Kendrick Lamar is an artist who represents the evolution of gangster rap, according to industry insiders.
THE WORLD HAS UNDERGONE SIGNIFICANT CHANGES SINCE 1985.
Technology has exploded, as has the access to information. Mobile phones are virtually omnipresent throughout the world. DNA testing and scanning social media have become routine and critical parts of police work. An increasing number of surgeries are handled laparoscopically, while GPS systems have essentially replaced paper maps. Music, which was once packaged on vinyl and cassette, graduated to CDs, which were then made obsolete by the various forms of digital distribution (ringtones, downloads, and streaming).
Thanks in part to rap’s omnipresence and cultural penetration, gangster rap, which turned thirty in 2015, has thrived during each of these shifts. Since its inception, the forefathers of the rap subgenre have become grandfathers, with offspring who live far removed from the world their elders rapped about and the environments in which they were raised. They went from the bottom of America’s societal structure to being some of the most accomplished and acclaimed figures in American culture.
2015
Key Rap Releases
1. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly album
2. Drake’s If Youre Reading This Its Too Late album
3. Future’s DS2 album
US President
Barack Obama
Something Else
Donald Trump launched his presidential campaign.
As artists such as Schoolly-D, Ice-T, Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, MC Eiht, DJ Quik, Snoop Dogg, 50 Cent, the Game, and others thrived during the past thirty years, they sold tens of millions of albums, performed in front of millions of fans around the world, starred in dozens of Hollywood blockbusters, and influenced society through their overall look, attitude, and perspective.
“Gangster rap is an image of society,” Tech N9ne says. “If society wasn’t like this, it wouldn’t be no gangster rap. We’re just the street poets that’s telling you what the fuck’s going on in society. So if it’s going on in society, of course it’s going to be a movie. Of course they’re going to do documentaries, have Gangland on TV, because we tell you the reality. The people that didn’t know, thanks to the gangster rappers, people like Ice Cube, Ice-T, N.W.A, told you what was going on in case you were blind to it, you live in the suburbs and it ain’t happening in your hood. It’s a camera on the neighborhood and what’s going on in society.”
For the artists themselves, the anger was counterbalanced with a sense of pride in making music, paying homage to the positive and negative aspects of their lives, and making a name for themselves in the highly competitive rap game and the legit business world. The members of N.W.A, for instance, aspired to be like their New York predecessors.
“The reason we wanted to put Compton on the map so much was that back then in hip-hop, everybody in New York would be hollering out their borough or their city or whatever,” MC Ren said. “It was either Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens, [or] Long Island in hip-hop. I can’t remember nothing else. So it was like, ‘Shit. We’ve got to talk about Compton.’ We wanted Compton to be in the same sentence with the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island. People thought we was crazy. They thought we wasn’t gonna do it. I had one fool come up to me. This was before we blew up. He was like, ‘Y’all know you ain’t never gonna be big like them New York cats.’ My homeboy when I was growing up, he told me that. We were sitting on the curb. Then we blew up, and he started trying to rhyme.”
Naming Compton specifically ended up being particularly significant. Once N.W.A rose to national superstardom and became one of the most important groups in rap history, the group’s championing of Compton made it stand out in the competitive rap world.
N.W.A, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, also stands among the rare group of musicians whose work graduated from the music world into the broader pop-culture universe.
Straight Outta Compton, the album on which “Fuck tha Police” appeared, was among the twenty-five recordings named to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in March 2017. Other honorees include Judy Garland, for her 1939 rendition of “Over the Rainbow,” and the Eagles, for Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975), the second-bestselling album of all time, behind only Michael Jackson’s Thriller.
“It’s still moving,” Snoop Dogg said. “I don’t think it’s done. Ice Cube is the hardest gangster rapper to ever come out. He’s one of the kings of Hollywood right now, as far as movies, production, behind the scenes. So you tell me how far gangster rap can go. Dr. Dre was the hardest gangster rap producer ever. Beats by Dre sold for a couple billion dollars. You tell me how far gangster rap can go. Snoop Dogg is one of the realest gangsters to ever come up out of the rap game, catching cases, doing real shit, being around the best of the best, and look at where he is now as far as in the TV world, the movie world, the business world, just the public acceptance world.”
“Gangster rap is an image of society. . . . you live in the suburbs and it ain’t happening in your hood. It’s a camera on the neighborhood and what’s going on in society.”
TECH N9NE
Like Snoop Dogg, gangster rap’s status in pop culture has undergone a dramatic shift. When Schoolly D, Ice-T, Boogie Down Productions, and Just-Ice started making gangster rap in the mideighties, the genre was an emerging segment of rap that was still finding its footing. Within a few years, Ice-T, Eazy-E, N.W.A, Ice Cube, and Dr. Dre had become some of rap’s bestselling and most controversial artists.
And they remained among the genre’s bestselling artists for years, outlasting the second and third generations of gangster rappers. This initial wave of gangster rap artists, ones who emerged before the term “gangster rap” even existed, all possessed an uncanny hustle. They had to overcome boycotts, protests, censorship, and government pressure, all of which seemed to instill a type of artistic resolve and personal fortitude that served them well in the studios and in the boardrooms.
Here’s a look at some of the most promising Los Angeles–area gangster rappers of the 2010s, highlighting their hometowns, main songs, and albums.
YG
Hometown: Compton
Noteworthy song: “My Nigga” (2013)
Project of note: My Krazy Life (2014)
NIPSEY HUSSLE
Hometown: Los Angeles
Noteworthy song: “I Don’t Give a Fucc” (2011)
Project of note: Crenshaw (2013)
VINCE STAPLES
Hometown: Long Beach
Noteworthy song: “65 Hunnid” (2014)
Project of note: Hell Can Wait (2014)
G PERICO
Hometown: Los Angeles
Noteworthy song: “Bout It” (2016)
Project of note: Shit Don’t Stop (2016)
AD
Hometown: Compton
Noteworthy song: “Juice” (2015)
Project of note: Blue:89 (2015)
KENDRICK LAMAR
Hometown: Compton
Noteworthy song: “Ronald Reagan Era (His Evils)” (2011)
Project of note: Section.80 (2011)
By the time N.W.A alumnus Dr. Dre was working with Eminem, the best-selling rap artist of all time, gangster rap had grown, evolved, and become an established part of rap and of pop culture in general. The road formed by gangster rap had long been paved. Eminem’s lyrics were similarly shocking, but at that point, mainstream America had been exposed to rap’s violent, profane, and hypersexual side for more than a decade.
“I think we scared the world so quickly, but then once Eminem did it, they were like, ‘Okay,’” Ice-T said. “Now people are kinda conditioned to it. It’s not like when Cube came out and said, ‘Crazy muthafucka named . . .’ and you were like, ‘What the fuck? Who are these motherfuckas?’ Now everybody’s like, ‘Okay. Cool. Y’all gonna Crip Walk and dance,’ but it’s not as threatening now.”
The image of N.W.A wearing all black and dark sunglasses, of gangster rappers toting semiautomatic firearms to interviews and in their videos, of Crips wearing exclusively blue and Bloods exclusively red, and of generally being viewed as ominous has waned significantly as time has gone on.
“Back in the days, a gangster looked a certain way,” said Los Angeles 92.3 KRRL radio personality Big Boy. “Now these motherfuckas are gangster and you’re like, ‘Oh shit.’ There’s no more uniform. Some cats can tuck a red rag or a blue rag, but back in the days, you knew what a muthafucka was this or that. There was no in between where, ‘Oh, I’m just wearing this.’”
“I think now the new trap rappers [Southern rappers who tend to rap about street topics, doing drugs in particular], they’ve convinced me they can get high,” Ice-T said. “They’ve convinced me that maybe they can sell a little drugs. They don’t scare me. I think a gangster rapper has to scare you a little bit.”
The perceived lack of shock current gangster rappers deliver can be partly explained by the novelty of the genre wearing off. It can also be attributed to the changing criteria of fans, who may seek different things from their artists than fans of previous generations.
“It used to be that you had to have your stripes in the nineties,” Dave Weiner said. “You couldn’t step up to a mic without a real, legitimate story. The story had to be real. The fights had to be real. The gunshots had to be real. It was a pedigree. It was who you are and where you came from. If you were a fraud, your music never even got the time of day, and that changed with rap taking on the mainstream appeal that it did through the end of the nineties and the 2000s, being ushered along by Eminem. But it evolved.”
In the 2010s, the current manifestation of gangster rap has numerous forms. Kendrick Lamar, who many believe to be among the best of the current crop of gangster rappers, has a decidedly different approach than the cornerstones of the culture, yet he shows the ways in which gangster rap has changed and remains dominant.
“It’s still reigning,” Tech N9ne said. “It’s a gangster that’s blowing up that’s multitalented though, so you don’t really put him in that category because he’s artistic. That’s Kendrick Lamar.”
After releasing his own mixtapes and collaborating with fellow Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) rapper Jay Rock, Kendrick Lamar garnered widespread acclaim in the rap world in 2010 for his Overly Dedicated mixtape. The project’s lyricism, social commentary, and the myriad of ways in which he could deliver his high-caliber rhymes endeared the rapper to a wide range of fans.
The Overly Dedicated song “Barbed Wire,” for instance, features Kendrick Lamar rapping about evading crooked cops, succeeding by not having to kill other black men, and living his dreams. Toward the end of the song, though, he raps that there’s always barbed wire preventing true progress. A gunshot ends the selection.
In 2011, Kendrick Lamar released Section.80, his first studio album. The project included “Ronald Reagan Era (His Evils),” a commentary about, among other things, how the children growing up in Compton fell victim to the policies of President Reagan, which included expanding the “War on Drugs” and an explosion of the incarceration of nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were lower-class black males.
“Ronald Reagan Era (His Evils)” and other Kendrick Lamar songs, such as the lyrical showcase “A.D.H.D.,” helped land Lamar a recording contract with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment. Although not overtly gangster, Kendrick Lamar’s subject matter, his willingness to discuss Compton, and his regular references to the gangs that inhabit the city and that helped define his life give his music gangster rap elements.
“I think Kendrick keeps a nice little hood edge on his shit, so you know he’s from Compton,” Ice-T said. “You know he’s from the hood.”
Like Ice Cube before him, Kendrick Lamar grew up in a gang-infested environment but doesn’t present himself as an active gang member in his music or in his interviews, even though they both rap about the gang lifestyle and its ripple effects throughout their respective communities specifically and society in general.
“If you’re in that neighborhood, you’re affiliated by association, basically,” said Dee Barnes, one half of rap group Body & Soul and former host of the rap video show Pump It Up! “I think Ice Cube is a good comparison because Ice Cube to me, as far as N.W.A, he was their conscious. I feel like that’s how Kendrick is. Kendrick is the conscious of Compton, of gangster rap. He’s more to me on that tip than anything because he’s telling stories of what’s happening in his neighborhood, what has happened from his perspective, and from a worldview. He’s taken it to just a whole other level.
“He gets the real hardcore gangsters to stop and think about some things for a minute,” Barnes continued. “And, I think that’s good, to get them to listen, to get their attention.”
Yet Kendrick Lamar’s list of accolades shows how differently gangster rap is received in the 2010s compared to the eighties or nineties. The Compton rapper has won twelve Grammy Awards and has been nominated twenty-nine times as of the 59th Grammy Awards presented in 2018. Snoop Dogg, by comparison, has never won a Grammy, despite being nominated fifteen times. Kendrick Lamar also made history in 2018 when he became the first rapper to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music for DAMN., his 2017 album.
This type of critical disparity could be attributed to any number of factors, from perceived authenticity to the legal drama surrounding an artist to the overall climate in the music business at the time of an artist’s popularity. Regardless, this variance speaks to how different artists may have been received differently in subsequent eras.
“What would Kendrick have meant in the midnineties?” Weiner asked. “He’s an undeniable talent, but he wasn’t coming from that gangster mentality. He wasn’t hard enough. I see him as the best example of the evolution of gangster rap, because that’s where he grew up and that’s what he was surrounded by, and he lived that life without living that life, so to speak.”
The majority of the other prominent gangster rappers emerging, from the Los Angeles area in particular, boasts of living the gangster lifestyle and of coming from that environment. Kendrick Lamar’s TDE labelmate ScHoolboy Q, for instance, uses an uppercase H in his name, song titles, and writings in order to pay homage to his affiliation with the 52 Hoover Gangster Crips.
ScHoolboy Q’s 2014 album, Oxymoron, featured the song “Hoover Street,” which detailed his growing up around robberies, guns, drugs, and gangs. The album title itself refers to the paradoxical life he was living.
“The oxymoron in this album is that I’m doing all this bad to do good for my daughter,” ScHoolboy Q said. “That’s why I’m robbin’. That’s why I’m stealing. That’s why I done shot you, and got on, and took your car. Whatever it is that I’m talking about in my album negative, it’s always for a good cause, for my daughter.”
G Perico, another Los Angeles gangster rapper who rose to prominence in the 2010s and who is among the first wave of artists signed as part of the relaunching of Priority Records, raps about the gangster rap bedrocks of gangs, crime, guns, drugs, and women. Like ScHoolboy Q, though, he looks at what life is, what it was, and what he wants it to be.
GANGSTER RAP’S BIGGEST SELLERS
Album: All Eyez On Me (1996) by 2Pac. Ten million albums sold. Released by Death Row/Interscope Records.
Top Artist (in Terms of Album Sales): 2Pac, 36.5 million albums sold
Top Artist (in Terms of Digital Single Sales): YG, 5 million digital singles sold
Gangsters and rappers respect Big Tray Deee.
One half of the platinum gangster rap group Tha Eastsidaz, Big Tray Deee reflects on five things he learned from gangster rap.
1. It was amazing that I could tell the truth and be myself and the whole world would be interested in my perspective, and be willing to support me for over two decades just being me.
2. Gangster rap, when it’s real, you feel it. When it comes on, you feel it. You get that with certain WC, Jayo Felony, Ice Cube, Scarface songs. As soon as the beat drops, it’s like, “Ah. Yeah. This is one of them right here.”
3. Everybody that’s a gangster rapper isn’t a gangster. At least people in Cali, we’re going to want to know if what you’re saying is certified and if you’re really who you say you are, and if the people you say you represent really respect you. We’re going to break down your whole resume.
4. You can’t be too serious in gangster rap. You still got to have fun. You still got to be able to make the women enjoy a song or two. You’ve still got to be able to show that you’re more aware of life than, “I don’t give a fuck and I’ll kill you.” You have to maintain some lyricism that hip-hop demands to be a real truly respected gangster rapper.
5. Gangster rap will have your muthafuckin’ ass in prison, just on the fact of keeping it real. There’s no off days of being a gangster. If you’re a gangster rapper that gets pushed up on, you might have to go all the way with it. If you’re not really with it like that, you might be put into a situation that you’re really not equipped to handle, and it could cause you and the people around you their lives.
G Perico is a rising rapper whose esthetic harkens back to the look of Los Angeles area gangster rappers of the 1980s.
“My risk-taking is pretty much done,” G Perico said. “The biggest risk I take is just still being around, because motherfuckers will try to kill me. I don’t gamble money, but you could say I’m gambling my life a little bit. I’m prepared, though.”
More so than maybe any other gangster rapper to emerge in the 2010s, G Perico has components of the uniform of a gangster rapper from the eighties and early nineties. The Los Angeles artist sports a Jheri curl, favors white T-shirts, and almost always wears blue apparel in order to identify himself as a Crip.
“When I first saw that muthafucka with a Jheri curl, he was cut from that cloth,” Big Boy said of G Perico. “I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ Then when you explore [his music], he reminds me of what that West Coast fire was. I don’t want to say ‘rebirth’ or ‘the new,’ but you hear that mothafucka and he go. Does radio have him? Not like radio should. Is that mothafucka gonna sell out at his next show? You mothafuckin’ right he is. It’s crazy because he’s another one that stays in his path and we’re walking over to him. He’s like, ‘Nah. Nah. You’ve got to cross the street over here because I’m not crossing the street and coming over there. If you want me, come over here.’”
Compton rapper YG is the most prominent gangster rapper to emerge in the 2010s and enjoy massive commercial success and critical acclaim. After his ode to one-night stands “Toot It and Boot It” became a West Coast hit in 2010, YG signed with Def Jam Recordings. His breakthrough single with the company was 2013’s “My Nigga” (the radio version was “My Hitta”), a nod to his loyalty to the people with whom he grew up and to the friends he can rely on in the streets and in life. The song, which featured Atlanta rappers Jeezy and Rich Homie Quan, sold more than one million copies in less than five months. By October 2016, “My Hitta” had sold more than three million copies.
Def Jam Recordings formally paired YG with Jeezy, who helped YG shape the direction of his major label debut album, 2014’s My Krazy Life. Song titles such as “BPT,” “Bicken Back Being Bool,” and “Bompton,” as well as the album title, paid homage to his affiliation with the Bloods, as the words replace the letter C with either a B or a K in order to show solidarity to the Bloods.
Thanks in part to the success of “My Hitta,” as well as the “Who Do You Love?” single with rap superstar Drake, YG’s My Krazy Life was certified gold in March 2016 and platinum in April 2017, even as record sales industry wide continued to wane. In order to address the shifting ways people consume music, the “album equivalent unit” was enacted in December 2014. In this new way of counting music for sales purposes, one album sale equals ten song downloads. One album sale is also equal to 1,500 song streams.
In 2016, YG’s Still Brazy album built upon YG’s momentum and showed his willingness to make incendiary political statements. In addition to the gold single “Why You Always Hatin?,” the project also featured “FDT,” short for “Fuck Donald Trump.” A collaboration with Los Angeles gangster rapper Nipsey Hussle, “FDT” featured both artists bashing the then–presidential candidate for his anti-Mexican rhetoric and in response to black students being kicked out of a Trump rally during his presidential campaign.
Another Still Brazy cut, “Blacks & Browns,” features YG and mentee Sad Boy examining some of the issues plaguing their respective communities. YG laments black on black crime, high levels of incarceration, and lackluster educational opportunities. For his part, Sad Boy Loko (as he’s also known) examines the traps of the green card system, the preponderance of dead-end jobs, and police brutality.
The ability to make songs that trumpet his gang affiliation as well as political statements makes YG a credible artist.
“YG don’t go into a phone booth and come out and say, ‘Okay, I’m YG now,’” Big Boy said. “YG, any time you sneak up on him, you’re gonna find YG. When I turn the microphone on, YG. When I turn the microphone off, that’s YG. I think that YG is another one that musically is gangbanging around the world. Now I think we’re also seeing that he knows how to make records, too. That’s one thing that you couldn’t deny when you’re fucking with anything as far as the Xzibits, the Cubes, Death Row. Those were records. YG is making records and building up his catalog. He’s also another one that’s from the street and telling the world where he’s from. He’s not running away from that shit. Is he glorifying shit? Call it what you want, but that’s him. He’s not stealing a lifestyle from anyone.”
Like YG, Long Beach rapper Vince Staples dedicates some of his music to political topics. He follows the mold of Ice-T and Ice Cube with his blend of incendiary social commentary and scintillating street reporting on such songs as “Versace Rap” and “65 Hunnid.” He is an insightful storyteller with a keen grasp of history, social injustice, and the streets as he weaves the evolution of America’s institutionalized racism into “C.N.B.” “The sheets and crosses turned to suits and ties,” he raps.
“I don’t want to make that kind of music. I’m not on that. [Violence] ruined my life. It killed my homies.”
VINCE STAPLES
Similar to the first generation of gangster rappers, Vince Staples infuses his music with the reality of life on the streets. He raps about his paranoia, his doubts, and his anger about the circumstances in which he was raised. Vince Staples’s music may discuss mayhem, but he does not advocate mindless violence.
“I don’t want to make that kind of music,” Vince Staples said. “I’m not on that. That ruined my life. It killed my homies.”
The business-oriented Los Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle made headlines in October 2013 by selling his Crenshaw mixtape for one hundred dollars apiece. He said he sold one thousand copies, good for one hundred thousand dollars in revenue for a project that would typically be given away for free on the Internet.
A self-proclaimed avid reader, the rapper read the book Contagious, by Wharton professor Jonah Berger, which details unusual and counterintuitive business successes. In the book, Berger tells the story of a restaurateur who charged one hundred dollars for his Philly cheesesteak and was both applauded and derided for the move. That tactic is where Nipsey Hussle drew inspiration for his mixtape.
Nipsey Hussle said his idea was hatched on music’s value in the marketplace. “It’s time we acknowledge what we all know: The music is free,” Nipsey Hussle said. “We shouldn’t force people to buy it. What we should do is create different methods to monetize the connection.”
Signed to Epic Records in 2009, Nipsey Hussle left the label the following year and resumed building his brand independently. In 2017, he announced he’d signed with Atlantic Records and, in 2018, released his major label debut album, the acclaimed Victory Lap.
Priority Records, which relaunched in 2017, returned to its gangster rap roots and tapped into the current generation of artists, including G Perico and AD. The latter is a Compton Crip rapper who embraces the evolution of gang relations in his city, as evidenced by his 2016 song “Thug,” which featured YG, a Blood.
“Compton is a different place now,” AD said. “As far as the gangbanging culture, Crips and [Bloods gang faction] Pirus don’t necessarily beef anymore. More Pirus beef with Pirus and more Crips beef with Crips. I and YG come from two different areas who originally wouldn’t get along with each other, but we don’t have problems with each other. I got a relationship with a lot of his homies from way back. For ‘Thug,’ once we came up with that, I told him to bring his whole hood to the video shoot. It was dope, man.”
More than thirty years after its inception, gangster rap shows that it continues to evolve and remains relevant to a wider range of people, ones who grew up listening to the music and forming their worldviews based in part on the gangster rap music they consumed. Gangster rap fans are now teaching school in suburban Maryland, working at post offices in Florida, and selling derivatives at Smith Barney in New York.
These are the people who were fascinated by gangster rap, the generation who looked at black kids from the ghetto with a more informed view and who voted for Barack Obama. It is a group of people who didn’t base their opinions solely on what they saw on the nightly news and how it depicted young black men in particular.
For today’s generation of listeners, the appeal remains, in essence, the same. In a brutal and ironic similarity, the current generation of gangster rappers has no shortage of material from which to draw, as racism, police brutality, drugs, guns, and gangs remain as relevant today as they were in the mideighties.
“It made a whole new reality in business, music, film,” DJ Quik said. “These dudes just became the trendiest dudes, bigger than the sum of their parts.”
