Gangster is the frequently misused term for a career criminalwho is, or at some point almost invariably becomes, a member of apersistent violent crime organization, such as a gang. As an adjective it can be used as an unflattering depiction of the violent and devious methods commonly used by mobsters, and the derived form gangsterism it implies such methods as practice or habit. The term gangster is most commonly used in reference to members of the criminal organizations associated with the American offshoot of the Cosa Nostra and the American prohibition, such as the Chicago Outfit and the Five Families, and individuals such as Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel.
In the WWII era, the word "gangster" became a popular term to describe an individual who was a part of a "mafia"or "organized crime group". In current times, gangsters are mostcommonly viewed as malicious individuals. The media has had asubstantial influence on the modern view of the gangster.
Gangsters are typically organized criminals who are actively engagedin crime as a group activity or enterprise for pleasure and profit. Thevisibility of activities of gangsters can range from the low-level suchas drug-trafficking or protectionism, which are prone to be 'under the radar', to the in-your-face spectacular, such as the UK's multi-million Brinks Mat robbery.Gangsters often run their operations as businesses insofar as theyoffer a "product" or "service", albeit an illegal one, or, as issometimes the case, a legitimate business operating as a front forcriminal activity.
Some gangsters engage in extortion, intimidation, and/or bribery to wield influence over labor unions. They are also known for attempting to manipulate the decisions of civil institutions, such as court cases and political elections.
It is also often used referring to a subgenre of rap music called "gangsta rap".The gangsta rappers often refer to themselves as gangstas. The spelling"gangsta" rather than "gangster" is also what is becoming the mostoften used spelling.
Southside Soldiers - New West Coast (2007) - Do or die
Gangster life in the city
You know it's hard to stay alive
Because we gotta do or die, ooooh
Gangster life in the city
You know it's hard to stay alive
Because we gotta do or die, do or die, do or die
I roll around with big straps, I like to bust caps
Make money, hit the pussy, and bomb ass raps
I be in San Bernardino like a motherfuckin nut
All these fools wanna kill me, and bitches wanna fuck
Damn, but I ain't trippin and shit
I got a fuckin calico with a hundred round clip
And at my pad, I got this fine ass bitch
Long hair, big booty, with some big ol tits
I don't be fuckin around because I ain't no joke
A crazy motherfucker blowin indo smoke
Cuz it's me, Danger, I'm chillin like a vilain
Smokin chronic, fuckin bitches, and I'd like to do a killin
In my crazy ass hood it's an everyday thang
Eastside Trece is my motherfucking gang
Hang, gettin paid, fucking all these hoes
Letting everyone know that we some fuckin criminals
[Chorus]
I remember growing up in my crazy ass hood
Now it's time to put it down to make this shit understood
Simon loco, I think it's time to roll
I got my homies down with it, and the rest in control
13 ST, IUC, from the 213 all the way to SB
It's a do or die in the streets where I'm from
Eastside South Central's where the petho pason
24 non-stop, you gotta carry your gun
Black and white, hitting corners but to me that's all fun
Rollin in the truck, got the glock sellin rocks
On the block, and I'm not givin a fuck
Gotta make that green anyway you can
And I'm that Brown motherfucker with the master plan
So you better not slip, cuz I'm lookin for a jack
So if you putos see me coming, loco go for your gat
[Chorus]
1-3, here comes even more
My motherfuckin homies breakin down he door
Talkin bout, who we gonna kill, and grab your gun
We gonna kill some fuckin mejos just to have some fun
My homies catch you from the front, I creep and crawl from the back
Punk you for your sack, and peel your fucking cap back
Insane in my brain, cuz I'm straight do or die
Dope money, fucking bitches, and I keep on getting high
Straight gangster flow, now you know, here I go
Creepin, hittin switches, bumpin, riding low
Danger sittin shotgun, Crook's rollin up one
Got the rag-top down in this hot ass sun
Rollin, by the park we go
Hittin corners through the hood puffin on some indo
It's an everyday thing in the city where I'm from
Tryin to do right, but always end up doing wrong
[Chorus til fade]
Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop, which developed during the late 1980s. After the popularity of Dr. Dre's The Chronicin 1992, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre ofhip-hop. Since then some former gangsta rap artists have moved towardsa more pop-friendly mainstream sound.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, and religious leaders, who have accused the genre of homophobia, violence, profanity, promiscuity, misogyny, racism, and materialism.
Gangsta rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they aredescribing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are onlyadopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves inways that they may not necessarily endorse. Some commentators (forexample, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized it as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackfaceperformance, in which performers – both black and white – were made upto look African American, acted in a stereotypically uncultured andignorant manner for the entertainment of white audiences.
Early Gangster themes
The 1973 album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin Rod featured lyrics that deal with street life, including pimping and hustling. The Last Poets member Jalal Mansur Nuriddindelivers rhyming vocals in the urban slang of his time, and togetherwith the other Last Poets members, was quite influential on later hip hop groups, such as Public Enemy. Many rappers, such as Ice T, have credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing their rhymes. There has also been a long tradition of gunman-oriented lyrics in some Jamaican music genres, which had a strong influence on South Bronx MC KRS-One.
[edit] 1984-1990
[edit] Schoolly D
Philadelphia MC Schoolly Dcan probably be credited as the first rapper to use the word "gangster"in one of his songs. In his 1984 12" single "Gangster Boogie"[1]he mentions it with "I shot call a with my gangster lean". He releasedthe 12" single "P.S.K." (short for Park Side Killers) in 1985. In thissong, Schoolly D makes direct references to his crew or gang (PSK) aswell as describing putting his pistol against another rapper's head.[2] Schoolly D is often considered a pioneer in hardcore rap as well as gangsta rap.
[edit] Ice-T
In 1987, Los Angeles based rapper Ice-Treleased "6 n the Mornin", which is often regarded as the first gangstarap song. Ice-T had been MCing since the early '80s. In an interviewwith PROPS magazine Ice-T said: "Here's the exact chronological orderof what really went down: The first record that came out along thoselines was Schoolly D's 'P.S.K.' Then the syncopation of that rap wasused by me when I made Six In The Morning. The vocal delivery was thesame: '...P.S.K. is makin' that green', '...six in the morning, policeat my door'. When I heard that record I was like "Oh shit!" and call ita bite or what you will but I dug that record. My record didn't soundlike P.S.K., but I liked the way he was flowing with it. P.S.K. wastalking about Park Side Killers but it was very vague. That was theonly difference, when Schoolly did it, it was "...one by one, I'mknockin' em out". All he did was represent a gang on his record. I tookthat and wrote a record about guns, beating people down, and all thatwith Six In The Morning. At the same time my single came out, BoogieDown Productions hit with Criminal Minded, which was a gangster-basedalbum. It wasn't about messages or "You Must Learn", it was aboutgangsterism."[3]
Ice-T continued to release gangsta albums for the remainder of the decade: Rhyme Pays in 1987, Power in 1988 and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Sayin 1989. Ice-T's lyrics also contained strong political commentary, andoften played the line between glorifying the gangsta lifestyle andcriticizing it as a no-win situation.
[edit] Boogie Down Productions
Boogie Down Productionsreleased their first single, "Say No Brother (Crack Attack Don't DoIt)", in 1986. It was followed by "South-Bronx/P is Free" and "9mm GoesBang" in the same year. The latter is the most gangsta-themed song ofthe three; in it KRS-1 describes shooting rival weed-dealers after they try to kill him in his home.[4] The album Criminal Minded followed in 1987. Shortly after the release of the album, BDP's DJ Scott LaRock was shot and killed. After this BDP's subsequent records focused on conscious lyrics instead.
[edit] Beastie Boys
The Beastie Boys,while never truly credited as gangsta rappers, were actually one of thefirst groups to identify themselves as "gangsters" on their acclaimedand commercially successful 1986 debut album, Licensed to Ill.They were also one of the first popular rap groups to talk aboutviolence, drug and alcohol use, and themes common in gangsta rap today.According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Licensed to Ill isfilled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (includingthe pornographic deployment of a Whiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") toqualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days,the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. rapped over Beastie Boy tracks forsongs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal", and the Beastie Boys'influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.
The Beastie Boys continued to produce proto-gangsta rap tracks on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, which included such hardcore tracks as "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," and "High-Plains Drifter."
[edit] N.W.A.
N.W.A.released their first single in 1986. They were crucial to thefoundations of the genre for introducing more violent lyrics over muchrougher beats. The first blockbuster gangsta album was N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton first released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton also established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and a rival of hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "Fuck Tha Police" earned a letter from the FBI strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song.[citation needed] Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A., gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon. In 1990, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube would further influence gangsta rap with his hardcore, socio-political solo albums.
[edit] Others
The rap group Run DMCare often credited with popularizing hardcore and abrasive attitudesand lyrics in hip hop culture, and were one of the first rap groups todress in gang-like street clothing. Their socially conscious lyrics andthe influence of rappers like Kool G Rap and Rakim would later influence socially conscious gangsta rappers and hardcore rappers such as Ice Cube and Nas. Rappers such as Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick, LL Cool J, the group EPMD, and the seminal hardcore group Public Enemywould further popularize hard-hitting, aggressive, oftensocio-political lyrics, sometimes revolving around street violence,poverty, and gunplay. Aside from N.W.A. and Ice T, early West Coastrappers include Too $hort (from Oakland, California), Kid Frost (who was an important Latin MC), and others from Compton, Watts, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco. On the East Coast, New York's Kool G Rap began to use more and more crime-related themes in his lyrics towards the end of the decade, as did female rap stars like Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown.
[edit] 1990-Present
[edit] Ice-T
Ice-T released one of the seminal albums of the genre, OG: Original Gangster in 1991. It also contained a song by his new thrash metal group Body Count, who released a self titled album in 1992. The group attracted a lot of media attention for the Cop Killer controversy.
His next album, Home Invasion,was postponed as a result of the controversy, and was finally releasedin 1993. While it contained gangsta elements, it was his most political album to date. After that, he left Time-Warnerrecords. Ice-T's subsequent releases went back to straight gangsta-ism,but were never as popular as his earlier releases. He had alienated hiscore audience with his involvement in metal, his emphasis on politicsand with his uptempo Bomb-Squad style beats during a time when G-funk was popular. He published a book "The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck?" in 1994.
[edit] G-funk and Death Row Records
Main Article: G-Funk
In 1992, former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre released The Chronic, which further established the dominance of West Coast gangsta rap and Death Row Records,and also began the subgenre of G-funk, a slow, drawled form of hip hopthat dominated the charts for some time. Extensively sampling P-Funk bands, especially Parliament and Funkadelic,G-funk was multi-layered, yet simple and easy to dance to, withanti-authoritarian lyrics that helped endear it to many younglisteners. Another G-Funk success was Ice Cube's Predator album, released at the same time as The Chronicin 1992. It sold over 5 million copies and was #1 in the Charts,despite the fact that Ice Cube wasn't a Death Row artist. One of thegenre's biggest crossover stars was Dre's protégé Snoop Doggy Dogg (Doggystyle, 1993), now known as Snoop Dogg, whose exuberant party-oriented themes made songs such as "Gin and Juice" club anthems and top hits nationwide. Tupac Shakur (Me Against the World,1995) has endured as one of the most successful and influential hip hopartists of all time. Snoop and Tupac were both artists on Death RowRecords, owned by Dre and Marion "Suge" Knight. Many of Tupac's greatest hits sampled or interpolated earlier music by Zapp & Roger.
[edit] Mafioso rap
Mafioso rap is a hip hop sub-genre which flourished in the mid-1990s. It is the pseudo-Mafiaextension of East Coast hardcore rap, and was the counterpart of WestCoast G-Funk rap during the 1990s. In contrast to West Coast gangstarappers, who tended to depict realistic urban life on the ghettostreets, Mafioso rappers' subject matter included self-indulgent andluxurious fantasies of rappers as Mobsters, or Mafiosi.
[edit] East Coast hardcore and gangsta rap
Meanwhile, rappers from New York City, such as Kool G. Rap & D.J. Polo (Live and Let Die, 1992, Black Moon (Enta Da Stage, 1993), Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993), Onyx (Bacdafucup, 1993), Mobb Deep (The Infamous, 1995), Nas (Illmatic, 1994), the Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1994), and Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, 1995) pioneered a grittier sound known as East Coast hardcore rap. B.I.G. and the rest of Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Recordsroster paved the way for New York City to take back chart dominancefrom the West Coast as gangsta rap continued to explode into themainstream. It is widely speculated that the "East Coast/West Coast"battle between Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records resulted in thedeaths of Death Row's Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy's Notorious B.I.G. Thishad a knock-on effect on Death Row itself, which sank quickly when mostof its big name artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg left and it found itself on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits. Dr. Dre, at the MTV Video Music Awards,claimed that "gangsta rap was dead". Although Puff Daddy's Bad BoyEntertainment fared better than its West Coast rival, it continued tolose popularity and support of the hip hop fan base with a moremainstream sound, and challenges from Atlanta and, especially, Master P's No Limit stable of popular rappers.
[edit] Southern and midwestern gangsta rap
After the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, gangsta rap remained a majorcommercial force. However, most of the industry's major labels were inturmoil, or bankrupt, and new locations sprang up.
Atlanta had been firmly established as a hip hop center by artists such as Goodie Mob and OutKastand many other Southern hip hop artists emerged in their wake, whilstgangsta rap artists achieving the most pop-chart success. Jermaine Dupri, an Atlanta-born record producer and talent scout, had great success after discovering youthful pop stars Kris Kross (Totally Krossed Out,1992) performing at a mall, and later masterminded a large roster ofcommercially successful acts on his So So Def label which althoughmostly weighted towards pop-rap & R&B, also included rapartists such as Da Brat (Funkdafied, 1994), and himself. Perhaps the most famous gangsta rapper from the South is Scarface.
Master P's No Limit Records label, based out of New Orleans, also became quite popular, though critical success was very scarce, with the exceptions of some later additions like Mystikal (Ghetto Fabulous, 1998). No Limit had begun its rise to fame with Master P's The Ghetto Is Trying to Kill Me! (1994, 1994 in music), and subsequent hits by Silkk the Shocker (Charge It 2 Da Game, 1998) and C-Murder (Life or Death, 1998). Cash Money Records,also based out of New Orleans, had enormous commercial success with avery similar musical style and quantity-over-quality business approachto No Limit but were less ridiculed.
Cleveland based rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmonyalso had a monumental impact on the Midwestern gangsta rap scene. Themid-1990s saw Bone metamorphose into an extremely popular commercialrap assemblage with the release of their critically acclaimed album E 1999 Eternal. Their fast, harmonizing vocals (coupled with their fast rap delivery) changed the limitations of gangsta rap.
[edit] Mainstream era
Before the late nineties, gangsta rap and hip hop in general, whilebeing extremely popular, had always been seen as a fringe genre thatremained firmly outside of the pop mainstream. However, the rise of BadBoy Records signalled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (or as itis referred to on the East Coast, hardcore rap), as it morphed into anew subgenre of hip hop which would become even more commerciallysuccessful. Ice Cubeis seen to have contributed to gangsta rap's move towards conqueringthe pop charts, as he produced albums which included both grittygangsta narratives and polished, catchy, danceable pop productionsentirely aimed at the clubs and at the mainstream pop charts. Betweenthe release of Biggie's debut album Ready to Die in 1994 and his follow-up Life after Deathin 1997, his sound changed from the darker, sample-heavy production toa cleaner, more upbeat sound fashioned for popular consumption (thoughthe references to guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the streetremained). R&B-styled hooks and instantly recognizable samples of well-known soul and popsongs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, whichwas showcased primarily in his latter-day work for The Notorious B.I.G.("Mo Money, Mo Problems"), Ma$e ("Feels So Good"), and non Bad Boy artists such as Jay-Z ("Can I Get A...") and Nas ("Street Dreams").
Also achieving similar levels of success with a similar sound at thesame time as Bad Boy was Master P and his No Limit label in NewOrleans, as well as the New Orleans upstart Cash Money label. A CashMoney artist, The B.G., popularized a catch phrase in 1999 that sums up what the majority of late-nineties mainstream hip hop focused on subject-wise: "Bling-Bling."Whereas much gangsta rap of the past had portrayed the rapper as beinga victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-nineties mainstreamgangsta rappers was far more weighted towards hedonism and showing offthe best jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women. Many of the artists who achieved such mainstream success, such as G-Unitand Jay-Z, originated from the gritty East Coast rap scene and wereinfluenced by hardcore artists such as the Notorious B.I.G and Nas.Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron are also typical of the more relaxed, casualflow that became the pop-gangsta norm. Many of these artists are viewedas being rather illegitimately "gangsta" compared to their West Coastcounterparts.
Pop-inflected gangsta rap continues to be successful into the 21stcentury, with many artists deftly straddling the divide between theirhip hop audience and their pop audience, such as Ja Rule and Jay-Z. The influence of West Coast gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur on the East Coast rap scene has also become increasingly apparent in the new century.
[edit] Chicano gangsta rap
Chicano gangsta rap/Chicano rapis a subgenre of rap music and Latin rap that embodies aspects of WestCoast and Southwest Chicano culture and is typically performed byAmerican rappers of Mexican descent. Although there are some artiststhat aren't even of Mexican descent such as Mr. Capone-E and Knife. Like Knife, most Chicano rappers are gang affiliated. Other notable Chicano gangsta rappers are Psycho Realm, Conejo, Omar Cruz, Thief Sicario, and Krazy Race.