Word: hip-hop
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...street corner in Brooklyn. Then he discovered gangsta rap. His first album, Ready to Die, sold more than a million copies, and his follow-up, Life After Death, scheduled to drop on March 25, was the talk of the rap world. Wallace had already landed the cover of the hip-hop magazine the Source, and he was set to have lunch with TIME's pop music critic in a week. Now here he was at a star-studded party in L.A. that Vibe magazine was hosting to celebrate the Soul Train Music Awards on March 9. Actor Wesley Snipes...
Some rappers are calling for introspection. Says Warren G, whose record company, fearing for his safety, postponed the promotional tour for his new album Take a Look over Your Shoulder: "This has gone too far. It's making us look like animals." Says rapper Ahmir of the progressive Philadelphia hip-hop band the Roots: "I thought Tupac's death was a wake-up call. I guess we hit the snooze button." Adds Wyclef of the socially conscious hip-hop band the Fugees: "We all need to chill out for a second and step back. It's just entertainment, after...
Others are calling for an end to gangsta rap. After Shakur's murder, Minister Conrad Muhammad of the Nation of Islam held a hip-hop summit in Harlem to encourage nonviolence. Now he wants to go further. "There needs to be one more murder," he says. "Gangsta rap needs to be murdered. [It] is absolutely genocidal. [It] holds out no hope. The lyrics can become like drugs, almost like a narcotic in a young person's life. We need rap. It's a critical vehicle for youth to express themselves. But the negativity is destroying what these young rappers have...
Inside the hip-hop community, paranoia is running at high levels and all kinds of rumors are flying. Several of Wallace's friends claim that he told them fbi agents were trailing him on his trip from New York City to Los Angeles. (The FBI office in New York would not confirm or deny this.) The alleged FBI presence has some seeing conspiracy. Mutulu Shakur, ex-husband of Tupac Shakur's mother, says the FBI is trying to create a "rift" between East Coast and West Coast rappers. "Whether we accept it or not, the rap groups are a movement...
...style. On the song Somebody's Gotta Die from his new CD, he hunts down a rival only to discover, as he shoots the man, that his victim is holding a child. (Wallace had two children of his own.) The rapper once told Peter Spirer, director of the new hip-hop documentary Rhyme & Reason, that "the hardest thing I ever had to overcome is really just making the transition from being a street hustling nigger to, like, a star." Friends say Wallace only rapped about violence to make enough money to leave it all behind. Says Lance Rivera, a close...