At Too Sense, One Drop explains his distaste for gangsta rap:
The problem is, a lot of the time these kids don’t know any actual black people. They have no way of knowing what is truth and what is fantasy. Gangsta rap plays into all of the old stereotypes about blacks: that they’re violent, over-sexed, addicted to drugs and alcohol. Culturally, we’ve gone from Amos N Andy to Capone and Noriega. And white people are completely comfortable with that image of black existence. It fits neatly with all of the preconceived notions we have. It reinforces them. […]
But gangsta rap? The life it describes is seen as “real” and “authentic” by the same people who couldn’t quite buy into the normalcy of the Cosbys. For too many people, the only face of blackness they see is the one worn by the gangstas.
Speaking as someone who grew up with those “suburban white kids,” I can definitely understand One Drop’s anger and exasperation, mostly because he’s right. For quite a few of my peers (in the loosest sense), gangsta rap did form the basis for their “understanding” of black people. In high school, I clearly remember having my “blackness” challenged by white kids who didn’t know the first thing about black people, but who listened to Get Rich or Die Tryin’ on permanent repeat.
That said, I think One Drop’s concerns might be a little ill-suited for the contemporary hip-hop world. We are long past the hey-day of mainstream gangsta rap; indeed, the genre reached it’s commercial (and artistic, I think) peak in the mid-nineties, with the rivalry between Bad Boy and Death Row. If anything, 50 Cent’s rise in the early part of this decade was the last hurrah for a genre which has steadily lost importance as tastes have changed. For all intents and purposes, gangsta rap has returned to the “underground” as it were, to be replaced by – one hand – southern hip-hop, and on the other, the pop-influenced hip-hop of Kanye West or Timbaland. In fact, two of the most well-regarded producers of the last few years – 9th Wonder and Just Blaze – rely heavily on soul samples which are oriented more towards the pop charts than they are anything else. Even rappers who are still, on some level, gangsta rappers, have embraced the pop side of things; listen to Jay-Z and Lil’ Wayne’s latest albums (American Gangster and Tha Carter III, respectively) and you’ll see what I mean.
Of course, that’s not to say that gangsta rap is irrelevant; if that were the case, The Game would still be pushing demo tapes somewhere, and not working on this third album. But we should remember that gangsta rap is a trend, and isn’t necessarily a permanent fixture of mainstream hip-hop. Yes, we should (rightly) criticize the sub-genre for it’s excesses, but we should also try to keep things in perspective.
cross-posted from The United States of Jamerica