Wednesday, August 12, 2009

#149. The Decline of Gangsta Rap




Black people love music. They have excelled at numerous forms of music, from jazz to disco, pop and finally to rap music. It is one of the major contributions that they have made to the world, and through this medium they have assimilated themselves to millions of white people who normally would have nothing to do with them.

Rap music in particular, owes its main-stream success to the integration of the gangsta-rap genre with the listening habits of suburban white people, particularly white males whose only exposure to Black people came from listening to gangsta – rap in the early late 1980s and early 1990s.

Songs like Snoop Dog’s “187” were monumentally influential to a generation of rappers and had an immediate impact on tapes that white people placed into their Walkmans.

Ice-T – an occasional actor – performed the popular song “Cop Killer” in 1992, which is, about killing cops:

“The song provoked much controversy and negative reactions from politicians such as George H.W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Tipper Gore, although some defended the song on the basis of the band's First Amendment rights.”


Another gangsta rapper, similarly named after solidified water, Ice Cube, was part of Niggaz With Attitude (NWA), a hardcore gangsta rap outfit from Compton, that took the world by storm in the late 80s, forever changing the listening habits of white people with it:

“N.W.A released Straight Outta Compton in 1988. With its famous opening salvo of three songs, the group reflected the rising anger of the urban youth. "Straight Outta Compton" introduced the group; "Fuck tha Police" protested police brutality and racial profiling, and "Gangsta Gangsta" painted the worldview of the inner-city youth. While the group was later credited with pioneering the burgeoning sub genre of gangsta rap, N.W.A in fact referred to their music as "reality rap".”


But as gangsta rap slowly invaded the white suburbs, it had to move away from the hardcore, cop-killing image it had created. Thus, the Trojan horse for gangsta rap and Black people invading white people’s cassette tapes and CD players: Vanilla Ice.

Yes, he got white kids listening to rap, but it was a Faustian Pact for gangsta rappers: he was a white rapper that parents found tolerable, yet a white rapper that Black audiences found unimaginably intolerable. He was a mortal blow to gangsta rap that the genre may never recover from.

Whomp There It is, Tootsie Roll and other silly rap songs diluted the angry Black man message of Black solidarity and gangsta rap, and appealed primarily to white people and their pocket books. Later rappers like Sisqo cranked out goofy songs like “The Thong Song”, just to make a quick buck. Nothing of substance or of protest in favor of the Black community, just a goofy song that white people enjoyed, and specifically written for massive consumption by the white audience.

Black people sold their soul to Mephistopheles - the white devil, white people – in their bid to get big record deals and big bucks. Snoop Dog is now in PG-13 movies with Vince Vaughn and no longer rapping about the thug life. Instead:

“Rap artists have continued to produce more easygoing, melodic songs with R&B choruses. However, the likes of Kanye West, Snoop Dogg and Nelly have gone as far as to not only sing the hooks themselves, but to sing entire songs.

"Additionally, almost across the board, rappers from T.I. to Plies to Soulja Boy Tell'em have released songs with the female fans in mind, boasting about their ability to satisfy their women physically, emotionally and/or materialistically.

Have rappers gone soft?”

Take Soulja Boy Tell’em for example. He is a young rapper who one website dubbed a walking poster-child for Black stereotypes. He scored a hit in 2007 about performing a lewd act upon a female – which is one of the number one topics of rap music now – and older rappers had this to say about him:

“Critics and hip-hop figures such as Snoop Dogg and Method Man cite Soulja Boy as artistically typical of contemporary rap trends such as writing for the lucrative ringtone market, and the ascendence of "Southern hip hop", emphasizing catchy music that discards rap's traditional emphasis on message.”


Rap music, in the good old days, wasn’t about pumping out hits for white people to listen to in lily-white suburbs, but a genre to express Black angst at the world and their predicament in it. That was of course, in Pre-Obama America.

Now, what do Black people have to protest?

Rappers now have so much money at their disposal, that the issue that dominates the music scene is No Homo:

“But old habits die hard, and last week, West amended his position somewhat on "Run This Town," a new Jay-Z single on which the Chicago rapper is a featured guest. "It's crazy how you can go from being Joe Blow," West begins his rap, "to everybody on your dick—no homo." No homo, to those unfamiliar with the term, is a phrase added to statements in order to rid them of possible homosexual double-entendre. ("You've got beautiful balls," you tell your friend at the bocce game—"no homo.") No homo began life as East Harlem slang in the early '90s, and in the early aughts it entered the hip-hop lexicon via the Harlem rapper Cam'ron and his Diplomats crew.”

Yes, gangsta rap and rap music as whole is dead, a water-downed form of music that white people feel safe and comfortable listening too.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes the decline of gangsta rap, an art form that they perfected and then lost in a Faustian pact with the white devils. The allure of money and fame was too much for gangsta rappers so they sold their souls for vast fortunes. Not even resurrecting Tupac Shakur could save rap music now.

The following two videos show the evolution of rap music, from its hardcore, edgy past to where it might be headed...




17 comments:

Anonymous said...

I was unaware of the decline of gangsta rap. If this is true I'm glad. Gangsta rap was just another example of Black culture destroying American culture as a whole. Good Riddance!

Anonymous said...

Ice T was not in NWA. You're thinking of Ice Cube.

Anonymous said...

Ice T was not in NWA. You're thinking of Ice Cube.

Anonymous said...

Gangsta rap didn't really take off in the mainstream until 1992 or so; prior to that, although Public Enemy had been around for a number of years, the majority of rap music was still in the pedestrian-safe camp: D.J. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, MC Hammer, LL Cool J, Father MC, Run-DMC, Heavy D & The Boyz, Biz Markie, MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, etc.

Anonymous said...

rap music itself had it's place which did eye opening things like making our community aware it's hardships and the outside world aware of our hardships..........problem is when your music or any thing of your culture turns on the community and devours the community like a deadly cancer as rap has become then it's has to go.........rap music it self is a bastard music and like all bastard musics has an evil end.........you would not make good your self by being productive so you made nigger a common term to legitimise your selves not having what it takes to stand up and man up........causing mass destruction of our once great communities.......rap music great gift the pants hanging off the ass, the symbolism is powerful saying "I have given up I surrender my soul and I have mentally taken a f**king so my pants are hanging off my ass I am ready for the physical f**king now; bent me over and give it to me".........rap musics other gift social homosexuals pants on your asses......social homosexuals........rap mucic the black plague...


yours truly

" black the bottom line"

Anonymous said...

You're not supposed to call it "rap" any more it's "hip-hop" now. Blacks love to point that out to you, just like they love to point out that whatever word you're using to refer to blacks is offensive and then make up some new one that you're supposed to use (i.e. People of Color).

Anonymous said...

This site is amazing.

Try and get a publisher.

If they can publish "Stuff white people like" you should be able to put this right along side it.

Or how about "Stuff Jews Like"

Anonymous said...

causing mass destruction of our once great communities?
Are the great communities that no onw dare drive through? The communities of murder theft and destruction. Person responsibility would be nice!

Anonymous said...

won't be sad to see gangsta rap go. Never liked it. Now if they could just get rid of that God-awful and frightening noise known as heavy metal!

Anonymous said...

At least Heavy Metal has more going for it than rap. Heavy Metal bands actually play ighly amped instruments. Rap on the other hand realy has no talent behind it except a drum machine and a group of people who find it very difficult to speak normal english. No Homo...I rest my case.

Anonymous said...

"Faustian pact with the white devils"

White devils = jewish controlled music industry

Anonymous said...

Like Nas said, Hip hop is dead. Today's bubblegum hip hop is catered toward the white suburban kids who think the music they listen to now is "HOOD".

Anonymous said...

It's all been about $

Anonymous said...

All you guyz are hella fuckin racist. U juz dont understand the work that goes into rap unlike heavy metal and annoying ass country music.Any body can scream words that no one could identify and anyone could make a sad story about some girl breaking ur heart or sum gay shit like that. U white people are juz mad that U are not producing tha number 1 type of music listened to across America and around tha world.Multiple serveys already proved this so U cant even say it aint true.

-A.R.D

Anonymous said...

Gangster rap is not all what black people want to hear. Stop making statements on things u white folks don't understand. Todays mainstream rap music promotes a self destructing life style for our youth. There is a huge library of rap artist who make positive good music. The stuff thats played on commercial radio is gear to dumb down our youth and to attract advertising money. 50cents,Lil Wayne,Jay-Z and all the other hip-hop uncle toms are more dangerous to blacks than the KKK. Constant radio and tv play of this garbage is evidence of the on going phsycological warfare against the black community.

Anonymous said...

Greetings from India! I'm neither black nor white (although we Indians are more overtly racist than most whites- fairness creams is big business here). But my personal preference would always be for music that has melody in it, which means legends like Nat King Cole or Louis Armstrong; or even an "Unbreak my heart" by Toni Braxton.

Here's a nice read "The Rap On Whites Who Try To Act Black" : http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/14/AR2008031403385_pf.html

And some good commentary on the above article:

http://whippersnapper.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/can-a-white-guy-just-like-black-music

Cheers!

Anonymous said...

The thing I hate the most about rap/hiphop is the way it has slowly commandeered black culture. I look back at old movies such as the Wiz and I see representations of normal people who can pronounce the "th" sound and speak normal standard English. Now, all I see on television are a bunch of bumbling black idiots who can barely talk.