Gangsta rap (1986- ) is the main form of hip hop music listened to by white Americans, who buy most of it. It is the sort of hip hop done by acts like Ice T, NWA, Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Eminem. It is famous for holding women and the law in low regard.
Gangsta rap is a white form of hip hop. Sure, the performers are nearly all black, but who is the audience? Follow the money. It is not music by blacks for blacks, but by blacks for whites.
When it comes to race, America has changed hugely since 1950. So maybe whites at last can enjoy black music in and of itself and not in some form that has been changed for them.
But if whites are suddenly so colour-blind, then why does gangsta rap play to the worst images that whites have about blacks – as violent and oversexed? Is it because they are true? Is this what KRS-One meant when he said the essence of rap is to interpret the consciousness of the people? Or is it just what white people like to buy and hear?
Look at the cover of Snoop Dogg’s “Doggystyle” (1993), the album that made his name. It has a naked black woman sticking her head in a doghouse. This is just how white men have seen black women for hundreds of years: as animals, as faceless sex objects, as something to rape. It looks like something straight out of the Jim Crow museum. The minstrel show is back in town.
Gangsta rap did not create racism, but it has become its well-paid handmaiden. Helping white people everywhere feel good about themselves. And putting pictures in everyone’s heads about black people that will be there for a long, long time.
But what about all those songs about violence against the police? Surely they at least are “black”.
Blacks in cities have no great love for the police, it is true, but songs about killing them is not natural to black America. Music is something that comes from churches and clubs where such themes would be out of place. But they are not out of place for a 13-year-old white boy sitting in his room, hating how he has to listen to his parents, his teachers and the law. It is as old as rock music.
The themes common to gangsta rap – women as sex objects, drugs and violence – come from rock music by way of the Beastie Boys, not from black music.
The general sound and feeling of gangsta rap is so close to rock music that Jay-Z and Linkin Park, a rock band, could do a song together. It sounded surprisingly natural. Ice T, one of the founders of gangsta rap, even had a heavy metal rock band, Body Count.
Not all of gangsta rap is a coon show, of course. Tupac Shakur is an example. But too much of it is – and the rest of hip hop is not completely innocent either.
See also:
- More Thoughts on T.R.O.Y. – a beautiful piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates about how human hip hop once was and why it has come to a sad pass with gangsta rap.
- hip hop music
- video vixens
- White American music
- Jim Crow
- minstrel show
- Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs
- The Jezebel stereotype
WOW! Abagond Thank you so much for this post! I have always tried to explain the difference to people, regarding true hip hop and what the mainstream now knows as rap. Hip hop has always had a message, that message usually resonates throughout the black community no matter the socioeconomic status. Rap, on the other hand, panders to the lowest dominator within our culture and the image that white America has of our people. However, as rap has become an increasingly popular way of becoming “rich or die trying” (50 cent), it has now begun to shape the minds of our young people that have no guidance in their lives. Slavery may have been the biggest rape of Africa, but rap is now the biggest rape and obstacle in furthering the black community. Thank you again so much for your post. You are beginning to inspire me to begin my own blog.
I agree. And, yes, start a blog! If you do, please tell me so I can link to it. I am sure it will be worth reading.
Abagond,
Thank you. That’s what I’m trying to say for years that gansta rap is nothing more than a minstrel show performed by black men or men in blackface.
Stephanie B.
http://jazzybecauseisaidso.blogspot.com/
ok Abagond, the above is my web address for my new blog. Give me a couple of days to get it up and running and please leave tips and suggestions. Thanks again for inspiring me.
Musiq now known as Jazzy
That is great news!
Abagond,
One other thing, the video girls are there for the titillation of young white males who already see Black women are oversexed and immoral, someone who isn’t marriage material. In most gansta rap video, there are several scantily-clad women gyrating at the rapper, who is saying derogative words to the said women.
In order for white supremacy to thrive, they need white women as wives and mothers. So they come up with stereotypes of Black women in order to justify their white supremacist ideology.
Steph
Ah, well, yes, that is an upcoming post.
im a white man and i have to say i love gangsta rap… you cant top the flo and lyrics of Big L, but i definately dont see black women as over sexed ho’s n shit, my girl is black if anything i think white girls are a bit more like that, maybe its where im from but white girls are the jezzebels here..but back on to the rap, gangsta rap is superb but i also love dirty south, miami bass, and bare other styles….people like krs-one just show you how good hip hop/ rap is… we white kids dont just listen to the gangsta shit, we love it all…..
For me hip hop seemed to take a wrong turn with gangsta rap.
no bad…
I can’t stand gangsta rap. Such vile stuff. And very popular in Germany, by the way. It always made me feel uncomfortable to be the only black girl in a big club full of white people dancing to Dr. Dre. As if I had to be on extra-good behaviour.
Gangsta rap is NOT for black people, that’s for sure. I do not listen to it, I refuse to endorse it.
Biggie and Tupac were way better than most of these rappers so-called today.
I’m 20 but I listen mostly to Old School. It’s way better, and healthier.
But sometimes I’ll indulge in some Rap/Hip-Hop.
I dunno. I just hate we’re made to look so bad. But it is good to know what the enemy thinks of you…
I’ve written a blog about Hip Hop
Heres the link:
http://neckback.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-hip-hop-dead-now.html
From another topic:
“The real question to ask is why the music/media industry chose gangster rap as the preferred medium for urban music, because there were always a lot of other urban music choices out there??”
There are many who believe the introduction of ‘gangster rap’ into the music industry was to ‘hi-jack’ an art form at that time which was very ‘race conscious’ and also had strong’Islamic’ influences
Furthermore the gangster rap element had always been there, take KRS-1 first album , ‘South Bronx’, the first album I believe to depict a gun thereon.
This form of ‘gangster rap’, and its earlier form was nowhere as ‘destructive’ as the forms developed subsequently.
Personally, I do not believe Hip Hop could be allowed to carry on its initial path of cultural uplift, race conscious, African centredness etc
Now that I think about it this is concurrent with Reggae music, but from a different perspective and analysis
Correctioon:
‘Criminal Minded’ with South Bronx tune on the album is KRS-1 and Scott La Rock’s first album.
Gangsta rap before even the term was even coined
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xtTqk-rWThQ/SeScHEBxQyI/AAAAAAAAAGM/I6X3cuuVfVA/s400/Boogie+Down+Productions+-+Criminal+Minded.jpg
The themes common to gangsta rap – women as sex objects, drugs and violence – come from rock music by way of the Beastie Boys, not from black music.
I both agree and disagree with this. It is true that black music does not have any precedent of such violent and anti-social music.
However;
- there are plenty of drug references in old jazz and funk, only they were more subtle than in gangsta rap.
- to say that the sex/drugs/violence themes come from rock music and the Beastie Boys is erroneous. Firstly, the Beasties were never about violence, and secondly, their impact on mainstream hip-hop (in terms of the black community that makes hip-hop and therefore gangsta rap) was not all that great.
I think it is more truthful to say that gangsta rap represents a certain element of the black community that came to the fore in the 80s with the crime and drug problems that beset the inner cities.
Trying to blame white rock music for the antisocial elements in gangsta rap strikes me as disingenuous. Yes, these elements occur in whites, but in blacks as well. And the black community came up with the style entirely on its own.
What white people DID do was make it popular, and through their consuming habits, turn it into mainstream music. They help perpetuate it, but they didn’t invent it.
My own view, I think you can chart Gangsta Rap specifically to NWA, even though Ice T was a classical ganster rapper even before then.
Personally, I think ‘Gangsta Rap’ had to be introduced to ‘nullify’ the ‘potentially revolutionary’ idea within the music back then.
Hmmmm!!
@ J:
Personally, I think ‘Gangsta Rap’ had to be introduced to ‘nullify’ the ‘potentially revolutionary’ idea within the music back then.
That’s nice if you like conspiracy theories. But it’s an extremely fanciful idea.
I think it’s a lot simpler than that. The gangsta rap of NWA was only one of many sub-genres of hip-hop in the late 80s. But because it so appealed to the aggressive anti-social instincts of young males (both white and black) it became the dominant strain. Their is no invisible hand guiding this, apart from the invisible hand of capitalism.
The buying public, most of the time, loves the lowest common denominator available. Consider how much more sophisticated the soul of the 60s and 70s was compared to today; audiences prefer dumbed-down versions such as most disco and the mechanical soul of the 80s til today.
Conscious rap ultimately requires too much thinking of its audience, and most music fans are pretty simple-minded in their tastes. Add to that the fact that gangsta rap is easier for young white males to consume, because it doesn’t challenge their world view like a Public Enemy or Dead Prez would.
I have to agree with Eurasian Sensation. Whites are partly responsible for the success of gangster rap, but it was invented by black youth and a large portion of its audience is black. I think the worst effect that this genre has had is to spread negative conceptions of African Americans well outside of the borders of the US into Europe, Africa, and Asia where the music is also popular. Anyone who seeks to improve the public image of black Americans should work towards suppressing this music and the crude, antisocial tendencies which give rise to it.
I agree with what you’re saying, but at least initially a lot of the founders you are talking about had a lot more to say about America than what was going on in innocent daisy-age the mainstream at the time.
Ice-T & Cube especially had a lot on their mind before they turned into parodies of themselves.
Snoop Dogg is the worst though, minstrelsy in the fullest.
I don’t think Rock had much do with it, more it was a result of the neglect and destruction of Ghettoes around America after the reagan administration.
Also, I’d say that right about now, “Conscious Hip-Hop”s audience is predominantly white…
Also I’d say that Tupac later became one of the very worst examples, since he obviously knew so much better (hear his debut) and he basically instigated that whole “East-Coast/West-Coast” bullshit that didn’t do anybody any favours. (except publicity)
@ Hammurubai:
I agree. Tupac had a positive side to him, but some of his stuff is as ugly and negative as anyone else out there. The near-deification of him (and to a lesser extent, Biggie) is quite disturbing. (Btw, Biggie was an amazing rapper, but he was a shitty human being.)
Agabond, initially Gangsta Rap was very politicised, with a lot of anti-american and pro-black lyrics, it was only with Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” that hedonism became the main theme and turned into a minstresly show.
Honestly, I don’t think Tupac was ever a very technically skilled or original rapper (except his debut album), especially compared to Ice Cube or Ice-T, the latter which often had a strong sense of irony in his lyrics.
Basically, STOP THE TUPAC JOCKING, NEITHER HIM OR BIGGIE ARE IN THE TOP 50 EVEN.
Honestly blaming the Beastie Boys for Gangsta Rap seems a bit far fetched.
But I can see where you’re coming from, almost all the stuff past 1997 has been real embarassing.
Gangsta rap was popularised and funded by the proponents of Finance Capital, and has surely been made another useful tool that can be used to great effect in the white man’s eugenicist programme to wipe out Black folks through the violence that this genre glorifies. Rap also dilutes the consciousness in hiphop that is churned out by profound artists like Talib Kweli, Bahamadia, Gift of Gab etc….. Gangsta rap is derogatory of black people, and it is surely fuelling identity crisis among young people at an exponential rate,,, the cypha is never complete….