vibe of a "consciousness" rapper. He's one of the few who could get away with a line like, "I dumbed down for my audience, doubled my dollars." Rather than signing with a label, Jay-Z formed his own Roc-A-Fella Records, with Dame Dash, and in 1996 released Reasonable Doubt,a classic that tells his back story with humor, cockiness and flow.
Through his nine records, Jay-Z has worked with the finest producers -- Timbaland, The Neptunes, Just Blaze, etc. -- to become one of hip-hop's most respected hit makers. As an example of rap's potential, he rose from ghetto drug dealer to "CEO of the R-O-C," where he's broken rappers such as Beanie Sigel and Memphis Bleek, launched a fashion line, worked for charity and wooed pop star Beyonce. Jay-Z says The Black Album, a career-peaking effort that debuted at No. 1 in December, will be his last record, but there are millions of fans who are hoping that isn't so.
"I think Jay-Z is at the top of the game," says Todd Boyd, who teaches a course on hip-hop at the University of Southern California. "I love Big ... but there's not a large enough body of work there. When you look at Jay-Z's body of work, you're talking about three of the best albums in the history of hip-hop -- Reasonable Doubt, Blueprint and The Black Album -- not to mention the amazing commercial success while maintaining street cred. So he's got something for the masses and true hip-hop heads. Jay-Z is untouchable."
Jay-Z found a worthy rival in Nas, a very wordy street poet and son of world musician Olu Dara, who also issued a classic debut in 1994's Illmatic. He lost some of his street cred with subsequent poppy records, but regained it when he struck back at Jay-Z's taunt on Stillmatic and followed with the acclaimed God's Son.
Reflecting on the hardcore style of rap's gangstas and street reporters of the '90s, Nelson George says, "What was really serious was the fact that crack was overwhelming all these neighborhoods. That was really serious. The actual records about what was going on with crack was just a symptom. People say, 'Look at these evil rappers'..... No. They were writing about the fact that kids had automatic weapons and crack was turning girls into crack hos and undermining the police in those cities as well, turning cops corrupt. All of those records were the result of a nasty period in American cities, and Americans wanted someone to blame."
NOTE:
*In the midst of DMX and Jay-Z rising to fame...the world of Hip Hop would lose 3 soldiers.Harlem rapper..Big L was on the verge of being a star. He recorded "Ebonics" a breakdown of street slang. The single was blowing up , people and record labels like Rocafella Records.. were startimg to notice his talent . Unfortunately his strive for success was cut short. Big L was murdered on the very streets where he grew Up. He was shot 7 Times in the head and chest on February 15, 1999.
*Big Pun was the first latin rapper to ever go platinum with his debut album..Capital Punishment.Unfortunately Pun was battling with a chronic weight problem and died of a heart attack and respiratoy failure.
*Freaky Tah, a member of the Lost Boyz, was shot and killed in the New York borough of Queens after leaving a party.The group released 3 albums together but later disbanded after Freaky's death.Group member Spigg Nice is in jail for life
PART 6
I'm tired of people judging what's real hip-hop/half the time, it be some [n----s] whose album flopped."
Nelly on his song "#1".
Nelson George says he was working at Billboard as late as 1990 and people were still asking the question: "How long will this thing last?"
The answer seemed to come with rap's ability to diversify and cross over with rock, R&B, jazz, soul and world music. Todd Boyd, who teaches hip-hop at the University of Southern California, says of the early '90s, "It was the era that indicated that hip-hop was going to be around for a long time, and there was going to be different varieties of styles and representation available."
Although gangstas stole the headlines in the '90s, it was also the decade when rap proved it could fly off in infinite directions, from the "jiggy wit it" style of Will Smith to the worldly vibe of the Fugees to the funky boys of the Dirty South.
Rap also continued to mix with rock, whether in the politically charged Rage Against the Machine, the thuggish Limp Bizkit, the blunt-crazy Cypress Hill or the white-trashy Kid Rock.
Far from the thug side was MC Hammer, who had no worries about clean versions. A onetime mascot for the Oakland A's, Hammer pounded home the pop potential and pop folly of rap. With his genie pants and "Super Freak" sample, he hit to the tune of 10 million copies in 1990, rising to the point where he became the poster boy for sellout and was over by 1994.
And yet, Hammer was Melle Mel compared to Vanilla Ice, who topped the chart the same year by swiping the bass line of "Under Pressure" for "Ice Ice Baby." The Miami native came packaged with a gangsta past that no one seemed convinced of, prompting white group 3rd Bass to beat up a likeness of Vanilla Ice (played by Henry Rollins) in its video for "Pop Goes the Weasel."
Will Smith managed to parlay his bubblegum rap into a serious acting career. Smith first appeared as the latter half of Philly's DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, a group that spoke to junior rap fans in the late '80s. They went multi-platinum and actually won the first-ever rap Grammy with "Parents Just Don't Understand." Smith went on to star in the sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and went solo in 1997 with Big Willie Style, adding "jiggy wit it" to the mainstream vocabulary.
Naughty By Nature, discovered by Queen Latifah, had it both ways, hitting big with "O.P.P." in 1991 while still holding on to an underground following. P.M. Dawn, a group that came out of the bohemian De La Soul school, became a favorite among the college crowd with a blend of hip-hop and soul. The tension between pop and hardcore rappers peaked when KRS-One, reacting to a P.M. dis, stormed the stage at a P.M. Dawn concert and took over the show with his own crew.
Somewhere between the pop and hardcore rappers were the people of the Native Tongues movement, originated by Afrika Bambaataa in the '80s to celebrate a positive and spiritual side of hip-hop, without losing its edge or party vibe. It was a modern version of Zulu Nation, and its followers included critical favorite De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest, of whose record the Village Voice said, "You could play it in the background when you're reading Proust."
Also signing on to Native Tongues were Queen Latifah and Brand Nubian, an Islamic trio so aggressively Afrocentric they were branded as reverse racists. Native Tongues inspired New York jazz-rap fusionists Digable Planets and Arrested Development, who rose out of the South in 1992 with a breezy acoustic style of hip-hop.
The Fugees, a trio with a soulful singer from New Jersey and two members of Haitian descent, worked the socially conscious side of hip-hop, slowing down the beat with reggae, R&B, soul and folk. The Fugees' second album, 1996's The Score, sold an unprecedented 17 million copies. When the Fugees split soon after, Lauryn Hill went on to win five Grammys in 1999 for her solo work, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, and Wyclef Jean became one of hip-hop's most ambitious innovators.
The Fugees were also the kingpins of the Smokin' Grooves Tour, which restored rap's standing as a touring genre. Smokin' Grooves shined the light on alternative acts such as Busta Rhymes, The Roots and Black Eyed Peas, who actually sneaked a topical song, "Where is the Love?," into the mainstream last year.
Following that lead, artists such as Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli take on a broader range of topics and emotions -- anger to joy -- with a jazzy or funky flow that's not as burdened by the hook. On his top-notch Quality, Kweli raps on the proliferation of weapons, the politics of Sept. 11 and the birth of his daughter without ever sounding soft. At one point he raps, "Kurt Loder asked me what I say to a dead cop's wife/Cops kill my people every day, that's life."
Def and Kweli both reject the "positive" and "conscious" label of rap. Kweli told the PG last year, "It gets overwhelming to have those prefixes in front of you. I get labeled a lot. But I try very hard not to become preachy in my music and just paint realistic pictures."
KRS-One says that keeping the likes Def and Kweli off the radio in favor of bling-bling rap is that same "sense of denial and apathy [that] is destroying this country."
PART 7
When producer Dr. Dre heard Eminem on tape, he issued a simple order: "Find him. Now." He didn't even know he was white. But, sure enough, in 1999, rap found its Elvis in Marshall Mathers, one of the most talented, disturbed and disturbing figures in all of pop music. The kind of kid who grew up on government cheese, he's got a voice that can cut through white bread. Eminem earned his respect in Detroit freestyle battles and then at the 1997 Rap Olympics in Los Angeles with white-hot rage and staccato flow.
Violence, homophobia and misogyny are taken to extremes on The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, which include fantasies about killing his wife and references to his own mother as a "slut." That, combined with various violent real-life escapades, made Eminem's damaged psyche an American soap opera.
Oddly enough, between his Grammy duet with Elton John, his fatherly songs on The Eminem Show and his sympathetic portrayal in 8 Mile, columnists were soon writing that he was loved even by soccer moms. Eminem has sold more than 20 million records, of which he's rapped, "Let's do the math/if I was black/I would have sold half."
The extent of his skills is a hot-button issue. Andre 3000 of OutKast and MC Sway rank him among the best. Bakari Kitwana, author of Hip-Hop Generation,says, "I think he is exceptional, but people are so surprised and stunned that he's white and can rap so well, they are quick to elevate him above black rappers."
One thing's for sure. Eminem is one of 50 Cent's favorite white boys. . The Eminem/Dre camp, known as Shady/Aftermath, introduced 50 last year with a gangsta back story to beat all -- the dude's bulletproof! Yet another onetime dealer, the toned, tattooed rapper from Queens was signed to Columbia and already infamous for "How to Rob" -- a single detailing how he'll stick up a whole host of rap stars -- when, first, he was stabbed at the Hit Factory and then was shot nine times with a 9 mm.
He lived to talk about it but was too hot for Columbia, which dropped him. Eminem put up seven figures to sign him, and the investment paid off as his retro-gangsta debut, Get Rich or Die Tryin', sold more than 5 million last year on the strength of "In Da Club" and "P.I.M.P," songs that even pre-teens seem to love.
"Musically, in his delivery, he is an exceptional rapper," says Kitwana. "The content of what he's saying, sometimes, I find offensive. It continues to push black people into these stereotypes. In 'P.I.M.P.,' he's making this association of black people as pimps, bitches and hos. Black people have to realize that it may just be a song to them, but there's some kid in Europe and Japan, and it's not just a song. [It's] representing black people in America."
