The 90s marked the shift in popularity of hip-hop music from the East Coast to the West Coast. This move coincided with the rise in popularity of gangsta rap music, a raw form filled with explicit language and violent tales of ghetto life, and utilizing funk-style musical accompaniment.
Gangsta rap music was born on the East Coast – Philadelphia to be specific, with Schooly D’s song “P.S.K. ‘What Does It Mean’?” released in 1986. On the West Coast, Ice-T quickly followed in the same year with his own song “6 in the Mornin.’” Though inspired by “PSK”, Ice-T’s song laid the blueprint for the Los Angeles gangsta lifestyle that became immortalized in gangsta rap music, and his 1987 debut release Rhyme Pays can be considered as the initial West Coast gangsta rap album.
Furthering the gangsta aesthetic on the East Coast was the group Boogie Down Productions, and their 1987 debut release Criminal Minded. This album featured group members KRS-One and DJ Scott LaRock depicted on the cover surrounded by an arsenal of weapons – the first major hip-hop release to feature such imagery. Their song “9mm Goes Bang” symbolized their hardcore, violent approach to hip-hop music, and also marked them as one of the forefathers of gangsta rap.[1]
The explosion of this form came in 1988 with N.W.A.’s album Straight Outta Compton, which sold over 2.5 million copies. N.W.A. was the ultimate group of rap all-stars, featuring Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella. They put Compton, California on the hip-hop map, and it is still considered as the true home of West Coast gangsta rap music. After that, throughout the 90s, gangsta rap became the most popular and commercial form of hip-hop music, and through it the dominant West Coast musical style “g-funk” was introduced in Dr. Dre’s classic 1992 solo album[2] The Chronic. This is a musical style that appeared in a manner not unlike the introduction of West Coast jazz in the 50s, for similar aesthetic and hegemonic reasons[3] – in opposition to the dominance of East Coast style musical production. G-funk (gangsta funk) music features minimal samples, live instrumentation, synthesizers and heavy bass, a mellow tone with relatively slower beats, and a marked emulation of the 70s funk music of Parliament-Funkadelic.
This heyday of the gangsta rap era produced the most influential and best-selling rapper of all-time: Tupac Shakur. Born in Harlem to a Black Panther family, but raised in Marin City, California, Shakur was a poet and a classically-trained actor; he was arguably the most complete and influential artist hip-hop has ever seen. While many label him a gangsta rapper, Shakur actually balanced a hardcore approach with a political edge, and sometimes even an idealistic softer side. Shakur was associated with Death Row Records at the end of his career, which is the label that became the largest symbol and proprietor of West Coast gangsta music. He released his masterpiece album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory under the alias “Makaveli” in 1996. This was also the year that he was shot and killed, closing the curtain on the dominance of Death Row Records, and also the supremacy of West Coast gangsta rap.
[1] When DJ Scott LaRock was killed only a few months after Criminal Minded was released, Boogie Down Productions switched the focus of their music to more positive, and sometimes educational, concerns.
[2] Though labeled a solo release, The Chronic featured a large number of guest appearances, to the extent that it can be considered a group album. This is the album that introduced, and made stars out of, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Daz, Kurupt, and Warren G, all members of the Dogg Pound, and most hailing from Long Beach, California.
[3] West Coast jazz developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco as a sub-genre of New York City cool jazz. It is characterized by a heavily-arranged, compositionally-based, and calm sound, in opposition to the aggressive, abstract, and dissonant style of be-bop.