COLUMN: Why I love gangster rap
I like to consider myself a semi-serious musician. I study classical and jazz piano here, and I sometimes do gigs for money.
I've played the piano for upwards of t10 years now and I see through the narrow-lensed goggles of a young pianist: I love composers who were virtuoso pianists, I love performers who are skilled improvisers and I love melody and harmony and creative chord voicings.
But I also love old-school gangster rap — for two main reasons.
The first is that it allows me to vicariously live out my boyish fantasies of violence. I'm a docile dude, but I have them like anyone else. Some people play Grand Theft Auto and some people play football. I don't play many video games and I've never been very good at sports, so I listen to N.W.A.
It's like listening to a riveting story. When I listen to Wu Tang's "Bring Da Ruckus" I feel cool because I know that in my entire life, I will never bring the ruckus to anything, ever. I'm too lame for all that.
The second reason is I think there's real literary quality in a lot of these songs. To rhyme like that takes real talent. To rhyme on the spot like many successful rappers can takes genius. I can't imagine freestyling the way Biggie did in "Notorious."
But then again, being able to rap like that has serious negative consequences. Biggie Smalls reportedly had to sleep on his stomach every night. He didn't want to ruin his bed sheets with the techniques that "dripped out his butt cheeks."
Artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac are poets because of the fluency of their rhymes. Because of the heaviness of their content, they're artists.
They're urban chroniclers. They speak about the neighborhoods they came from. When Tupac raps about the disappointment in the youth not being warranted because the older generation left them a broken world to inherit in "Ghetto Gospel," it's hard not to stop and think about how deep that is. And that's a universal message.
It's brilliant social commentary; Biggie Smalls rapping about how he's selling drugs to make money to feed his daughter calls into question why anyone should have to resort to that in the first place. He's certainly not lazy. He's out hustling, risking his freedom and life to buy food. What's wrong with that picture?
I think stuff is good if it makes people think and if it's fun. I find old-school, gangster rap to accomplish those goals.
I know a lot of people don't agree with me, of course. But haters gonna hate.
