#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...