Word: gangsta
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...Police" N.W.A. The song that not only helped invent gangsta rap, but also proved prophetic when the L.A. riots broke...
...Golden Years," to me, simply means that was a period when hip-hop or, specifically, rap music, was incredibly exciting, fresh, def and diverse. There was no such thing as positive rap or negative rap, or so-called gangsta rap. Rap was rap: rhythmic American poetry, period. There has not been a time since when an N.W.A was as popular as a Public Enemy, or where the storytelling of a Slick Rick could fall alongside the pimp strolls of a Too Short, or Roxanne Shante was just as necessary as a Salt 'N Pepa or Queen Latifah...
...Public Enemy proclaimed hip-hop the "Black CNN," and even original gangsta rappers NWA said "it's not about a salary it's all about reality..." Does this still hold true? What's happened to the "bearing witness" side of hip-hop? And how do the more mainstream artists view those like Mos Def, Common, the Roots, KRS One, Black Eyed Peas etc. - the acts that arise in every generation who rededicate themselves to the core values of the socially conscious rappers of the early years - are they the conscience of the hip-hop nation...
Where 2 Live Crew's potty-mouth lyrics may have sparked hip-hop's first sustained confrontation with the law, the rise of gangsta rap opened the floodgates. N.W.A. (Niggas With Attitude) pioneered the new form with an in-your-face contempt for authority in tales of murder and mayhem set on the streets of Compton, Calif. "F--- tha Police" shocked mainstream America, but it resonated with the youth of the hip-hop nation. And it proved frighteningly prophetic when L.A. erupted in riots that shocked the world two years later. N.W.A. spawned a new breed of rapper, styled...
...Gangsta rap, with its narrative tales and its cinematic funk-driven sound, offered a distinct alternative to the tricky bebop gymnastics of the freestyling East Coast. But hip-hop came close to destroying itself in the mid-'90s when that bicoastal rivalry almost turned into a shooting war, as Tupac Shakur - between surviving shootings and spells in prison - threatened the life of Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. and both men, former friends, were by the end of 1997 dead in as-yet-unsolved drive-by shootings...