Gangsta Rap

    What is gangster rap? Some call it music that is made purely for bragging about how much money they got and how violent they can be. Gangster rap originated from South Central California. It used to be that there were more friendly type of music like the Fresh Prince’s album, which was released in 1988, and quickly became a big hit. But it was on this summer that rap would change forever. Niggaz With Attitude or N.W.A released their album entitled Straight Outta Compton and quickly became controversial because of songs like “Fuck tha Police” and “Straight Outta Compton” which promoted violence in their music and “contained more explicit language and incendiary subject matter than every previous hip hop record combined, and it contained nothing like a didactic ‘message’’(History).

            Gangster Rap can tell a story about what a rapper has supposedly done before coming to rap. But there is a case in Newport, Va in which detectives are using Antwain Steward rap in which he states “But nobody saw when I [expletive] smoked him, roped him, sharpened up the shank then I poked him…” as a confession to killing two teenagers (Manly). Prosecutors are trying to prove that Steward did kill the two teenagers because he brags about it in his song. This is just one example of many rappers that promote gun violence. Chief Keef is another rapper that raps about killing people and smoking weed and not caring for police authority

            Now in this couple of years we still gangster rap changing and rappers are starting to rap about how much money they get buy robbing and selling weed. They also start rapping about how much women they can get. This is a problem because according to Ronald Roach, and author at Diverse Education, he states that  “study revealed that Black adolescents are becoming sexually active at ages younger than other youth and are suffering from HIV/AIDS at a rate higher than other groups.”

Works Cited

“Gangsta Rap Hits the Mainstream with the Release of N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton” History, A&E Television Networks N.D Web 04 April 2014

Manly, Lorne. "Legal Debate on Using Boastful Rap Lyrics as a Smoking Gun." The New York Times. The New York Times, 26 Mar. 2014. Web. 04 April 2014

Roach, Ronald. "Decoding Hip-Hop's Cultural Impact." Diverse: Issues In Higher Education. Diverse: Issues In Higher Education, 22 Apr. 2004. Web. 04 April 2014