One day in April 1992, a troubled nineteen-year-old was pulled over on a routine traffic stop on a southeastern Texas highway. The African-American driver, Ronald Ray Howard, had grown up in poverty and said he was beaten by his dad; that day, he was driving a stolen vehicle and blasting Tupac’s 2Pacalypse Now from the cassette deck. “The music was up as loud as it could go with gunshots and siren noises on it and my heart was pounding hard,” Howard said. As he watched a forty-something white state trooper named Bill Davidson approach his car, he grew agitated. “I was so hyped up, I just snapped. I jacked a bullet in the chamber and when he was close enough, I turned around and bam! I shot him.”
Howard was tried for murder, but his lawyer attempted to pin the blame on rap, arguing that Howard’s favorite artists, including Tupac, N.W.A, and the Geto Boys, had unduly influenced him. Davidson’s widow agreed. “There isn’t a doubt in my mind that my husband would still be alive if Tupac hadn’t written these violent, antipolice songs and the companies involved hadn’t published and put them out on the street,” she said. Vice President Dan Quayle jumped into the fray, criticizing 2Pacalypse Now—which features songs like “Soulja’s Story” and “Trapped,” in which characters murder police—and calling for Interscope to withdraw it from stores. “There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published by a responsible corporation,” Quayle said.
“They ain’t even judged the dude that shot the cop yet,” Tupac complained, “and they judged me!”
In the end, the jury agreed that Howard’s love for violent hip-hop had influenced him, but he was nonetheless convicted and given the death penalty, and was executed in 2005.
Quayle, of course, had also denounced Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” and during the eighties and nineties politicians frequently took shots at popular musicians. But while some record companies did not stand by their artists, Tupac’s label Interscope—which would go on to sign controversial performers like Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson—was different. “[Interscope’s] owners believed in the artist being able to say whatever they wanted,” said journalist Jeffrey Jolson-Colburn. “And the more controversial, the better.”
“A lot of this [criticism of rap] is just plain old racism,” said Interscope cofounder Ted Field in 1993. “You can tell the people who want to stop us from releasing controversial rap music one thing: Kiss my ass.”
Field was a Chicago-born heir to a department store and media company fortune. He dabbled in the family businesses and became a successful racecar driver, before mashing his left hand in a 1975 accident. He reinvented himself as a Hollywood power player, producing hit movies like Revenge of the Nerds and Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. In 1989 he dove into the music industry, cofounding Interscope Records with Jimmy Iovine.
If Field was born with a silver spoon, Iovine was self-made. He prided himself on his hardscrabble upbringing. Raised in a working-class Italian family in Downtown Brooklyn, his father was a union longshoreman and drove a bread truck. Jimmy dropped out of criminal justice college and diligently worked his way into the music business. He got his first industry job as a teenager, sweeping studio floors. He eventually became known as a guy who could make hit records, even with prickly personalities. He navigated the coked-up major label rock world of the seventies and eighties, coaxing top-sellers out of artists like Stevie Nicks and Meatloaf. He worked as an engineer on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and John Lennon’s Walls and Bridges, and produced Patti Smith’s Easter. Like Dre, he was known for his tenacity and perfectionism.
“He’s a heat-seeking missile,” said Bono about Iovine, who produced the 1983 U2 live album, Under a Blood Red Sky. “Jimmy wants everything cut like a diamond that can be seen from a long distance. And he’s not subtle about how he tells you.”
But studio wizardry was one thing; with Interscope Iovine sought to be a mogul. The label launched in 1990 as a joint venture with Atlantic Records. Field contributed some of his inheritance—he received millions when his father Marshall Field IV died—and Iovine contributed his expertise.
There were questionable early decisions, like signing Gerardo, a Latino Vanilla Ice of sorts responsible for the gimmicky hit “Rico Suave.” Their roster also included Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, also rather vanilla, though “Good Vibrations” remains the jam.
When Dr. Dre met Iovine, the latter knew little about hip-hop. Iovine prided himself on being a man who could smell a hit in almost any genre. It’s just that he found the product sonically lackluster; there was no oomph. But when Dre came to his office and played him “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” it sounded so crisp and right that Iovine could barely believe it.
“I did,” said Dre.
“Who’s the engineer?”
“I am.”
Urged on by a whipsmart A&R named John McClain, Interscope set their sights on securing the rights to The Chronic. But they knew it wouldn’t be easy. Just about everyone in the industry was steering clear of Dre, owing both to his legal issues—the contract dispute with Ruthless—and bad publicity surrounding his arrests and lawsuits. Even Sony Records, which put out the Deep Cover soundtrack, had been scared off.
Iovine didn’t believe everything he read in the news. “If this was a white artist, I believe that these court cases would be a footnote in the story,” he said. He set about untangling the strands of Dre’s legal situation. He helped negotiate a deal with Ruthless, which would see a cut. Then Iovine worked on Dre’s deal with Priority, which also had him under contract. Iovine was able to do legally what Suge had allegedly attempted with baseball bats.
Dre reportedly received a million-dollar advance from his new deal, as part of a complicated food chain: Dre recorded for Death Row, which had a distribution deal with Interscope, which in turn was partly owned by Atlantic, a Time Warner company.
“[N]obody wanted to take a chance on me because of all that legal shit,” said Dre. “Jimmy made it happen.” They became attached at the hip. Dre was grateful for an ally, someone who truly understood his brilliance. Sure, Eazy-E and Jerry Heller appreciated his hit-making abilities, but they seemed to treat him like a commodity. Iovine, a producer himself, knew he was a treasure.
Iovine allowed Dre to expand his role as well, tapping him to direct the video for “Let Me Ride” in 1993. Once, as he watched Dre ease into a lowrider, hitting switches to bounce the car up and down like a shark devouring its prey, something dawned on Iovine: Snoop and Dre were the new Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Brilliant musicians and cultural spokesmen alike, they’d soon be dictating what kids listened to, how they moved through the world, and what they wore. Indeed, baseball caps, hoodies, bulky sports jackets, and baggy pants remain classic youth garb to this day.
This wasn’t a British invasion, this was a West Coast invasion. The lingua franca of the new youth movement would be the language of the inner city.
For the most part, Suge left his artists alone to do their thing in Hollywood. “He might come in, nod his head a bit,” said The Glove. “Dre was the decision maker.” Suge spent more time across town in Westwood. Death Row had moved into an office adjacent to Interscope, in a red brick and glass tower on a corporate stretch of Wilshire Boulevard. Cultures clashed from the jump. Suge’s label lacked a formal reception area, and tough characters would mill about the lobby. Those who’d arrived on legitimate business might find a gang member in their face: “Who are you, Blood?”
Interscope staff quickly began realizing what they’d been signed up for. Since Death Row was accessed directly from the elevator, cautious Interscope employees might take the stairs rather than potentially face Suge associates. One morning, a promotions department worker saw some Death Row affiliates appropriating furniture from his boss’s office. “Don’t start no problems,” he claims to have been told, “and there won’t be none.”
In July 1992, a pair of brothers named George and Lynwood Stanley arrived at Solar. The rap duo was there at Dre’s invitation, and he’d given them permission to make a phone call on Death Row’s line, they said. “I don’t give a fuck what Dre says, Dre ain’t payin’ no bills,” said Suge. They began arguing and then, according to the Stanleys’ complaint filed in L.A. Superior Court, Knight proceeded to beat them, threatened to shoot them, and fired off a warning round. He ordered them to take off their pants, took Lynwood’s money, and then said he’d kill their families if they mentioned the incident, the complaint continued. “He shot through the wall to scare ’em,” added Dick Griffey. “The hole is still there.”
Suge was often accused of this sort of intimidation. Many alleged victims declined to press charges, citing a fear of retaliation. This case played out differently. Under a plea bargain, Knight pleaded no contest to two counts of assault, receiving a nine-year prison sentence that would be suspended so long as he completed five years of probation. According to the Stanley brothers, Deputy District Attorney Lawrence Longo had urged them to accept a subpar deal. It turned out that Knight rented Longo’s Malibu home in 1996, for $19,000 per month plus a hefty commission. And that wasn’t all: A few months earlier, Longo’s eighteen-year-old daughter Gina signed a recording contract with Death Row, reportedly for $50,000. Longo was fired from the DA’s office in 1997 and disciplined by the state Bar.
The case gave insight into Suge’s MO. Using the three main incentives at his disposal—brute force, money, and access to the entertainment industry—he became a master manipulator. “Suge is the kind of dude to piss on your leg and laugh because he’s 350 pounds and he knows you ain’t really fittin’ to do shit,” said D.O.C. “He got sort of a kick out of that kind of shit. So the more power he got, the more outrageous he got.”
Despite Suge’s shenanigans—or perhaps because of them—the stars had begun to align for Death Row, Inc., by late 1992. They only had one product to sell, but that product was exquisite. The Chronic became a massive hit upon its December release. Videos for “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” “Dre Day,” and “Let Me Ride” soon dominated MTV, and the first two tracks cracked Billboard’s Top 10. The album sold over three million copies, and is largely credited with doing in pop rappers like Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer, under whose feet the ground suddenly shifted.
Despite Interscope’s confidence, The Chronic’s pop breakout was unexpected. N.W.A never had much chart success with their singles, because most radio programmers refused to play them. The smart money had the same fate befalling first single “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang,” which similarly had trouble getting into rotation—at first.
“We can’t get it played on the radio,” Jimmy Iovine said the radio guys told him.
“It’s ‘Satisfaction,’” he retorted.
“Radio doesn’t think so. They think it’s a bunch of black guys cursing who want to kill everybody.”
Iovine decided to create a minute-long commercial, consisting of nothing but the song. “Don’t say who it is, and buy it on fifty stations, drive time. I want the program directors to hear it in their cars.”
It wasn’t program directors who were swayed. It was the listeners themselves, kids who called in requesting the song in droves. This populist wellspring set the music industry hype machine in motion. Before long, Dr. Dre was being promoted on the same stations as Aerosmith, Whitney Houston, and U2. He and Snoop got the September 30, 1993, Rolling Stone cover. Soon they didn’t seem out of place among other popular acts of the day. “It’s my business to know these things,” said Interscope’s promotion director Marc Benesch, “and there’s no difference between the people that are going out and buying the Dre album and the people that are buying Guns N’ Roses.”
Guns N’ Roses, N.W.A’s rock counterparts had with great fanfare in 1991, released a pair of albums, Use Your Illusion I and II, their melodramatic follow-ups to the lean and mean Appetite for Destruction. The group’s core lineup would soon split apart, and rock’s mainstream dominance was beginning to unravel. Though Seattle grunge, led by Nirvana and Pearl Jam, was briefly ascendant in the early nineties, it wouldn’t survive the fallout of Kurt Cobain’s suicide in 1994, which inspired an industry identity crisis spawning forgettable subgenres like post-grunge, mainstream alternative, and nu-metal.
Hip-hop, meanwhile, was birthing one classic after another. The genre’s golden age had kicked off in the late eighties: De La Soul’s progressive, brainy musings had mass appeal, while the Beastie Boys traveled to Los Angeles and recast themselves as sonic innovators on their sophomore album Paul’s Boutique. In the early nineties A Tribe Called Quest changed the game with their jazz-fueled meditations, while Wu-Tang Clan caused mayhem with their grimy, brutal lyricism on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). On the West Coast, the Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde was emotionally honest and hilarious, while Oakland’s Souls of Mischief offered warm, acrobatic poetry on ’93 ’til Infinity.
The Chronic came to be considered one of the very best albums in rap history. Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die also gets some votes, and the most frequently mentioned for the top spot is Nas’s Illmatic, a dark, gritty reflection on urban dangers wrought by poverty. That came out in 1994. Two years before, The Chronic swung hip-hop’s center of gravity dramatically westward, finally establishing Los Angeles’s dominance after years as rap’s redheaded stepchild. When I started writing about hip-hop in the mid-2000s, virtually every rapper-producer duo I talked to, from all parts of the country, expressed their desires to be the next Snoop and Dre.
In summer 1993, the Death Row artists toured with acts including the Geto Boys and Run-D.M.C., performing on an elaborate set that included a live band and an actual ’64 Chevy Impala. But with The Chronic’s success came controversy, which still continues today. It inspired a rash of imitators, and gangsta tropes began to choke out almost everything else.
“The gangsta element is 2 to 3 percent of our culture, but it’s portrayed in the media as 98 percent,” said Ben Caldwell, an outspoken critic of the subgenre who ran the I Fresh rap workshop in Leimert Park in the eighties. “It would be better if they could rap about something other than shooting someone in the head. We need to think about feeding and clothing our children, but this takes us back to the very beginning.”
Though he called gangsta rap simply an “extension” of an already violent culture, Jesse Jackson called for a boycott of the record companies selling it. “It is not a question of censorship,” said Al Sharpton. “You have the right of free speech in this country, but you don’t have the right to yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater. And that is what some of these records are doing. They are yelling ‘shoot’ in a community that is crowded with guns.”
Some hip-hop voices of conscience lamented the rise of gangsta rap. “Before, we had people that was teaching, in New York,” Afrika Bambaataa told a Columbia University audience in October 1993. “You had X-Clan, you had Public Enemy, you had KRS, and they was [painting] pictures that was waking up people. Then this whole thing came from the West Coast, which, I’m sorry to say, was negativity. Those are still my brothers, but they was teaching negativity.”
“Gangsta rap was highly financed and endorsed more than Afrocentric rap,” said Chuck D. “I never got mad at my peers. I just got angry at the puppeteers.”
The gangsta rap spawned by The Chronic—which often embraces a nihilistic, “get mine” philosophy and continues to dominate today—barely resembles the righteous hardcore of Chuck D’s heyday. The political messages of Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Straight Outta Compton were largely stripped as gangsta rap matured, leaving a hollow shell of macho tropes performed by bulletproof vest–clad rebels without a cause. One could argue that Dr. Dre led the genre in that direction. No medallions, dreadlocks, or black fists, he rapped on “Let Me Ride.” Though Chronic tracks “The Day the Niggaz Took Over” and “Lil’ Ghetto Boy” (a poignant update of Donny Hathaway’s 1972 song of the same name) show solidarity with the oppressed, Dre was more concerned with his bank account than his message. He removed an anticop song called “Mr. Officer” from The Chronic, explaining: “Making money is more important to me than talking about killing police.”