Word: gangstas
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DESPITE HIS CONTROVERSIAL REPutation, Tupac Shakur was always an ambivalent gangsta, at least on record. His 1993 album, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z., included an anthem called Keep Ya Head Up that was chivalrously supportive of black women; on his last album, the confrontationally titled Me Against the World, he rapped a surprisingly tender tribute to his mother titled Dear Mama. Even as Shakur was being vilified in the mainstream press as a tough-talkin', gin-and-juice-drinkin' gangsta rapper, his songwriting was becoming increasingly intelligent and introspective...
Shakur seems to have decided that if people were going to criticize him for things he wasn't doing, if the justice system was going to convict him of a crime he claims he didn't commit, well, then, he was going to become the most dysfunctionally fearsome gangsta in America just to spite them all. In Wonda Why They Call U Bytch he offers up a dishearteningly crass justification for calling women cruel names. In Ambitionz az a Ridah he raps, conspiratorially, "Now these money-hungry bitches gettin' suspicious/ Started plottin' and plannin' on a scheme to come...
...husky, passionate delivery when he raps. The white power structure he denounces so vehemently must enjoy seeing him squander his gifts reifying its stereotypes of blackness--that is, if the white power structure thinks about him much at all. By leaving the lockup for the world of gangsta rap, he's just entered another prison...
...good deal of their music has gangsta-rap aggressiveness (in The Beast, for example, they decry police brutality), but the Fugees deliver a very different message from gangsta rappers, steering clear of boastful misogyny and empty-headed machismo. They criticize performers who fail to make clear that their violent songs are fantasies, not instructions. "You got a lot of kids who look up to these artists, who think what they're saying is true," says Michel, who was a philosophy major at Rutgers University before he took a break to pursue a musical career. "I'm not saying...
...Christ Superstar came out way back in 1970; and Christian diva Amy Grant has been racking up Grammys and gold records for years with her lite-FM pop. But younger Christian performers are now borrowing from a wider, more modern array of musical styles--such as alternative rock and gangsta rap--in an effort to create music that can appeal to a generation raised on Nirvana...