“Early one morning while makin’ the rounds / I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down / I went right home and I went to bed / I stuck that lovin’ 44 beneath my head / Got up next morning and I grabbed that gun / Took a shot of cocaine and away I run / Made a good run but I run too slow / They overtook me down in Warren, Mexico (Cash).”

What if I told you this is a song by a Gangsta rap artist named DJ Cash? If you had a kid, would you let them listen to this song? The answer is probably no, you would not want your children listening to this. Next, picture your kid walking up to you saying he was listening to Johnny Cash’s song “Cocaine Blues.” He plays it out loud and the song starts with these same lyrics and continues on but you do not even wince at what is being said. Why do you think this is? The simple answer is a bias to rap music. A psychologist at Indiana University, Carrie Fried, tested this same thing in her 1996 study “Bad Rap for Rap: Bias in Reactions to Musical Lyrics.” She took eight lines from an American folk song, “Bad Man’s Blunder,” which is a song about a man who shot a police officer, and read it for three groups of people. The first group she told that the song was a 1960’s folk song, the second she told that it was a 1990’s country song, and the third she told that it was a 1990’s rap song. The participants then rated what they thought of the lyrics, and in a predictable outcome, the group that was told it was rap music rated it as more offensive than the other two groups (Mendoza-Denton). This study proved that there was a stigma behind rap music but what was the reason? Is it because it was associated with African American youth from a lower socioeconomic background? Is it because America is racist? Critics write rap music off as explicit music that lacks content and causes problems within our society. They are wrong.

Gangsta Rap is a highly-criticized subgenre of rap music. With the explicit presentation of lyrics and a look of African-American inner city teenage youth, critics have had a hard time relating to the genre and have had an easier time criticizing it. They would like you to believe that it hurts America. They would like you to believe that it demoralizes our youth. I am here to tell you the opposite: Gangsta Rap has not hurt American culture; Gangsta Rap has not hurt American society; Gangsta Rap has helped it. It is a powerful force in political and social change but is highly undervalued and underappreciated. While critics stereotype Gangsta Rap as promoting violence, drugs, and the objectification of women, this neglects the complexity of Gangsta Rap and how it has positively influenced American culture.

In the mid-1980s, rappers Schoolly D and Ice T began producing a more hardcore sound of hip hop. Soon after, a group known as N.W.A. took this and popularized this style of Hip Hop as Gangsta Rap. The group came from South Central Los Angeles which was known for its violence and criminality. The LAPD was known for its racist tendencies such as racial profiling, police brutality, and random search and seizures. The community lost its faith in the police which led to the creation of an even more dangerous place. With N.W.A.’s first single “Boyz n The Hood,” and their first album “Straight Outta Compton” containing songs like “Fuck Tha Police,” they voiced the lives of people living in their neighborhoods. This is very much ignored due to the genre’s obscene and explicit portrayal. Like many Gangsta rappers to come after, N.W.A was never short of critics and their music was very controversial. 

“Fuck tha Police” can easily seem like a bad song that is just completely against police, but if you look at it that way, you just ignore the entire message. In 1999, Anthony M. Giovacchini had his article, The Negative Influence of Gangster Rap and What Can Be Done About It, published on a Stanford website called “EDGE.” He wrote: “N.W.A. got the ball of gangster rap rolling with their production of ‘Fuck the Police’ in 1988… This track expressed hatred and violence towards police officers and implied that they were all racists.” With a typical example from a critic of Gangsta Rap, Giovacchini ignored the message of the song and listened to it with a very limited view of the lyricism. He quoted the following lyrics: “Fuck the police coming straight from the underground, a young nigga got it bad cause I’m brown… They have the authority to kill a minority, fuck that shit cause I ain’t the one for a punk motherfucker with a badge and a gun to be beaten on… Searching my car looking for the product thinking every nigga is selling narcota” (N.W.A.). He said that the lyrics were a public attack on the police force and unmoral (Giovacchini). To counter this, I would say it is more of a hard truth that came with growing up and living in South Central LA as an African American male. The members of N.W.A. were forced to grow up with a racist police department. “Fuck tha Police” is the experience of growing up in Compton being recorded through the eyes of five African-American males. This song later led to problems with the FBI and an arrest for preforming it in Detroit. In an interview on Arsenio Hall while talking about the song, Arsenio asked if all police were bad. MC Ren jokingly said “90% of [Police] are,” but Arsenio said that there had to be more than 10% that were good. Ren replied: “Where I come from it is no percent. I don’t even feel for them ‘cause they don’t feel for me. They don’t feel for a lot of black youths in the community” (PaperMC). He also talked about being harassed by police outside of his house and how blacks are stereotyped by police because of the way they dress and how they have to dress that way because the families can’t afford anything different (PaperMC). N.W.A. didn’t expect their song to become a protest anthem around the world, and to say that it is just an attack on police takes away from the complexity and the impact that the song had. They spoke the hard truth about their lives at the time and the situations they were forced into growing up in South Central LA. Giovacchini really ignored the problems of racism and poverty by just writing off “Fuck Tha Police.”

After N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton Tour, Ice Cube left the group due to problems with their manager Jerry Heller. While the other members of N.W.A. cashed their checks, and moved out of the ghetto, Ice Cube moved back into Compton with his parents. After the split with N.W.A., Ice Cube took on the voice of the hood. His first solo project Amerikkka’s Most Wanted was a social and politically conscious album dealing with problems of racism, overseas intervention, sexism, drug addiction, and poverty peaking at number 19 on the billboard top 200 (Giles). Off the album came a track that was very aware of the problems of the hood, focusing on more than just a single problem, but more of the multitude of problems from right in the hood to a political scale: “Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside).” The song starts with an intro saying that a new animal has been added to the endangered species list and that animal was black teenagers. He continues by talking out against mainstream rappers calling for peace and the idea that Gangsta Rap was causing violence in the 90’s. He believed that belief was wrong and he nor any other rapper could say anything to stop the violence. He also touches on police interaction differences between whites, blacks, the youth, and the elderly. On top of all that, he talked how Americans wanted to help Africa but not help fix the problems in America (Rap Genius) which was talked about by multiple Gangsta rappers at the time including the members of his ex-group N.W.A. (PaperMC). “Endangered Species” focused on a wide range of problems that were being ignored and his mainstream success along with other rapper’s in his subgenre helped bring these problems to the light on a national scale. People were buying their music and hearing how people were being forced to live within America. 

One of the most important things that ever happened for Gangsta rap were the Rodney King Riots. On March 3, 1991, four LA police officers were filmed beating an African American male named Rodney King. The jury acquitted all four officers from assault charges and three out of four officers from excessive force charges (AFTER THE RIOTS; A Juror Describes the Ordeal of Deliberations). This verdict angered many people and on the day it was announced, the 1992 LA Riots began. Spanning 6 days, over 50 people were killed, over 4000 people were injured, and over one billion dollars in property damages ensued (Gray). This event was foretold by Gangsta Rappers, and it changed Gangsta Rap forever. The LA Riots had many bad outcomes. People were being killed and injured, and businesses were being burned and looted. However, out of the wreckage came a light shining on to the deeper problems that Gangsta Rappers had been recording in their songs for years. Police brutality would no longer be tolerated. Racial profiling would no longer be tolerated. Ignoring poor income neighborhoods would no longer be tolerated. Finally, all the rappers that talked about these problems were seen as prophets and new rappers emerged to share in the now-bustling industry of Gangsta Rap. The riots changed Gangsta Rap because of the surplus and mainstream success of post-Riot music. Before the riots were even over Ice Cube started working on his third project: The Predator. This album was littered with allusions to Rodney King and the riots selling 193,000 copies in its first week, reaching number one on the Billboard 200, and eventually going double platinum (Fields). Dr. Dre released his album The Chronic which “captured feelings of pre-riot, during-the-riots, and post-riot energy” (Brown and Hardy). Dre even used recordings of reactions outside an AME church after the verdicts were announced. These reasons are what made The Chronic resonate with so many people (Brown and Hardy). The album peaked at number three and spent 28 weeks in the top ten of the Billboard 200. It also went triple platinum and sold over fifty-seven million copies in the US alone (Caulfield). Not only members of NWA were increasing sales but less popular rappers were also doing so. These riots took hood music and popularized it around the world. It made more people respect and listen to Gangsta Rap with understanding rather than superficial judgement. It is art, poetry, history, and stories of a style of life that people are forced to live in but nobody wants to do anything about. They ignore it and write it off as bad and immoral just because it is different from their own without any real understanding of what is going on in these places.

With Dr. Dre and Death Row Records in the west perfecting a West Coast style of Gangsta rap, signing names like Snoop Dog and Tupac Shakur, and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs discovering Christopher Wallace a.k.a. The Notorious B.I.G. a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, the stage was being set for the East Coast West Coast feud. There was no real East Coast West Coast feud. It was more of a Death Row Records against Bad Boy Records feud that was being over-played by the media. Out of this era of Hip Hop, Gangsta Rap went from misogynistic, materialistic, and glorifying gangster lifestyle to being viewed as a violent genre of music and industry.

Death Row Records was home to big names such as Dr. Dre, Snoop Dog, Tupac, and Suge Knight. Prior to this era, Gangsta Rap just talked about the lifestyle. The industry worked the same way as any other music industry until Suge Knight came into the game. He brought street rules into the business world within Death Row Records. In an MTV documentary on Death Row Records, countless artists said at least once a week somebody was getting beat up, and one even saying he wouldn’t even go unless he was strapped. To this day Suge Knight is still one of the most feared men in Hip Hop, and currently in jail charged with robbery, attempted murder, and murder. With an image like that, people can get the bad idea of an entire genre all based off of one man and that is exactly what happened. Everybody associated with him and the Death Row label were now guilty by association. They were all assumed guilty of being “violent thugs” because of one man.

Death Row was a major powerhouse in the sales of Gangsta Rap in the 1990’s. Albums like Dr. Dre’s The Chronic and Snoop Dog’s Doggy Style brought Death Row to the tops of the rap and pop worlds. Thus, bringing Gangsta Rap from a small-scale industry to “one of the biggest selling genres in music” (MTV). This movement into the mainstream really added an abundance of ability to push social norms and influence everyday life through things such fashion trends and slang speak around America. The groundwork that Death Row laid paved a road for up and coming rappers, most notoriously, Biggie Smalls. With his different look and sound, Biggie made it big with his first studio album Ready to Die.

Also from New York, Tupac Shakur began to make a stir in the movie and rap industries. He was not just another a regular rapper. Born to his mother Afeni Shakur, a Black Panther and political activist, Tupac was raised to be politically and socially conscious. However, his mother fell into a fight with crack addiction causing him to find refuge in the streets. This background laid out a conscious element behind Tupac’s lyricism. While incarcerated in New York on sexual assault charges, Suge Knight dropped $1.4 million to get Tupac out along with a signed contract to Death Row Records. Soon after he released his album All Eyez On Me which sold over seven million copies and made it to number one on the Billboard 200 (MTV). Tupac, still to this day, is one of the most influential rappers to ever be in game. He brought problems of the ghetto into the mainstream that had been previously ignored by Gangsta rappers before him. His song “Brenda’s Got a Baby” was a take on why people should care that people of their community are effected. It is a sad take on a girl’s life in the ghetto. Growing up with her single, drug addicted father, she had gotten a boyfriend which turned out to be her older, rapist of a cousin and had gotten pregnant. She threw the baby in the trash but took it back because it was crying too much. Since she kept the baby, her family wouldn’t let her stay with them anymore. With minimal education, and a very young age of twelve years old, she couldn’t do much for money. She later became a prostitute and the song ended with “Prostitute, found slain, and Brenda’s her name, she had a baby” (Shakur). This is a sad and awakening song to everyday problems that were being ignore and thought of as “It is not mine so it is not my problem.” This song evokes emotion and sends a message of why you should make a difference in your community. The only problem is that it wasn’t an acceptable message just because it was labeled as Gangsta rap.

With the movement into the mainstream, the violence, and the overall success of Gangsta Rap, criticism became highly publicized and politicized. People of high influence such as Senator Bob Dole and Civil Rights Activist C. Delores Tucker were talking against it publicly and even in US Senate hearings. They said that it lacked “dignity,” it objectified and disgraced women by calling them “bitches and hoes,” and calling it “muck” that was “motivating our youth to commit violent behavior, use drugs, and abuse women” (MTV). The attack on Gangsta Rap targeted the companies that distributed and supported it. Time Warner even sold the distributor of Death Row Records ‘Interscope.’ Despite this, the music didn’t change and the consumers kept buying (MTV). A big part of this was due to mass consumption by white suburban teens.

A big reason behind Gangsta Rap’s success is the mass consumption by white Americans. Whites make up as much as 70% of all rap sales and the owners of Hip Hop magazines such as XXL and The Source, which are “major vehicles of rap culture,” are white (Brown and Thompson). It can be confusing to understand why is white consumption so high of a genre that identifies with black culture and is mostly African American. It can be used to satisfy an expression of “teenage angst” and with the televised riots, it showed the white suburban kids that it was more than just songs of fiction, but rather “rooted in bitter truths” (Brown and Hardy). The realism behind Gangsta Rap’s message and lyricism really resonated with white youth much like Rock had done in the past. It gave them something different along with an image of rebellion against the generation before them and the America they were living in. This new influx of suburban white consumption changed social norms amongst white youth which dominated American media.

Another positive of white suburban teen consumption is that better race relations could also be predicted and tracked due to the large consumption of rap music. With the white youth growing up listening to rap music, there is “increased interracial contact and racial awareness.” Also, having the white children grow up with a better understanding of racial discrimination allowing for a less racist society and giving a chance for the majority of America, which is white, to make changes regarding those problems (Brown and Thompson). Gangsta Rap is good for America despite what you say it glorifies or causes. People are constantly saying that Gangsta rap causes violence in youth but there is no evidence to a correlation between them. Gangsta rap may be seen as a bad thing but the positive aspects of it way out-weigh the negative ones.

If the arguments I have made are not enough, let me tell you a story. Two seventeen-year-old males were caught and tried for a sniper attack on a police officer in Milwaukee. They shot and killed the 31-year-old police officer saying that they did it because of Tupac’s verse on South Central Cartel’s track “Gangsta Team.” The alleged shooter Curtis Walker had already had a “six-year history of drug, burglary, and weapon offenses” (Philips). The claim for this is completely absurd and the fact that the court system even entertained the idea shows the deep-rooted racism within the American system. This isn’t the first time this has happened, countless times criminal actions have been blamed on artist’s influence over them. It’s like Snoop said in his interview on MTV’s Death Row Documentary: “There’s no way I can say don’t do drugs; don’t do this. People ain’t going to stop killing each other…I don’t mean to be political but that ain’t even me, but I’m going to express the real from my heart” (MTV). Gangsta rappers are not causing violence, and they are not causing people to sell dope. They are rapping a reality that they live or have lived in. There are many reasons why people are or become violent, and people are out slinging dope because they can’t get a job to support themselves and/or their kids. That is a problem with the way our country is ran rather than a problem of what is being rapped about. You can talk all day about how it causes violence, but it was there before it and it’s going to be there after it.

There were negative and controversial aspects behind Gangsta Rap for sure, but there were also truths, and a social influence that helped America become what it is today. I’m not saying the American system is no longer racist but I believe that it has become a less racist institution. Gangsta Rap shook up old America and allowed a new America to be built on top of its destruction. This new America is one where a president could be black, one where a president could invite a rapper to perform at the white house, and one where a rapper could meet and argue with a governor about public education in a city that has turned into a war-zone due to lack of acknowledgement. The same style lives today and it still fights for the same thing. The issues Gangsta Rappers recorded for years were once completely ignored and are now front page issues. Hip Hop is probably the most influential aspect of the mainstream today. This America would not have been possible without Gangsta Rap. It isn’t as bad as everybody thinks and says it is. The positive aspects of it, as I said before, greatly outweigh the negative ones. It may be profane but it conveys a message that is typically ignored by most of these critics. It is an underappreciated driving force in America both socially and politically.
