Word: rappers
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...folks EMINEM has offended over the years--gays, women, his mother--the blond rapper seemed to avoid insulting African Americans. Until, that is, hip-hop magazine The Source dug up some Eminem juvenilia: "Blacks and whites, they sometimes mix/but black girls only want your money 'cause they're dumb chicks" are some of the milder lyrics on the tape. Responding to charges of racism, Eminem issued a statement saying the song was recorded after he broke up with a black girlfriend and "made out of anger, stupidity and frustration when I was a teenager." Hey, man, some of us just...
...that's exactly how he likes it. In many ways, Jay-Z is a pioneer: the first rapper to acknowledge that he cares as much about making money as he does about making records, and the first to use acquisitiveness as the major theme of his music. He has written a few great songs about other subjects--D'Evils, an allegory about the dangers of rap life, is his personal favorite--but he says, "I've talked about wanting to have enough to get out since my first album. I was always more interested in the business side of things...
While a retiring rapper seems like a particularly absurd joke ("Most rappers get up at 5 p.m. anyway," laughs Jay-Z) and the marketing tie-ins surrounding The Black Album would make George Lucas blush, Jay-Z is taking his departing moment seriously, in part because it was brought on by a serious moment. In 1999 he was arrested for stabbing Lance Rivera, a rival producer, in a crowded New York City nightclub. Jay-Z's friends claim that Rivera was bootlegging some of the rapper's music. All Jay-Z will say is that "it was the dumbest thing...
...been called the thug Elvis and Malcolm X reborn as a rapper. Since he predicted his own demise and since the movie of his life and death is called Tupac: Resurrection, we may as well surrender to hip-hop hype and say Tupac Shakur was the gangsta Jesus. True to his cult status, Shakur's myth blossomed after his death. So did his estate. It earned a lively $12 million last year. As with the deaths of so many celebs, his was a pity, an irony, a great career move...
...streets, the rapper couldn't find peace and didn't make it. Pummeled by cops after an arrest for jaywalking in 1991, he sued the Oakland Police Department for $10 million (and got $42,500). It didn't always go his way. He beat several assault charges before doing jail time for sexual abuse of a woman...