Gangster rap is the cesspool where black music has been festering for about twenty-five years now. What might one say about that, as an observer of politics and culture?
Very little, if you eat your meals in the neocon mess hall. Such observation could easily get too real, and airing too much reality gets the high officials in the antiracist priesthood all antsy in their pantsies. But you have to say something—you have to at least seem like you’re living in the real world, where a virtuoso named Lil Wayne is at the top of the Billboard charts and my WASP college pals are suffering through cultural identity crises that end up looking like this. Otherwise people will start to notice how out of touch you are.
So L. Brent Bozell III bravely airs his opinion that rap is stupid.
And Jonah Goldberg has the courage to suggest that rap isn’t very good music.
Thrilling stuff. Really, guys, you’re giving me goosebumps. But what if I don’t want to nance around with a self-satisfied smirk, and actually want to be a journalist? Is neocon limp-wristing really my only option?
Thank heavens one guy doesn’t think so, or else I’d feel guilty for being so mean.
In the mid-1980s, a potent new formulation of cocaine called crack became popular in the slums of Los Angeles County. In 1988, the first gangsta rap album, NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, began to spread the South Central crack dealer’s code nationwide. Soon, all across America, gangsta rap fans formed crack-dealing gangs called either Bloods or Crips in emulation of LA County’s most notorious black gangs. They began blasting away at each other, causing the national homicide rate to peak from 1990-1994.
LA’s legendary black gangs, like its black community in general, are in decline, inundated by Latin American immigrants and their progeny. Man for man, the black gangstas are still plenty scary, but the Hispanic “gang-affiliated members” now badly outnumber them. Blacks are leaving Los Angeles, with the South a particularly popular destination.
Oh. So, like, sociology and race are kind of important when discussing gangster rap. Who would have thunk it? Tell me more.
Hip hop first hit the Top 40 way back in 1979 with the amusing “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang. At the time I thought, “What a cute novelty record—I bet that style will be around for a year, maybe even two!” Little did I anticipate that decades of stylistic innovation by African-Americans were coming to an end, and that rap would turn out to be the black hole that entrapped black talent for, apparently, all eternity.
Hip-hop kept its goofy aura through the mid-80s (when the biggest selling rap record was “The Super Bowl Shuffle” by the Chicago Bears NFL team).
Then, gangsta rap emerged from Los Angeles and New York. By promoting the drug dealer’s code of what a boy had to do to be a man, it helped spread the crack wars across the country. By 1993-94, the murder rate had quadrupled among black 14-17 year-old-youths born in the late 70s (which was after Roe v. Wade, as economist Steven D. Levitt conveniently forgot to mention while pushing his abortion-cut-crime theory in the bestseller Freakonomics).
Wow. So realistic journalism about rap is possible. Thanks, Steve. On the other hand, if I go easy on hip hop like the ladies in Manhattan and D.C., maybe I’ll get invited to some fun parties at Snoop’s crib—or at least some cocktail receptions at AEI. I’ll have to think about this one.
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Neocons on gangster rap - a punchline looking for a joke
Gangster rap is the cesspool where black music has been festering for about twenty-five years now. What might one say about that, as an observer of politics and culture? Very little, … [Read More]
Posted by Evan McLaren on June 25, 2008
The Usual Suspects