Gangsta Rap And Its Impact On The Rap Game

Rap is a genre in music that consists of rhyming or being poetic over a certain unique beat. The origin of rap is significantly different from any other form of music. The flow, change, subject of the music, and the instrumentals behind the rapping has all changed with time. Most people would underestimate the complexity of the music and the evolution it has undergone. The real roots of rap music began in the late 1980’s with the “Golden Age.” It was innovative and mostly based around the party scene. Gangsta Rap followed the Golden age and was very impactful on the young culture. After the Gangsta Rap era came the time in rap referred to as Crunk Rap which combined the country sound with the party lifestyle. Conscious

During the 1970s, the urban underground musical culture ‘Hip Hop’, began to arise through African American youth in East-Coast, New York City (The Bronx). With “noisy, disorganised park jams” (Lazerine and Lazerine, 2008, P.1), a musical revolution was about to begin.

N.W.A (an abbreviation of Niggaz Wit Attitudes)[1][2][3] was an American hip hop group from Compton, California, widely considered one of the seminal acts of the gangsta rap and west coast hip hop sub-genres, sometimes credited as the most important group in the history of rap music.[4] Active from 1986 to 1991, the rap group endured controversy due to the explicit lyrics that many considered to be disrespectful to women, and glorifying drugs and crime. The group was subsequently banned from many mainstream American radio stations. In spite of this, the group has sold over 10 million units in the United States alone.

Rap music has become one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past few decades. A major part of hip hop culture, rap, discusses the experiences and standards of living of people in different situations ranging from racial stereotyping to struggle for survival in poor, violent conditions. Rap music is a vocal protest for the people oppressed by these things. Most people know that rap is not only music to dance and party to, but a significant form of expression. It is a source of information that describes the rage of people facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday survival. Its distinct sound, images, and attitude are notorious to people of all

Picture this, you are teenager growing up in Los Angeles, on your way to school and you turn on the radio. “Yo thanks for tuning into to the hottest radio station in the streets of LA. Up next we got N.W.A. with their new single Appetite for Destruction.” That was common for nearly every person who lived in LA and enjoyed hip-hop music. During the early 90s and late 80s, West coast hip-hop was dominated by the gruesome realities of gangster rap and g-funk. Rap at the time was intense, authentic, and unbearable. Ultimately, this wave of “fuck you” sprouted from the injustices that plagued many impoverished communities. Individuals were angered from the oppressive acts that hindered any attempt to reach success, and gangster music within LA served as the platform to express the frustration under such terrible circumstances. Although the sound was revolutionary and taking over the entire nation, still Los Angeles needed a fresh of breath of air to display the artistic talent that came out of Los Angeles. New York could play with both sides of the hip-hop spectrum of light-heartedness to aggressiveness, but unfortunately for LA, they only had one sound. In New York, they had artists from Kid N Play to Public Enemy. If Los Angeles were ever going to snatch the throne from New York, they needed to do so quickly before the dawn of Golden Age ended.

Who some call the call the godfather of rap, Eazy E, once said, “Who gave it that title, gangsta rap? It 's reality rap. It 's about what 's really going on.” There has been a great injustice done to the form of expression called rap. In essence rap is just lyrics over a basic beat or rhythm. Many members of society today assume that rap is a dangerous and violent influence, however what they seem to be ignorant of is the fact that rap music is actually beneficial. The majority of the world we live in today has unjustly classified rap as a barbaric form of music, unfit for any decent human to listen to, but the reality of the situation is, that people simply cannot accept the culture known as rap into society. Nowadays, rappers such as Kanye, Soulja Boi, and Wiz Khalifa are receiving much criticism about the way they portray their “hoodlum” lifestyle or the way they “encourage” violence through their music, when in actuality they are venting about the unfair circumstances society has forced them into. Listening to rap music and it’s positive vibes is in fact beneficial based on evidence which shows that consumption of rap music not only assists the listener in several ways, but also aids the rapper.

In the late 1980s a rap group helped popularize gangster rap but it got a little out of hand, when a song they made a song about the police and in that song it had a line that goes like this " F the police coming straight from the underground a young n**ga had it bad cause he's brown" this caused so many problem for both the genre and the group, now people are debating wither gangster rap is a good genre or not. The influence can go both ways. There are rappers that talk about their lives and there is rappers that talk about fame. But what some don't know is that there is a good side to this music. " Rap lyrics as you know are very brutal with gang and weapon violence" ( Riley 2). Since the rise of N.W.A, rap was

The scope of this study only focuses in on 5th grade boys who are African American. It also focuses on one form of music and that is gangsta rap. Gangsta rap has formed a bad reputation over the years due to the stigmas and stereotypes that this type of music provides. When it comes to gangster rap and its influence it is assumed that it can change the

When rock and roll made its debut, it was criticized immensely. Critics despised rock artists such as The Beatles, their sound, and their lyrical style, but nevertheless rock and roll emerged as one of the most successful genres in popular music (Considine 34). New musical genres are subject to both tremendous praise and harsh criticism, and in the 1990’s the genre of hip-hop and rap experienced just that. Throughout its evolution in the 90’s, hip-hop and rap endured harsh criticism from not only the musical press, but the general public as well. In the early 90’s, many raps embodied the ideology of rapping against controversial sociopolitical subjects, and that angered many individuals while creating a divide between artists and listeners.

This can actually be seen in a study by Herd (2009), in 1985-1989 32% of songs had violence in them that increased by 23 % in 1990 that made it go up to over 50%. In 1994-1997 60% of rap songs contained lyrics about violence and it kept on increasing as the years went on. The content of these rap songs can range from sex, drugs, race, religion, social issues, and crime. The early 1990s is when Gangsta rap, new form of hip hop first came out. Once “gangsta rap” was formed the negative influences started to increase. The debate suggests that rap or “gangta rap” encourages anti social and pessimistic behavior. Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop music that many people believe promotes procriminal behavior through glorifying involvement in criminal

McDonnell, J. (1992). Rap music: Its role as an agent of change. Popular Music and

When people used to think of rap in the 80’s and 90’s they would relate it to gangs, violence, drugs and an overall bad connotation to its name. Although these are all not great qualities, these connotations of rap music were very accurate. Gang violence was a relevant thing in the decades previously stated, and many gang members would rap in order to bring in revenue for their gangs. For example Eazy-E, a rapper that was a part of a musical group known as NWA, was in a gang in Southern California and sold drugs in order to gain money for studio time and then sell records to make money for his gang (Eazy-E). There are many other rappers that did the same thing during his era and were part of the reasons that rap got a bad wrap. Comparing the past with present day rap culture there is an evident change. Todays rap culture is more about being flashy and showy. For example In Kanye West’s song Looking For Trouble he says

It no longer matters what part of the world you live in. Rap music can be heard playing from car’s passing in the streets and the hottest night club scene all across the globe. There is no doubt that Rap music has made a name for itself. With hard baselines and incredible word play put together in what is considered a standard sixteen bar versus has brought fame to artists of all styles. A virtual cash cow in the industry from music sells “it now generates over $10 billion per year and has moved beyond its musical roots, transforming into a dominant and increasingly lucrative lifestyle (Watson, Rapper 's Delight: A Billion-Dollar Industry).” The growth of the rap industry from a subcultural movement started

With roots in New York, hip hop extended and developed all through both shorelines of the United States in the eighties. Rappers like Talib Kweli, Gangstarr, and Mos Def have been at the bleeding edge of this development for a considerable length of time. While recounting stories of the hazards and one of kind characteristics

“Whip it through the glass n***a…I’m blowin money fast n***a” these are the words of rapper O.T. Genasis, not to be mistaken for O.T. Genesis, no this is O.T. GenAsis and his awe inspiring lyrics featured in his hit single “Coco”. Rap wasn’t always this bad, back when Rap first started with a group by the name of Sugar Hill Gang and their hit single to begin the era “Rapper’s Delight” Rap was about peace, harmony and just hanging out at a party, but r=this precedent split into more violent distorted versions of the genre such as the more 1990s popular genre of “Gangsta Rap” or the more recent rap music that glorifies sexual themes, practices and criminal mischief. This violent rap music has been seen to have harmful and undesirable effects on the behavior of adolescents as seen in many academic journals and a couple of long term scientific experiments. Even though many have acknowledged these negative effects seen in rap music of this time, some have used rap music to relay more positive messages such as using rap music in church sermons or just releasing music without the crude themes of most rap music and using the same aspects of rap music used by Sugar Hill Gang, Slick Rick and others in the past.