14 — THE RISE OF GANGSTA RAP
Somewhere else, another branch of Hip-Hop was taking shape.
Gangsta rap.
Its roots developed from artists describing environments where gangs, drugs, poverty, policing and violence were already realities.
Philadelphia's Schoolly D was an early pioneer, with P.S.K. What does it mean? from his self titled debut LP in 85
This was said to have been the first gangster rap track. And if you didn’t already know, P.S.K. stands for Park Side Killers, a street gang from west philly’s Parkside during the 70’s and 80’s
Ice-T developed the West Coast sound and then came N.W.A. with ‘Straight Outta Compton’ which changed everything.
The album described life in Compton and brought the realities of LA street life into mainstream America with heavy hitting beats from James Brown, Kool and the Gang and The Winstons to name a few.
N.W.A. were not just creating controversy, they were creating a commercial market, and the industry noticed.
Independent labels like Ruthless and Priority demonstrated that there was demand for the music and major labels subsequently invested in the genre.
The industry didn't necessarily create the environment being described. It did however discover that gangsta rap could be extremely profitable.
And once the industry recognised the commercial potential, the relationship between Hip-Hop and corporate America changed permanently.
15 — GLORIFYING NAUGHTY BEHAVIOURS
This brings me to one of the more controversial arguments surrounding the history of gangsta rap and Hip-Hop.
During the same period that gangsta rap was becoming commercially dominant, The American prison system was privatised and the population of black male inmates increased by approximately 200%.
2 of the largest private for profit prison companies were The CCA (Corrections Corporation of America) now known as CoreCivic, founded in 1983 and Wackenhut Corrections, later associated with GEO Group, founded in 1984.
By 1990 the total annual revenues for the CCA reached $55.5M annually, and by 1994 that number grew to $120M. Whereas Wackenhut Corrections grew from an annual revenue of $19M in 1989 to $89M in 1994.
Therefore private prisons became a commercially successful private industry during the exact same period as gangsta rap was moving into the mainstream.
Another interesting fact is that SEC filings showed that large institutional investors including Vanguard and BlackRock held substantial positions in Corrections Corporation of America. And those same investment institutions held substantial positions in the major media corporations who were promoting gangsta rap.
These facts led to claims that the music industry and private-prison industry were financially connected, and on further investigation, the financial connections themselves are confirmed to be real.
But of course, they do not provide reliable documented evidence of a coordinated plan.
The more defensible conclusion is therefore more complicated:
The music industry discovered that music promoting violence, gangs and gangsta behaviours could be enormously profitable, while America was simultaneously experiencing an extraordinary expansion of incarceration, which was also enormously profitable.
That is a disturbing convergence.
However, convergence is not proof.
16 — THE WEST COAST EXPLODES
The West Coast became the centre of mainstream Hip-Hop during the early 1990s.
Dr. Dre's ‘The Chronic’ established G-funk.
Taking influence from George Clinton’s P-Funk with Parliament-Funkadelic,
Using deep basslines, vocoders, synthesizers, and slow wide sweeping grooves.
The sound was unmistakably rooted in Funk, and once again, Hip-Hop was reaching backwards.
Again, Dre was tapping into the roots of Hip-Hop culture by rebuilding the sound of 70s Funk with 90s technology.
Alongside Dre, Snoop Dogg became one of the defining voices of the era and Death Row Records became one of the most powerful labels in Hip-Hop and suddenly the West Coast was at the centre of the commercial rap universe.
17 — EAST COAST VS WEST COAST
In Hip-Hop, regional identity always mattered.
But during the mid-1990s, the rivalry between East Coast and West Coast became increasingly intense.
Musically the two scenes developed distinct sounds.
New York leaned toward harder drums, sample-heavy production and lyrical complexity.
The West Coast developed G-funk, squelching basslines and a smoother production.
But while the East and West were dominating media coverage, other scenes were developing.
Groups like OutKast demonstrated that Atlanta had its own sound, its own rhythms, slang, production style, and history.
18 — THE WU-TANG REVOLUTION
Enter the Wu-Tang Clan.
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) appeared in 1993 and introduced an entirely different production aesthetic.
Raw, dark, lo-fi, and loaded with sampled audio clips from old dubbed Kung-fu movies layered over dusty drums and obscure loops
Vintage martial arts images and an enormous collective of MCs.
The Wu-Tang Clan werent nuthing ta Fuck wit’. And the model was commercially revolutionary. And there were plenty of us who related to growing up watching old kung-fu movies.
Instead of functioning simply as a traditional group, the members could develop individual careers while remaining part of the wider Wu-Tang identity.
The Clan demonstrated that Hip-Hop could operate almost like an independent cultural ecosystem.
19 — 1998: HIP-HOP OPENS EVERY DOOR
By the end of the 1990s, Hip-Hop had stopped being a subculture and became one of the dominant forces in popular music.
1998 alone produced:
A Tribe Called Quest — The Love Movement
OutKast — Aquemini
Lauryn Hill — The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Black Star — Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
Gang Starr — Moment of Truth
Beastie Boys — Hello Nasty
But most importantly People Under The Stairs debut LP The Next Step
These records represented completely different approaches to Hip-Hop.
Whether Conscious, Jazz-based, Soul-based, Underground, Commercial, Alternative or Pop
The genre became too large to fit into one box.
In the beginning of Hip-Hop, the DJ was the centre.
Then the MC became the star.
By the 1990s, producers had become celebrities, and the producer was no longer just the guy putting beats together. The production style itself became part of the artist's identity and top producers were in demand.
We had Dr. Dre - DJ Premier - Pete Rock - Q-Tip - J Dilla - Timbaland and Prince Paul, to name a few of my personal faves.
20 — THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION
By the 2010s, the way Hip-Hop was made had changed again.
Laptops replaced expensive studios.
Software replaced hardware.
Samples could be sourced online, spliced, chopped and ready to go..
Beats could be put together like lego bricks.
And artists could distribute their music directly.
SoundCloud, YouTube, Bandcamp, Streaming platforms and Social media.
The gatekeepers were disappearing.
The downside was that the internet created an overwhelming amount of music.
The crates were no longer limited to the dedicated diggers, collectors and connoisseurs. Now they were digital files available to download today, for the producers of tomorrow.
And if you wanted to be a DJ you just needed a laptop, a USB stick and shazam.
Follow a couple of dedicated diggers and you got all the breaks you need in a matter of days, with the software to mix them together for you.
The upside for the old school DJ was that he didn't need to dig through his collection before every gig and carry heavy heavy super heavy boxes of records.
The down side was that many of the smaller venues no longer had turntables, but did however have an abundance of USB DJs who were willing to play for free.
