Word: gangstas
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Iovine intervention is more like it, as in Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope Records. Prodded by its new owner, Seagram, Iovine and partner Ted Field are remaking Interscope from a high-risk purveyor of gangsta rap into an imposing presence in rock, R. and B. and gospel, gobbling down an ever bigger slice of the $12.5 billion U.S. record market. God's Property--which went on to sell a heavenly 1 million copies three months after hitting record stores--helped slingshot Seagram's Universal Music Group last summer from fifth place to third place among the six top record companies...
...years ago, Interscope was a small record company that became a huge political problem for its then owner, Time Warner (parent company of TIME's publisher), by releasing gangsta-rap albums such as Tupac Shakur's 2pacalypse Now. Capitulating to critics, Time Warner severed its joint agreement with Interscope and sold its 50% stake back to Iovine and Field for $100 million. Four months later, the two resold that stake to hit-starved Universal for $200 million. This is not an industry big on morality plays...
...musical roots. He cut his teeth in the early 1980s, when rap was still largely playful entertainment--an intricate mix of bare rhythms, verbal acrobatics and sharp humor. As rap's agenda grew more urgent--the thundering political nationalism of Public Enemy, the corrosive social critiques of gangsta rappers like N.W.A.--LL continued to build his career on the genre's original foundations. The approach worked. Since his first record, I Need A Beat, appeared in 1984, five of his subsequent seven albums have gone platinum...
...missteps, 1993's 14 Shots to the Dome, was an unfortunate foray into gangsta rap and a poor fit with LL's good-guy image. It was a lesson he did not ignore. "Now, no matter how the tide is going," he says, "I try to keep my ship on my own course...
...soul and R. and B., and every now and again falls back on a vintage rhythm that could have come from one of LL's early records. "I don't strive to be on the cutting edge of hip- hop," he admits. The song Phenomenon tries to deflate the gangsta mythology, asking, "Does she want a thug/ Or does she want real love?" Then there's Candy, which LL describes as "a celebration of being with a woman and starting a family." Two years ago, he married Simone Johnson, the mother of his three children...