Word: gangstas
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...life imitating rap? Faster than you could rhyme "niggaz" and "triggaz" (standard rap prosody) people were asking whether rappers -- especially those from the Thugs-'R'-Us subcategory called gangsta rap -- are too quick to use the guns they brag about in their songs. "Who is the man with the master plan?" asks a lyric by Snoop Doggy Dogg. "A nigga witta motherf-----' gun." Two weeks ago Snoop, 22, was charged as an accomplice to murder...
...vanilla songstress of the '60s and '70s, shot her boyfriend, a killing that she called accidental and a jury called criminally negligent homicide. But for the most part singers, even the ones who like to pal with mobsters, have been content to leave gunplay to the pros. Not gangsta rappers. In a world where it can seem as if everybody's "strapped" -- meaning armed -- the rapper Spice 1 bragged to TIME last week, "I'm gonna be strapped 24-7." (That's 24 hours a day, seven days a week.) "I've got an AK on the way, and that...
...backlash against gangsta has been forming, especially among blacks who may be fans of other, less bloody-minded styles of hip-hop. "They send messages to children, and kids are impressionable" says Von Alexander of the National Political Congress of Black Women, which has launched a national petition drive to bring pressure on record companies. Rap Sheet magazine will no longer accept ads for albums that show rappers with guns...
...gangsta style took off in Los Angeles in the late 1980s with albums from N.W.A. (Niggaz with Attitude) and Ice-T. Pounded out in lyrics where testosterone always gets the last word, it updates the Three Penny Opera equation of gangsterism and rawboned free enterprise. The rhyming talk about Glocks and Uzis, the porn fantasies and rat-a-tat expletives -- all of it helps establish the rapper's ghetto credentials, excite the white teenage boys who are among rap's main consumers and provoke the mainstream press...
...school in Long Beach, California, Snoop Doggy Dogg -- real name Calvin Broadus -- spent three years in and out of prison on a drug charge and subsequent parole violations. "That was the key to my whole life," he once said. Snoop, now one of the most wanted new stars of gangsta rap, provided a good part of the lyrics and vocals on The Chronic, a 2 million-selling album by Dr. Dre, who pleaded no contest in June to battery for breaking...