Snoop Dogg (left) and Archbishop Don “Da Magic” Juan attend a Player’s Ball in Chicago, November 30, 2002.
IN 2005, THE WORLD SUFFERED BOTH NATURAL DISASTERS AND MAN-MADE TERROR.
Hurricane Katrina devastated large swaths of the US Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,800 people and causing a reported $115 billion in damages. London’s public transport system was rocked by coordinated bomb blasts, which killed fifty-two people and injured another seven hundred.
Nonetheless, progress was being made. The G8, a forum featuring representatives from the world’s major highly industrialized economies (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States), pledged to provide $50 billion (USD) in aid to Africa by 2010. The Provisional Irish Republican Army also ended its thirty-year armed campaign in Northern Ireland.
2005
Key Rap Releases
1. The Game’s The Documentary album
2. 50 Cent’s The Massacre album
3. Kanye West’s Late Registration album
US President
George W. Bush
Something Else
WikiLeaks is launched.
As these events were unfolding and the aughts passed their middle point, many of rap’s detractors still saw the genre as a disruptive force. Nonetheless, rap had enjoyed sustained commercial success for more than twenty-five years, even as independent record stores had mostly gone out of business and major record retailers, such as Tower Records, were on their last legs as a result of music becoming digital. The music business and artists were taking serious blows, and most didn’t know how to reinvent themselves.
Mainstream rappers Will Smith, LL Cool J, and Queen Latifah were among the rare few who had graduated from being consistent hit makers in the music world to mainstream stars with award nominations and their own television shows and/or film franchises to their credits.
It is also worth noting that gangster rappers had arguably enjoyed more success than the rappers from all other subgenres of the music combined. Ice-T landed a role on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which is on its twentieth season, making him the longest-running black actor currently on television, having joined the show in the second season. If Ice-T and Law & Order: SVU return for a twenty-first season, the rapper will hold the all-time record for the longest-running black actor on a program in television history.
“. . . In the hood or the ghetto communities, people admire strength over wealth.”
ICE-T
Additionally, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and 50 Cent were among the preeminent gangster rap acts who had parlayed their success into multimillion-dollar deals (and even one multibillion-dollar pact) that stretched beyond the creation of music.
Just like their mainstream rap counterparts, gangster rappers excelled at selling records, topping the Billboard charts, delivering box-office success, becoming mainstays on television, and connecting with audiences around the globe. Gangster rap had the rare ability to appeal to listeners of all racial and socioeconomic backgrounds on personal, visceral, and intellectual levels.
Their reality isn’t always positive, but that doesn’t matter to listeners. It’s the authentic perspective that they crave.
“Why these particular artists tend to have good careers goes back to what it was originally called: reality rap,” Ice-T said. “These artists tend to be more honest. They’re telling the truth. They’re saying unabashedly how they feel about things and people gravitate toward that. Now, especially in the hood or the ghetto communities, people admire strength over wealth. If you’re strong, willing to break the rules, say, ‘Fuck ’em,’ then people dig that. So, of course, the gangster is the epitome of that. That’s the person who says, ‘Hey, I’m going to do it my way regardless.’ So, there’s a lot of admiration that goes along with that, whether it be a negative image you’re portraying or a positive image.”
“We have a business mentality,” Snoop Dogg said. “We all looked at the gangsters we watched as kids, whether it was movie stars or gangsters in our neighborhood, drug dealers, kingpins, they all had a mentality about themselves. Some of the best Fortune 500 company runners are in the penitentiary right now as drug dealers. Those are guys who ran business from a street perspective, who gave us inspiration to do it, so when we was able to get into the game of doing it the right way, we definitely were going to maximize and learn and figure it out and not just be mean and tough and gangster. We were going to be gangster with this business, too.”
Ice-T, for one, presented himself as gangster, but like many of his musical successors, he also portrayed himself as a player, a pimp, a mack, and a hustler. The gangster rap forefather broke into acting playing a rapper in Breakin’ (1984) and Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984). He took the ultimate career risk by going against type—and against the foundational gangster rap ethos of “Fuck tha Police”—by taking on the role of police officer Scotty Appleton in New Jack City (1991), his first starring role.
Malt liquor brand St. Ides was among the first companies to embrace gangster rap stars and hire them as pitchmen. The Geto Boys, MC Eiht, and Snoop Dogg were among the hardcore acts that made commercials about their love of the beverage, whose alcohol by volume concentration of 8.2 percent was significantly higher than most other drinks. Ice Cube was perhaps St. Ides’s biggest endorser, appearing in several commercials and boasting his own poster for the malt liquor company. King Tee (the first rapper with a pact to endorse the brand) and Ice Cube’s song for the company, “King Tee’s Beer Stand,” was included as a track on King Tee’s 1993 album, Tha Triflin’ Album. Thanks to the heavy push from rappers, St. Ides supplanted Colt 45 (famously pushed by actor Billy Dee Williams) as the malt liquor du jour of the urban community.
“For him to say, ‘You know what, man, I’m Ice-T, and I’m going to play a cop in this movie.’ The shit that you’ve been rapping about, and now you’re playing this motherfucka. ‘But it’s a role, and I’m an actor now,’ and then can still come back and jump on that music, I think that he navigated his career extremely well,” Los Angeles radio personality Big Boy said.
After earning acclaim for his turn in New Jack City, Ice-T landed a string of high-profile roles in films with Denzel Washington (1991’s Ricochet), Rutger Hauer (1994’s Surviving the Game), and Keanu Reeves (1995’s Johnny Mnemonic). In 2000, he was cast in a role that made television history. The gangster rap pioneer has starred in more than four hundred Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes.
Ice-T credits his willingness to play diverse, even surprising roles for his success as an actor. “If you’re going to act and you’re going to limit yourself to roles, you’re very stupid,” Ice-T said. “Playing a cop and a gangster is the exact same acting. You both have an attitude. You both have a gun. You both want answers, and there’ll be a consequence. So when I’m sitting on Law & Order and I’m doing an interrogation, in my brain, I might not even be thinking I’m a cop. I’m thinking like, ‘This fool better tell me what I want to know,’ in the same way I might be dealing on some street shit.”
RAPPERS SPORT THE SHIELD
Ice-T went against type by portraying police officer Scotty Appleton in 1991’s New Jack City. Soon thereafter, rappers became regularly featured as police officers in film and on television. The Fresh Prince, aka Will Smith, portrayed a cop in the successful Bad Boys film franchise that launched in 1995, while Dr. Dre played a corrupt officer in Training Day in 2001. LL Cool J has also played a police officer in film (2003’s S.W.A.T.) and on television (2009’s N.C.I.S.: Los Angeles). Ice Cube, who came up with the song idea for N.W.A’s “Fuck tha Police,” played cops in two blockbuster film franchises: the 21 Jump Street reboot that launched in 2012 and Ride Along, which launched a popular series two years later. Ice-T, of course, came full circle in his acting career by portraying Odafin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
While Ice-T has become a television fixture, Ice Cube has become one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars and producers. In addition to his films, which have combined to gross more than $1 billion at the box office, the Los Angeles artist’s Cube Vision production company released several of Hollywood’s most successful franchises, including films such as Next Friday, Barbershop, Are We There Yet?, and Ride Along.
Showing his versatility as a director (The Players Club [1998]) and writer (Friday [1995], The Players Club [1998], and All About the Benjamins [2002], among others), Ice Cube made himself more valuable, and he didn’t have to chase roles. He created his own opportunities.
“You’ve got a lot of hip-hop artists that go from hip-hop and that make the transition into movies,” MC Ren said. “Cube took it to a whole ’nother level, producing, writing, directing, and still going strong. He’s always sitting down putting a movie out, writing a movie. He’s always got that going on, so it’s like one movie drops, he’s already got another one ready to go. He’s shooting out movies like singles.”
Underpinning his myriad talents, Ice Cube has made his mark by having a supreme belief in himself, a confidence that nearly no one else did. After all, he left N.W.A when it was rap’s most exciting and influential group.
“Cube left an organization in N.W.A at its hottest time and stepped out on faith, even if he couldn’t see the whole staircase,” Big Boy said. “That was a person that was determined. It takes a formula of the talent, determination, timing, work ethic. Everything’s gotta be aligned right, because everybody doesn’t have it. I think there’s some cats that need to superserve their fan base, but you do have to know how to maneuver.
GUARD YOUR GANGSTA GRILLZ
As mixtapes gained popularity in the early 2000s, DJ Drama delivered the benchmark for the genre with his heralded Gangsta Grillz series. Revered for having album quality, lyric-driven content, the projects from such Southern rap stars as Lil Wayne, T.I., Killer Mike, Jeezy, Bun B, and Yo Gotti put a spotlight on street-centered artists with a gangster edge who heretofore were not typically thought of as top-tier artists.
“I felt like artists that were more lyrical and, in a sense, what I called ‘Quality Street Music,’ weren’t getting the attention that they deserved,” said DJ Drama, who has released more than 150 Gangsta Grillz projects. “Gangsta Grillz, it was almost that was like the movie of the South at the time, the gangster film. You knew you were going to get the most quality essence of it.”
“Then when we’re not buying records, it’s like, ‘Well fuck it. I’m going to put some concentration into movies,’” Big Boy continued. “So these cats became brands, and we supported the brand. As long as you didn’t give us the bullshit, yeah, we’ll support the brand. Do we do that for everybody? Nah.”
Perhaps the strongest brand of all gangster rappers belongs to Dr. Dre. After being the sonic architect of Ruthless Records in the eighties and early nineties, as well as Death Row Records in the early and midnineties, he struck out on his own with Aftermath Entertainment. With a roster that included Eminem, 50 Cent, the Game, and Kendrick Lamar, as well as his own material, Dr. Dre’s vanity label was one of the most dominant imprints in all of music in terms of sales, with more than sixty million albums sold.
Launched in 2006, Beats Electronics made Dr. Dre one of the richest members of the rap world. The company, founded by Dr. Dre with longtime business partner and record executive Jimmy Iovine, was purchased by Apple in 2014 for a reported $3 billion. Dr. Dre earned a paycheck in the neighborhood of a reported $600 million for the transaction.
By remaining focused on making high-quality music and music-related products, Dr. Dre has stayed true to the foundation of his work.
“We’ve been through so many styles of rap and so many different phases of ‘This is what’s hot,’ and trends and fads, but there’s some cats that never swerved,” Big Boy said. “You can swerve a little bit and say, ‘Oh, I’m getting into this and I’m getting into headphones,’ but you still say Dr. Dre. We know him as Andre Young, but that dude didn’t do a 360 on us and say, ‘Don’t call me Dr. Dre.’”
Despite their success in film, television, and electronics, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg haven’t abandoned music. In fact, they remain in-demand musicians. Both Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube tour regularly and still release music, while Dr. Dre’s Compton: A Soundtrack was released in 2015 and sold more than five hundred thousand units, robust numbers for an artist whose music career started in the mideighties. Ice-T’s band Body Count tours to major festivals in the United States and abroad, and their latest LP, Bloodlust, was released twenty-five years to the day after their first album and was nominated by Loudwire for Best LP, with the band earning a Best Group nomination.
These artists have remained musically significant for several decades. “Cube is still a beast on the mic,” MC Ren said. “He still makes good records. He still puts on a good stage show. Dre’s still a beast on the beats. Nothing changed. A lot of people, they kind of decline over the years, but they just . . . And they don’t even have to if they don’t want to. They done made boatloads and boatloads of money, but it’s like that drive keeps ’em going. That drive that they have keeps them successful.”
From left (standing): Mel-Man, Mike Lynn, Dr. Dre, Xzibit, Richard “Segal” Huredia, King Tee. From left (kneeling): Time Bomb, Hittman at the recording session for Dr. Dre’s 2001 song “Some L.A. Niggaz.”
XZIBIT AND DR. Dre have worked together extensively since first collaborating in 1999 on Snoop Dogg’s “B Please” single. Since then, they’ve also grown to be close friends. Here, Mr. X To The Z explains what he’s learned from Dr. Dre.
“Dre is a mentor to me, and he is also someone I respect very highly as a businessman, as a family man, and just as someone who’s been to the fuckin’ mountaintop. I’ve seen him go through the best of times and the worst of times. One thing remains true, which is that you’ve got to keep going. You never settle. Great is not good enough. It has to be undeniable. I think that seeing him build these dynasties that somehow came back to bite him, and how he’s able to rise back up and do it even bigger, better, and brighter has inspired me. Underestimation is a beautiful thing, if you know how to accept it.
“I’ve learned to persevere because of what I’ve seen from him, and he’s given me super direction as far as some of the decision-making that I had problems with. I’d go and talk with Dre and he could simplify it and make clear what the right thing is.
“I never had a Plan B. I was always driven, and people may have drive, but they sometimes drive themselves in the wrong direction. I think what I learned from Dre was to make better choices and don’t be just blindly driven. Be focused, and driven.
He also told me that this is the record business. Yeah, we make music, but you have to be just as good at business, and that’s something that I definitely raised the eyebrow to and found very interesting.
“He’s never told me what to do. He’s either given me an example of something that he went through at the time, or he’ll say something that makes you feel like, ‘Damn. I’m stupid. I should have thought of that shit. Damn. What the fuck was I thinking?’
“Sometimes the best lessons are learned by observation. I’ve seen the process from the first step of when they press the first button to make the beat, to a lyric, to a mix, to a master, to a video, to big as fuck. So, I saw that process, and then the business around it, and how it was promoted, and how it how it was received. When you see it like that, that’s like watching a plant grow right in front of you. That is more valuable than him sitting down and writing a book, or putting it on paper and handing it to me. That was valuable because now I see, ‘Oh. This is how it’s done.’
“The relationship I have with Dr. Dre, I think it’s a mutual respect. He values the relationship we have, and he values my opinion. From being a kid who was a fan of his before I actually got to meet him, and to be considered family at this point, is amazing. I’ll never turn my back on Dr. Dre. Ever.”
The consumer base that supports gangster rappers doesn’t seem to be fading, either. Masta Ace, whose SlaughtaHouse album with Masta Ace Incorporated provided a stark commentary on gangster rap and some of its less positive aspects, believes that America’s voyeuristic affinity for the bona fide bad guy keeps them intrigued by the persona gangster rappers present.
“If they believe the lyrics that are being said on the song, they’re a little bit more interested in them and excited about these acts and what they’re talking about, because it’s like an escape,” Masta Ace said. “You’re going to your nine-to-five, dealing with your asshole boss, sitting in your cubicle doing your job. You can put your headphones on and escape into another world where it’s like putting on a movie. There’s shootings, car chases, police, police chases, rape, and who the hell knows what else. Gangster music kind of goes down that wormhole, and it takes these listeners living these boring lives, I guess, it takes them with them, and they can escape for a few hours to be violent in their minds and be in this other world, and then come back to their reality.”
“These cats became brands, and we supported the brand. As long as you didn’t give us the bullshit, yeah, we’ll support the brand. Do we do that for everybody? Nah.”
BIG BOY
MC Ren thinks that once the door was opened to the explicit world of gangster rap, there was no turning back.
“What makes [Eazy-E] bigger, Dre bigger, Master P, 50 Cent, it’s because of the content, what they’re talking about,” MC Ren said. “Before they called it gangster rap, people wasn’t rapping about—you know a few was, like KRS[-One], Schoolly D, and Ice-T—but the majority of people wasn’t rhyming like that. Now you’ve got a lot of people doing it, and that’s just what people want to hear. The door’s been kicked open and people want to hear that. Back in the day, that was a Richard Pryor record. Once Richard Pryor came out doing his thing, cussing, all the jokes and all of that, all the comedians after Richard Pryor did it like Richard Pryor. You go somewhere now, if you go see a comedian and they’re not cussing and they’re not talking that shit, you’re like, I don’t want to see this. Same way.”
The N.W.A brand demonstrated its staying power when Straight Outta Compton arrived in theaters on August 14, 2015. Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Tomica Woods-Wright (Eazy-E’s widow) produced the film, which stars O’Shea Jackson Jr. portraying his father, Ice Cube. Made for a reported $28 million, Straight Outta Compton was, at the time it finished its run in theaters, the highest-grossing film of all time by a black filmmaker (F. Gary Gray), with a worldwide box office of $201 million.
“That movie wasn’t successful just because forty-five-year-old black men went to see the motherfucka,” Big Boy said. “I saw this one little Caucasian kid. He was probably like nine years old. He had a Compton hat on. To this day, I’m still like, ‘That shit is fuckin’ crazy.’ I know he probably hasn’t walked the streets of Compton. Maybe he has. I don’t know. He got a tire rotation in Compton? I don’t know, but he’s rockin’ the hat.”
Straight Outta Compton won twenty-five awards, including Movie of the Year at the AFI (American Film Institute) Awards. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, a testament to the power of the film and its story, which traces how N.W.A’s members met, their rise from unknowns to stardom, their eventual breakup, the death of Eazy-E, and Ice Cube’s and Dr. Dre’s subsequent successes.
Although the movie focused on the lives and careers of the group members, the story also includes poignant examinations of social ills, racism, and betrayal. Straight Outta Compton’s universal themes made it more than just a movie about rap.
“When I saw La Bamba and when I saw The Buddy Holly Story, I didn’t really know the music,” Big Boy said. “I wasn’t alive to know Buddy Holly or Ritchie Valens. I didn’t know ‘La Bamba’ or ‘Donna.’ But I enjoyed the story. Then that got me into, ‘Oh, who’s this guy?’ I think that people that didn’t know [N.W.A], they got intrigued, and then they enjoyed the movie once they sat down.”
In the film, Snoop Dogg, portrayed by Lakeith Stanfield, is introduced as Dr. Dre’s protégé once he leaves Eazy-E’s Ruthless Records and starts Death Row Records with Suge Knight. The movie doesn’t delve much into Snoop Dogg and his career, but after becoming the first artist in music history to have a debut album enter the Billboard Top 200 charts at No. 1 (Doggystyle), Snoop Dogg has become one of the most lauded and embraced figures in rap history.
Since he arrived on the scene in 1992, the Long Beach, California, native has recorded with virtually every rap artist of note (Eminem, 2Pac, JAY-Z, and so on), pop icons (Mariah Carey, Katy Perry, Justin Timberlake), and even country icons (Willie Nelson). His music has been used more than one hundred and seventy times in movies or on television programs.
Beyond music, though, Snoop Dogg has arguably the most diverse and successful presence in rap history. In 2005, he founded the Snoop Youth Football League (SYFL), which he also owns and operates. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization provides inner-city children between the ages of five and thirteen the opportunity to play football without the worry of having to pay for equipment. Several of its players have made it to the NFL, including Super Bowl champion running back Ronnie Hillman, kick returner and wide receiver De’Anthony Thomas, and John Ross, who was selected as the ninth overall pick in the 2017 NFL draft by the Cincinnati Bengals.
As an actor, Snoop Dogg’s roles have ranged from comedic (1998’s Half Baked, 2004’s Soul Plane) to gangster (2001’s Baby Boy and Training Day) and have expanded to include voice-over work (2003’s Malibu’s Most Wanted, 2013’s Turbo).
In addition, he has hosted Saturday Night Live with Avril Lavigne (2004), anchored Snoop Dogg’s Father Hood reality show about his life and family (2007–09), appeared on WWE Raw several times (2007–15), and showed his culinary knowledge and ability to charm on the hit celebrity cooking show Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party (2016), and he is the host of the rebooted game show The Joker’s Wild (2017). He also handled a four-episode run on the soap opera One Life to Live (2013).
Snoop Dogg’s reach as a pitchman is also global. He has hawked everything from Hot Pockets and Air New Zealand to Chrysler and Adidas. The latter also has a partnership with the SYFL.
Even though he made his initial mark as a gangster rapper, Snoop Dogg said his ability to show people the other sides of his personality and character have allowed him to thrive in the business world.
While Snoop Dogg has become one of entertainment’s most popular people, 50 Cent earned one of the largest one-time checks outside of Dr. Dre’s Beats Electronics payout. An early investor in Glacéau Vitaminwater, 50 Cent earned a reported $60–100 million in 2007 when Coca-Cola bought parent company Glacéau for a reported $1.2 billion.
50 Cent has also made significant inroads in film and television. As of this writing, he has an overall deal with cable network STARZ, which airs Power, the program in which he appears and which he executive-produces, through at least September 2018. The deal also includes Tomorrow, Today, a superhero-themed series about a falsely imprisoned veteran who is set free after being used in an experiment by an insane prison doctor.
Even those who are not gangsters can appreciate the way gangsters work, also leading to their appeal.
“The gangster by nature is an entrepreneurial, enterprising character,” Wrekonize said. “If you’re about that life and you’re about hustling and you’re about getting your shit, then that goes hand in hand with success and entrepreneurialism. So I feel to be a successful artist or businessman and you consider yourself to be a gangster or whatever by nature, you kind of have to make shit happen. You have to be hungrier than the next guy. It’s a very competitive way to be. I feel like most gangster rappers, eight out of ten, are gangsters in general. . . . They’re out there to get it.”
DJ Quik provides succinct reviews for several Ice Cube films.
Boyz N the Hood (1991). Accurate.
Trespass (1992). Seriocomic.
Friday (1995). Hilarious.
Anaconda (1997). Funny.
The Players Club (1998). Groundbreaking comedy.
Next Friday (2000). Ambitious.
All About the Benjamins (2002). Dope.
Barbershop (2002). Fresh.
Friday After Next (2002). Cool.
Barbershop 2: Back in Business (2004). Hard.
Are We There Yet? (2005). Endearing.
xXx: State of the Union (2005). Spectacular.
Are We Done Yet? (2007). Likable.
First Sunday (2008). Funny.
The Longshots (2008). Oscar-worthy.
The Janky Promoters (2009). Favorite.
Lottery Ticket (2010). Empathetic.
21 Jump Street (2012). Fleetingly brilliant.
Ride Along (2014). Sidesplitting.
Barbershop: The Next Cut (2016). Necessary.
In the early stages of rap, the genre was not embraced by corporate America. This exclusion made a portion of the rap world vocal about distancing itself from any ties to corporate commercialization. But as the genre grew and its artists became multifaceted stars, the way rappers were received and perceived by the corporate world, as well as their fans, also shifted.
“People can call them whatever they want at the end of the day. They can say, ‘Ah, sellout. He was never real,’” Big Boy said. “But you know what, man, they turned their business into a business. It wasn’t like, ‘Ah, man, there’s no more royalties. Streaming is stealing music. I can’t get on a record label.’ These motherfuckas just went and turned themselves into an enterprise. Cube can do Jimmy Kimmel on Thursday and get on stage somewhere and do ‘Fuck tha Police’ and then do his premiere the next Tuesday. We accept all that from these cats.”
More than thirty years after its inception, gangster rap is firmly entrenched in American pop culture. If there was a short list of the pillars of gangster rap, Schoolly-D, Ice-T, N.W.A (Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren, DJ Yella), and Snoop Dogg would be on it. They pioneered an art form, repeatedly reinvented themselves like no artists before them, and became cultural icons. Where the genre is headed and what its legacy will be have yet to be determined, but MC Ren, DJ Quik, Dee Barnes, and Vince Staples provide perspective on what gangster rap means historically and how it continues evolving.
POWER VS. EMPIRE
After becoming one of rap’s most popular artists, 50 Cent expanded his brand to television, executive-producing and appearing in the hit STARZ network program Power. The Queens, New York, rapper brought his confrontational ways to promoting his show, engaging in social-media wars with Taraji P. Henson and other principals from the record-breaking music-based show Empire. Empire featured Xzibit in a recurring role as gangster Shyne Johnson, while Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, and other A-list rappers also appeared on the program.
