• African American Migrants move and bring stories, southern blues, and laid back attitude

• As LA grew, there was emergence of racial segregation

Containment

• Contain people with different viewpoints

Homeowners Association/Gated Communities 89-90

• Role in Maintaining White Wealth

• Demolishing and not replacing thousands of units of existing affordable housing in poor black communities

• What you can and can't do in a community and who has the right to be there

• Cameras are placed on streets in LA in colored places

• Rules and guidelines on who could be there- space with a wall around it

-LAPD & African Americans (Rodney King) 48-49 (1991)

• Failed to address the roots of the problem and barely distinguished between drug dealers and communities as a whole

• Housing Projects equipped with police substations and black males were picked up for potential gang activity

• Higher punishment for black crack users and dealers than cocaine

• Spark after already feeling injustice

• He was speeding and drunk and didn't want to be arrested but then was beaten because of resistance

• Police officers say that they were afraid, so they win on an all white courthouse

• Sadness and anger in the rest of the country as they see the reality

• War on the communities that bore the brunt of the drug crisis

• Focuses on Criminalization rather than Rehabilitation

-Rap 2-5,15-17, 243-246, 2-3

• Represented street criminal icons in a musically compelling way

• White consumers wanted gangsta-oriented rap music

• New interest in gangsta rap as a mainstream profit stream moved swiftly into a multitude of markets and related products

”Boyz in the Hood”- Easy E (1987)

• Being strong and able to protect oneself from pain and hardship

• Defines masculinity

“Straight Outta Compton”- NWA (1988)

• Police doing sweeps in neighborhoods and they are always a part of the story

• Making oneself known/heard

“It was a good day”- Ice Cube (1992)

• Looking for normalcy

• Gangstas want to live their lives and be themselves but they are always bound by containment culture

• Came from politically active family, educated but not richm learned how to bring in voices to tell stories

• Brought attention to the mass incarceration of African Americans

• Product of their experiences

• Appealing to white men so they can see a different culture that they will never experience

How was gangsta rap then critiqued by other musicians or political figures.

-Homophobia- 8.76.154.236-240

• Black teenagers have smuggled sexism and homophobia into American culture, bringing them in like unauthorized imports

• Fosters negative interactions and exploitative relations between young black men and women in ways that degrade women

• Few music videos depict gay men or women at all

• Homophobia helps obscure the fundamental connections among patriarchal masculinity, femininity and homophobia

• Gay men are weak and real masculinity is heterosexual and aggressive

• Become quiet and uncomfortable and close down conversation

• What he represents culturally

Nelly “Tip Drill” - Misogyny 3,6,13,75-77,115,159,188

-Viewing women as sex objects at the BET Spring Fling

• The way they dress

• Its the truth

• Females also blame women

• Raping Bitches and shooting people

• No one wants to hear about alternative futures or consequences of choices

• Doing whatever they can to get there, no one raps about the positives

• Truth from the streets and the black ghetto

-Fat Joe- Masculinity and Hardness 154.107-108..117-120

• Violent behavior is, in fact, at the heart of American Value system

• Violence was added to mainstream visions of manhood

• Bush suggests that gang-invested kids are operating outside the bounds of acceptable male american culture that “respects” a woman

• Imply hip hop and young black men represent the decline of civility, honor and good manhood

• Gun makes a real man

• Everyone wants to be hard, we can’t walk and smile at eachother if we are competing for something

• Hip-hop is ego driven, want respect