About Gangsta Rap
After soul music set a positive tone for hip hop music in the 1970s, the birth of gangsta rap in the 1980s revealed a negative side to hip hop. With its brutal lyrics that promote the lifestyle of a street gangster, the genre has attracted huge amounts of criticism and banning threats. However, the genre is still thriving.
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Hip Hop Style
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Based on a lyrical focus on the lifestyles of inner-city thugs, gangsters and criminals, gangsta rap is viewed as a subgenre of hip hop music. Driven by drum beats, keyboard effects, loops and rapping or "flowing" from the vocals, gangsta rap is very similar to hip hop.
History
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The lyrics of hip hop music sometimes focus on crime and violence in the inner city, but prior to the rise of gangsta rap in the late 1980s, hip hop relayed the style of soul music of the 1970s. It was received as a positive music. However, when gangsta rap emerged, it praised the acts of criminals and violence in the streets.
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The Media on Gangsta Rap
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The media attacks gangsta rap and some hip hop artists on a regular basis because of their relationships with crime, violence, homophobia, materialism and misogyny. However, through out the 1990s, gangsta rap was the most commercially successful branch of hip hop in America, and dominated the Billboard charts numerous times.
2Pac
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Tupac Amaru Shakur, a native of New York City, moved to Marin City, California when he was 17 years of age. He lived on the streets and began hustling for the next four years. After meeting Shock-G, the front man of Digital Underground, a successful rap group from Oakland, Tupac joined the group to get experience. Tupac became "2Pac" and was an unlikely martyr of gangsta rap. His debut album "2Pacalypse Now" in 1991 set the tone for his career and he was a highly recognized artist in the world of gangsta rap. However, he died following a drive-by shooting in September 1996.
N.W.A.
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According to the biography of N.W.A. on Allmusic.com, N.W.A. band membes are "the unapologetically violent and sexist pioneers of gangsta rap, and are in many ways the most notorious group in the history of rap." The five-piece group was born into the genre in the late 1980s and glorified the violence and hedonism of a criminal lifestyle. Their music consisted of harsh language with funky, bass-driven beats. Artists Ice Cube and Eazy-E were group members before departing in 1989. The group eventually fell apart in 1992 when producer Dr. Dre left for a solo career.
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References
- Photo Credit inner city urban basketball image by davidcrehner from Fotolia.com
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Comments
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how in the world can censorship, block reality from being told, gangster rappers are not saying, what it was like or how it can be but, how it is in the now in their inner city neighborhoods.if you never lived the lives these individuels live, you can through their lyrycs see and experience notheir true life brutal struggle that they face daily, and the reality that they constanly face.less educated, fatherless, hopelessness, no money to support the kids they have, sure some poeple grow up in these cicumstances and succeed in life fine, but I assure you, that the majority don't, I grew up in a tough italian neighborhood, and if it wasnt for the the shoes fact that I didn't have italian blood I would today, be a full fledged made man in one of the new york biggest crime organizations, it is only when you live in the shoes of a poor and miserable individuel can you realy understand the deep resentment that gangster rappers express to whoever takes the time to listen, we may not like the lyrycs, but its exacyly the same as saying, i don't like to hear it.some poeple don't know what is going on in life, they don't read the newspaper, some poeple realy don't want to know what's going on in the lives of the less fortunate.it seems that the majority of the kids have no way out of the peer pressure s that they encounter daily.when and if society ever changes the way it treats and encounters these communities, maybe the songs of thier live will be more acceptable to us all, meanwhile life goes on what are you doing to try and change it? why aren't you listening? they say that a person can retire form their jobs, but you realy cant retire form the ghetto mentality, i should know I'm 63 and haved have lived it, its the only life I can understand.the only place where outside poeples minds dare not to enter. love to all........POPz.
