Transcript
Into America
Street Disciples: America’s Most Wanted
Trymaine Lee: A heads-up, this episode contains several instances of profanity.
By the end of the ’80s hip-hop was finding its rhythm. The culture was reaching new heights, rappers had achieved stardom with massive followings, Yo! MTV Raps was featuring rap videos on cable TV every single day. There were world tours and platinum records, but all of the success still felt fragile.
Glenn Bolton: It was tough on us because you get ready to go do a show and you’re hoping, like, man, I hope nothing don’t happen in here tonight.
Lee: Glenn Bolton, aka Daddy-O, is a member of the Brooklyn-bred group, Stetsasonic. The group formed in the early ’80s and was one of the first rap groups to perform with a full band. And over the decade, they put their mark on this growing industry with hits like Sally and Talkin’ All That Jazz.
Stetsasonic, Talkin’ All That Jazz: (Music Playing) Stop, check it out, my man. This is the music opera hip-hop band. Jazz, well, you call it that, but this jazz retains a new format. Point —
Lee: But as their star was on the rise, so was the violence surrounding hip-hop, and it was threatening their livelihood.
Bolton: You know, I hope nothing don’thappen so we don’t get to perform. On another level, it’s like, I hope nothing don’t happen so the club don’t get shut down and we can’t perform next week.
Lee: Adding to the pressure, the media began associating hip-hop with the rise in crime.
Ralph McDaniels: Oh, somebody got shot at a house party and they were playing rap music. There was somebody walking down the block and the car went by, they were playing rap music and the shootout happened. I’m like, how is this all related to hip-hop music?
Lee: The violence wasn’t because of hip-hop. But for many of raps core fans, back then, the ones who the music really spoke to were often living in neighborhoods where violence, police brutality, and poverty were features of everyday life.
Bolton: In the beginning, it was just kind of like stickup kids, you know, that type of thing. But then the murder game started, so you was just seeing more death than you would normally see.
Lee: In the summer of 1988, the Dope Jam Tour was the show to be at, with new stars like Eric B. & Rakim and rap veterans like Kool Moe Dee and Doug E. Fresh. And Yo! MTV Raps even pulled up with host Fab 5 Freddy.
Fab 5 Freddy: Yes. Yo, Fab 5 Freddy. Welcome to Yo! MTV Raps. I got a mega possie chillin’ with me right now. We getting ready to go into Nassau Coliseum with the Dope Jam Tour is getting ready to get cooling effects (ph).
Lee: That day, September 10th, 10,000 people packed into Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum. It was a momentous moment for hip-hop, with some of the biggest names in rap on top of their game. And a final hurrah to summer, with everyone fresh to death in new fits and rockin’ to the music, it was all of that, until it wasn’t.
Dean Jones: One guy has saw me with my gold, and so he reached for my bracelet.
Lee: This is Dean Jones flashing back to that night for a documentary produced by legendary hip-hop director Ralph McDaniels.
Jones: And I didn’t realize I was stabbed until a friend of mine tells me all of this blood is on my pants, and I turn around and lift my shirt up and blood just starts gushing out. So I go to the first aid office. When I’m going to the first aid office, it’s crowded, you know, full of people that had been stabbed and cut.
KRS-One: We had no security at Nassau Coliseum. You have Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Bronx, Staten Island, Long Island, Jersey in the house. It started bugging.
Lee: Rapper KRS-One had performed that night with his group Boogie Down Productions. Dozens of people were robbed or injured, and a 19-year-old named Julio Fuentes from the Bronx was killed.
KRS-One: Out of all the many things that went on that night, that seemed to be the zenith of the ignorance. He died because of his gold chains.
Lee: The media went wild. Culture writer Nelson George remembers all the headlines decrying rap violence. And now the whole scene fit the false narrative of rap music being inherently dangerous and violent.
Nelson George: And I remember thinking this could stop this whole movement, because there was a lot of talks about not letting people come into venues anymore, really stopping the shows from happening.
McDaniels: You know, hip-hop is just starting to get its legs.
Lee: Ralph McDaniels was deep in the New York hip-hop scene. He hosted the groundbreaking and wildly popular Video Music Box, which was the first TV show to feature hip-hop music videos almost exclusively. It’s still on the air today. But back in September of ’88, people were starting to worry that the culture was on the brink. And Ralph, he had to do something about it.
McDaniels: I was sitting at Jive Records myself, a lady name Ann Carli who was over at Jive and Nelson George, and we said, let’s make a record that addresses this and put some artists that fit on this particular record. KRS was already making music like that, but it had to be him to be the point person to make everybody else buy in.
Lee: The Bronx’s KRS-One was a natural fit for a lot of reasons. He was fiercely political and fiercely pro-Black, and he had respect in the streets. He already had a song called Stop the Violence, which he had written as a freestyle to rap at concerts when things started popping off.
But this time, he wanted more voices, so that no one could ignore the message. He got Public Enemy, Kool Moe Dee, Ms. Melodie, Doug E. Fresh, the list goes on and on. And among that group was Daddy-O of Stetsasonic.
Bolton: There’s no way this record’s going to be corny if KRS and Public Enemy is on this record.
Lee: They called the song Self Destruction. The premise was this violence is going too far and it’s up to us to save ourselves. Nelson George gave all the MCs some stats on violence in the Black community, and they each wrote their own verse, with their own spin on issue.
George: I think what’s interesting about that whole experience was, these very intense conversations about your relationship of the artists to the audience, artists to the record company, artists to each other. I imagined it must be the kind of conversations that must have happened back in the ’70s when people were organizing political activities.
Lee: KRS made it clear that hip-hop shouldn’t be defined by individual acts of violence.
Stop the Violence Movement, Self Destruction: (Music Playing) Well, today’s topic, self-destruction, it really ain’t the rap audience that’s bugging. It’s one or two suckers, ignorant brothers, trying to rob and steal from one another. You get caught in the mid —
Lee: And Kool Moe Dee’s verse is still seared in my head more than 30 years later, with references to the racist violence of villains paths.
Stop the Violence Movement, Self Destruction: (Music Playing) Back in the ’60s our brothers and sisters were hanged. How could you gang-bang? I never ever ran from the Ku Klux Klan, and I shouldn’t have to run from a Black man ’cause that’s self-destruction, you’re headed for self-destruction. Self-destruction, you’re headed for self-destruction.
Lee: And there was MC Lyte, one of the baddest female rappers of the time, of all time, really, who was fed up.
Stop the Violence Movement, Self Destruction: (Music Playing) Leave the guns and the crack and knives alone. MC Lyte’s on the microphone. Bum rushing and pushing, snatching and taxing, I cram to understand why brothers don’t be maxing. There’s only one disco, they’ll close one more. You ain’t guarding the door, so what you got a gun for? Do you rob the rich and give to the poor? Yo Daddy-O, school em some more.
Stop the Violence Movement, Self Destruction: (Music Playing) Straight from the mouth of Wise and Daddy-O.Do a crime.End up in jail and gotta go.’Cause you could do crime —
Bolton: My favorite line is do a crime, end up in jail and gotta go. Because to know that you’re in a cell and you can’t open it, that’s crazy, son. You know what I mean? And so that’s why that line sticks out, because I just think that a lot of crimes are committed before people think. Like, they just don’t think, they just jump out and do it. And then next thing you know, clink, clink.
Stop the Violence Movement Self Destruction: (Music Playing) ‘Cause you could do crime and get paid today. And tomorrow you’re behind bars in the worst way. Far from your family, ’cause you’re locked away. Now tell me.
Bolton: Do you really think crime pays? Scheming on taking what your brother had? You little sucker, you’re talkin’ all that jazz. And then now shall we go, bum, doo doodoodoodoo.
Lee: Like the song, the video, directed by Ralph McDaniels, features what feels like this endless parade of dope MCs, your favorite rapper’s favorite rappers, all rocking the mic for a common cause.
Stop the Violence Movement, Self Destruction: (Music Playing) Self-destruction, you’re headed for self-destruction. Self-destruction, you’re headed for self-destruction.
Bolton: I mean, it was nothing less than incredible. Because remember, at this time, it’s us against the word.
Lee: Self Destruction dropped January 15th, 1989, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.
Bolton: I know that it’s had a lasting impact. Like I said, the best example for me is just I’m around the country a lot and young people just telling me how they was. And you know, maybe they’re not so young right now. You know, they still might be like 37 or 40 now, but telling me how that affected their life.
Lee: Self Destruction was part of a lineage in hip-hop, along with songs like The Message and Fight The Power that expressed a sense of political consciousness, responsibility and pride.
George: It’s definitely a moment, a record that speaks to the environment of New York, a very socially conscious, lyrically advanced vision of what hip-hop could be.
Lee: But despite the best efforts of The Stop the Violence Movement, America entered the ’90s with street violence only getting worse. And no song, no matter how many stars rapped on it, could stop the blood pooling in Black communities all across the country.
And in Los Angeles, a specific kind of violence was brewing, one rooted in racist housing, economic and policing policies, where gang culture that grew out of a need for self-preservation spiraled into wanton, viciousness and chaos.
The hip-hop that came from L.A. was hard, reflecting the hard lives of many of the poor and Black people who lived there. Hip-hop might have been born and raised in New York City. But in Los Angeles, hip-hop would raise hell.
I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America.
As hip-hop spread to the West Coast, it went gangsta. And as violence seeped into the music, rap exploded in popularity and infamy. In this new era, rap will get caught in the national crossfire, drawing the attention of policymakers at the highest levels of government.
But despite all of that, some of the biggest and most prolific stars in the culture would emerge in the 1990s, shaping what many consider the golden era of rap.
This is part three of Street Disciples: America’s Most Wanted.
Archival Recording: (Beatbox Music) That stuff, that’s the first time I heard West Coast rap.
Archival Recording: When I first heard about West Coast rap, I can distinctly remember saying like, what are you gonna rap about? Palm trees?
Archival Recording: When I first heard N.W.A., we go to L.A. on a tour, Stetsasonic and Public Enemy for the entire tour shared a bus. There was this one song, it was (inaudible) called Dopeman.
N.W.A., Dopeman: (Music Playing) It was once said by a man who couldn’t quit, Dopeman, please can I have another hit? The dopeman said —
Archival Recording: And I remember Chuck and I arguing, Public Enemy is arguing with Chuck, Stetsasonic is arguing with me on how whack this record is. And we’re like, it’s not gonna always be us. Rap is not gonna always come from the East Coast.
McDaniels: The first time I heard Straight OuttaCompton, like going through it and stopping when it was over and sitting there almost, not traumatized, I remember this so distinctly. I remember, like I’d been run over, and then I looked and realized I had the other side to listen to. Only got (ph) through side one.
(LAUGHTER)
It was like, what the hell?
(LAUGHTER)
Archival Recording: But, yeah, you know, we fell in love with Easy. We fell in love with just what Dre was doing with that music, because it wasn’t us. You know what I mean? I think we fell more in love with it because it wasn’t us, and it was so different.
Lee: And no doubt, it was different.
Tracy Curry: It was a brand-new world for me, bro. My name is Tracy Curry aka D.O.C. from Dallas, Texas.
Lee: The D.O.C. aka D.O.C. is synonymous with early West Coast rap. He’s helped some of the biggest names find their voice. And before his vocal cords were damaged in an accident, his own voice was emerging buttery, but still hard.
The D.O.C., It’s Funky Enough: (Music Playing) ‘Cause I don’t think he is funny when you’re messing with my money. Yo people tell me this, Yo Dre you gotta stop him. But with no frills, so I just drop him. Continue with the rhyme and make sure I get mine, with no static ’cause that’s all I need to get my nine. But lessons have been learned now all kidding have been fronting. Let it play when the people say, Dre yo you’re getting funky enough.
Lee: The D.O.C. grew up in Dallas, where he was in a rap group as a team. When Dr. Dre was on a trip to Texas, the two men and Dre invited D.O.C. to California.
Curry: And the rest is history.
Lee: Dr. Dre produced The D.O.C.’s first solo album, No One Can Do It Better. It went platinum and hit the top of Billboard’s hip-hop charts. You can hear D.O.C.’s range on his verse of Mind Blowin’ where he shows off some of his lyrical acrobatics.
The D.O.C., Mind Blowin’: (Music Playing) Always gettin’ paid ’cause the rap is sort of a twist, between what you needed and what I mean. What I mean by twist, now you gotta listen. Never a segment is negative ’cause I’m employin’ what you been missing. So in total, this is one of the many styles of an artist. Hard it may be, but not my hardest.
Lee: But as the D.O.C. was making music, he was also experiencing, like he said, a brand-new world.
Curry: I didn’t know those people. I didn’t know how to react to them. And you know, in my essence, I’m just a good guy. You know what I’m saying? I’m not a thug. But those guys out there, they’re raised for war, you know. They’re raised to be on a pivot all the time, and you have to kill or be killed or, you know, you have to watch everybody. And you know, I dove head first into, you know, sort of a culture where it’s really dark and dangerous and kind of dirty, you know, but that’s where the music was.
Lee: This music coming out of L.A. did feel dark and dangerous, because there was some dark and dangerous stuff happening in the City of Angels. There were street gangs. And then there were the cops who often functioned like a gang.
The Los Angeles Police Department has a long history of corruption, racism and brutality. During the ’40s and ’50s, the Great Migration brought Black families out to L.A., where redlining and other racist housing policies forced them into certain neighborhoods, like South Central and nearby cities like Compton.
At the same time, the LAPD was actively recruiting officers from the Jim Crow South to police the streets, who brought with them the same brand of racist violence to Los Angeles that Black families had fled. Animosity between Black people and police continue to mount.
And in 1965, it reached a breaking point when police officers beat a Black man at a traffic stop. And Watts, a Black neighborhood in L.A., erupted.
Archival Recording: Watts, a womb from whence has been spawned Molotov cocktails and shotguns, but most of all, a lack of care. The man named fear has inherited half an acre, and is angry.
Lee: As the years went on, violence in L.A. continued to rise. And with the backdrop of social and economic isolation, young Black men started forming gangs to protect themselves against rivals and, by some accounts, the police.
Over the next decades, gangs like the Bloods and the Crips would become massive criminal enterprises. These gangs spurred an even heavier, more violent response from the police.
Curry: And so I absolutely saw the increased negative element from policing when it comes to us as just individuals walking the streets, whether or not we are into those things a lot. You know, just the culture itself is under attack.
Lee: Overpolicing was a part of life, gang member or not. Young Black men were being trapped beneath the thumb of the law.
McDaniels: And the LAPD, their thing was to put people on the ground. Like, if they stopped you and you had to get out the car, they would make you either lay on the ground on your stomach or you were sitting on the curb. Like, it was pretty brutal.
Lee: But one day, all of this friction would spark something that no one could contain. The D.O.C., a master lyricist, was working with Dr. Dre and his group N.W.A., which included now legends, Ice Cube and Eazy-E, along with MC Ren and DJ Yella. They were putting together their first album.
Curry: That morning, Dre and I, we rode to the studio at the same time every morning. And if I’m remembering correctly, bro, it’s a long time ago, Dre got pulled over and he was giving the cops (EXPLETIVE DELETED). The cop has given him a whole bunch (EXPLETIVE DELETED). It really pissed him off. And that day, dude, was with the business. And we went in and went to work on it.
And Eazy was always willing to push the envelope as far as he could push it. That was his deal. And so, it was just a moment in time, man. Dre was pissed off and Cube had the song already in his pocket, you know. You know what I mean? And we went to work on it. I don’t think we had any idea that it (ph) was gonna do that.
Lee: The song they wrote that day was straight up raw, and as relevant as it was provocative.
N.W.A., Fuck Tha Police: (Music Playing) Fuck the police comin’ straight from the underground. A young nigga got it bad ’cause I’m brown and not the other color, so police think they have the authority to kill a minority.
Lee: Eff (ph)ThaPolice was decades of frustration with the racist and brutal LAPD, set to a driving beat, profanity-laced, dagger-sharp rhymes, with a chorus that became a controversial chant for generations.
N.W.A., Fuck Tha Police: (Music Playing) Fuck the police, fuck, fuck. Fuck the police, fuck, fuck, fuck. Fuck the police, fuck, fuck. Fuck the police.
Lee: It ended up being the second song on N.W.A.’s album, Straight Outta Compton, which came out in 1988 and exemplified what became known as gangsta rap. Hip-hop about the hard knocks of being Black and poor in America, and gang life, and all the violence that often came with it.
N.W.A., Straight Outta Compton: (Music Playing) Straight Outta Compton, crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube from the gang called NiggazWith Attitudes. When I’m called off, I got a sawed off. Squeeze the trigger, and bodies are hauled off. You too, boy, if ya fuck with me.
Lee: But the D.O.C. says it was really the media and the industry, not the artists, that pushed the label of gangsta rap.
Archival Recording: Gangsta rap, the angriest kind of rap music, it glorifies brutality and sex.
Curry: I think that the definition itself is sort of a misleading, you know, marketing and promotion, more so than what the music was really about. But gangsta rap (ph), they called it reality rap, you know, because that’s what they were living.
Lee: How did you strike the balance between the reality rap and righteousness, but also not falling into the hyperbole of gangsterism?
Curry: Well, if I’m being honest, brother, there was no extras put on Eazy-E as a gangster. He was about as real as they get —
Lee: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
Curry: — in that space. You know what I’m saying?
Lee: Yeah, yeah. I know what you’re saying.
Gang violence was tearing through the Los Angeles area, with deadly consequences. Hundreds of young men and women were dying every single year. In 1991, the same year that 15-year-old Latasha Harlins was shot in the back of the head by Korean-American storeowner over a bottle of orange juice. Seven hundred and seventy-one people were killed from gang violence in Los Angeles County, a record high. And the next year would prove to be even deadlier.
And as the city tried to quell the violence, the police brutality ratcheted up as well. Like in March of that year, when four officers beat Rodney King nearly to death. The city was just a spark away from exploding.
When the four officers who beat King were acquitted, Black Angelenos rose up, and said resoundingly, eff the police.
(RIOTING VOICES)
Lee: The riots set hip-hop on a collision course with America’s political elite.
When a reporter for “The Washington Post” asked political activist and rapper Sister Souljah if she thought the reaction to the verdict was justified, she said, yes, given how often Black folks have been abused by the system. But she also went further, a lot further. She’s quoted as saying, “If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people? If you’re a gang member and you would normally be killing somebody, why not kill a white person?”
Her comments threw immediate backlash, including from then-Presidential Candidate Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton: I know she is a young person, but she has a big influence on a lot of people. And when people say that, if you took the words white and Black and you reverse them, you might think Davey Duke was giving that speech.
Lee: His comment was so absurd. She had a news conference in New York City to personally respond to Clinton.
Sister Souljah: The context in which my statements were made in “The Washington Post” was this, and I paraphrase, white people should not have been surprised, they knew that Black people were dying every day in the streets of Los Angeles, to gang violence created by poverty and social chaos. But they did not care. If young Black men in Los Angeles would kill their own kind, their own brothers and sisters, what would make white people think that they wouldn’t kill them too?’
Lee: This feud became known as the Sister Souljah moment, and would come to define a very specific kind of political dynamic, where two presumed allies find themselves at odds.
The uprising also revealed another kind of dynamic between hip-hop and this new subgenre of gangsta rap, which was really taking off.
And The D.O.C. was there, pushing the music to new heights. This was three years after the D.O.C.’s car accident, and without his voice, he threw himself deeper into writing and producing. In ’91, he co-founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre and the infamous gang-affiliated Suge Knight, and he’s producing some of the biggest hits coming out the West Coast.
Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: (Music Playing) One, two, three and to the four, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Dre is at the door, ready to make an entrance so back on up.’Cause you knew we’re ’bout to rip shit up.
Lee: The D.O.C. co-wrote Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang, the first single of Dr. Dre’s universally heralded first solo album, The Chronic, which came out in 1992, months after the riots.
Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: (Music Playing) And the city they call Long Beach, putting’ the shit together like my nigga D.O.C. No one can do it better like this.
Lee: The album also helped launch the career of none other than Snoop Doggy Dog,
Curry: If there’s an it, then Snoop got that.
Lee: The D.O.C. mentored the young Snoop, training him on how to actually write songs. And once Snoop blended what The D.O.C. taught him with his own naturally laid-back style, Snoop never looked back.
Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, Nuthin’ but a “G” Thang: (Music Playing) Ain’tnuthin’ but a G thang, baby. Two loc’ed out niggas going crazy. Death Row is the label that pays me. Unfadeable, so please don’t try to fade this. Hell, yeah.But, um, back to the lecture at hand —
Lee: Snoop released his debut album, Doggystyle, in 1993.
Curry: It was significant for me because, at that time, I was dying on the inside. But Snoop opened up to me in a way that allowed me to pour into him.
Lee: The D.O.C. was still in a tough headspace after his accident, and he says his relationship with Snoop helped him get through those early years.
Curry: And he was so accommodating and accepting, and you know, I could live through him, you know. And he allowed that, you know, and he uplifted me and has always uplifted me. You know, he’s one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and one of the people that saved my life, no question, you know. And I love him.
Lee: Today, Snoop is one of the most beloved figures in pop culture, period. He’s got a football league for low-income youth that has produced multiple NFL players. He’s featured in national ad campaigns, hangs out with Martha Stewart, and he even got a children’s album, where he recites affirmations to kids, feels like everyone now sees what The D.O.C. saw.
Snoop Dogg, Affirmations: (Music Playing) When you’re not feeling good and have negative thoughts, so repeat after me, come on, everyone. There was no one better to beat than myself. There is no one better to beat than myself. Today is going to be an amazing day.
Lee: But back then, a lot of people wouldn’t or couldn’t see that side of Snoop. Much of white America saw a criminal, a Black man, gang member, once charged with and acquitted of murder.
Archival Recording: In October, while he was out on bail for a weapons violation charge, Los Angeles police arrested Snoop and charged him with murder.
Archival Recording: The irony is that now that it’s so cool to be tough, some say Snoop’s murder charge may actually help them sell more records.
Lee: The backlash also came from some Black leaders.
Calvin Butts: We’re not against rap. We’re not against rappers.
Lee: Here’s the Reverend Calvin Butts from a sermon in Harlem in 1993.
Butts: But we are against those thugs who disgrace our community, our women; who disgrace our culture; and who have absolutely nothing of redemptive value to offer, except the legacy of violence and sexual assault and foul language.
(APPLAUSE)
Cynthia Delores Tucker: Enough is enough.
Lee: That’s same year, C. Delores Tucker, a civil rights leader who had marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Selma, was on a crusade against gangsta rap. She and many other Black leaders at that time, felt the music glorified violence and misogyny.
Tucker: And I’d like someone to bring me what made me say enough is enough. Where’s my graphic? Bring it up here, please.
Lee: Ms. Tucker’s graphic was the cover of Doggystyle. The album depicts an anamorphic female dog’s bare behind, with a tail sticking out of the doghouse.
Tucker: I am here to put the nation on notice that violence perpetuated against women through the music industry, in the forms of gangsta rap and misogynist lyrics will not be tolerated in any longer.
(APPLAUSE)
Lee: Ms. Tucker was talking about songs like the hit Gin and Juice of Doggystyle, still one of the most iconic hip-hop songs of all time. But the lyrics are pretty vulgar.
Snoop Dogg, Gin and Juice: (Music Playing) I got bitches in the livin’ room gettin’ it on, and they ain’t leavin’ til’ six in the mornin’ so what you wanna do? Shit, I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too. So turn off the lights and close the doors. But for what?
Lee: It wasn’t just Snoop’s music, you could hear this kind of language all across hip-hop. In a 1993 Nightly News story on gangsta rap, a reporter asked Eazy-E about his role in portraying women in hip-hop negatively, like in his verse with Straight Outta Compton.
Archival Recording: I have some lyrics here from some of the songs that you’ve done in your career, and to be very honest, much of this I can’t even say on television. But I want to read some of this to you. So what about the bitch that got shot? Eff her. You think I care about a bitch? I ain’t a sucker.
Eazy-E: Right.
Archival Recording: Songs titled —
Eazy-E: That’s not talking about women, though.
Archival Recording: What is it talking about?
Eazy-E: A lot of them bitches, there’s a difference. I figure bitch is someone that does like scandalous things to you.
Lee: The D.O.C. is listed as a co-writer on that song, and worked with Eazy on his solo album. Now, he thinks about the role he played in this kind of music.
Curry: That’s just where I was in the space and time. But I’ve always been a lover of women, you know. I love my mother. You know, I’m a man who loves Black women. And I understand that nothing happens without a Black woman. And so you can’t get me to talk bad about them. It’s just not in me today. I had a couple of lines as a young man, but that’s because Eazy wanted it, you know.
Lee: Right. So you were gonna help deliver it. This is your vision. This is your message. Well, I’ll help you say it in a way that can appeal.
Curry: That’s right. That’s my job. You know, we all know that when you work at Burger King, that (EXPLETIVE DELETED) ain’t no good for you, but we got to serve that burger. We have to do it.
(LAUGHTER)
Lee: Ms. Tucker took her fight to Congress. And in 1994, the Senate and the House both convened hearings on the effects of rap music.
Archival Recording: As a father, father of three boys who do listen to rap, and as a member of this Subcommittee, I am deeply concerned about the violence and misogyny, the hatred of women contained in the lyrics and in the music.
Lee: But TheD.O.C. says the people making the music, they weren’t too worried about the government. Rap had come a long way. This was no longer the late ’80s when people feared that one wild incident could topple the genre, like after the Dope Jam stabbing that led to Self Destruction. Hip-hop was too big to be struck down now.
Curry: Yeah. Yeah, we felt no pressure. We felt none, because the highest forms of government really had no power, right? The power is in the people. I know that today. I didn’t know that then. But we still had no fear because the people loved us. But even this Ms. Tucker, I digress, was meant for her space and time, and she did what she did. I don’t think Tupac liked her very much.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
Curry: And then you know, because he felt, we felt under attack by somebody that maybe should have been trying to champion us, maybe understand us, maybe guide us, but she wanted to regulate us, you know. And most of us are young men from the street. You can’t regulate no young man from the street. You’re just gonna walk in and take away what he’s worked hard to build because he doesn’t conform into your understanding of how (EXPLETIVE DELETED) supposed to go.
When the crack epidemic happened, not thinking where is all of this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) coming from? How is this (EXPLETIVE DELETED) getting into our communities? Why is it that the incarceration rates and arrests are different from this group to this group? You don’t blame (EXPLETIVE DELETED) on the rap. Come on, man. That’s like, I’m not a high school graduate, nor am I a rocket scientist, but I’m a thinking man. And if you’re elected to some sort of Congress, I would think you would be a thinking person.
Lee: Congress was trying to figure out what to do as homicides and other violent crimes peaked in the early ’90s. Tough on crime rhetoric became the norm for Republicans and Democrats. And many Black constituents were pleading with their representatives to do something to stop the violence in their neighborhoods.
Archival Recording: We want to take our community back. This is our statement for ’92 and ’93 and the rest of the coming years, that we want our community to be safe.
Archival Recording: Cars will drive through, shoot up and just drive right on out.
Lee: In 1993, homicides around the country reached an all-time high. And this became the talk of Washington, and the way a lot of politicians talked about the so-called criminals played on racial fears and tropes.
Joe Biden: We should focus on them now. If we don’t, they will, or a portion of them will become the predators 15 years from now. And Madam President, we have predators on our streets.
Archival Recording: You might even recognize this famous speech that now-President, then-Senator Joe Biden gave on the floor in 1993. He was trying to get support for a new tough on crime legislation.
The bill was a mixed bag. It included the Violence Against Women Act and the temporary ban on assault rifles. But it also gave police departments billions of dollars to mass hire new officers, make gang membership a crime. It also gave states federal funding to build new prisons so that people couldn’t be released early due to overcrowding.
Biden: It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re the victims of society. The end result is they’re about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons. So I didn’t want to ask what made them do this, they must be taken off the street.
Lee: At the time, the NAACP and some Black leaders in Congress warned that the bill would harm Black Americans and propose alternate solutions that focus more on rehabilitation. But in September of 1994, desperate to hold off Republicans in the midterms, quite accused him of not being tough on crime, President Clinton signed the bill into law.
Clinton: Let us roll up our sleeves to roll back this awful tide of violence and reduce crime in our country. We have the tools now, let us get about the business of using them.
(APPLAUSE)
Lee: We have to take a quick break. But when we come back, the consequences of the crime bill unfold, just as hip-hop is spreading across the country and maturing in its sound. Stick with us.
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Lee: This episode contains several instances of profanity. By the mid-90s, L.A.’s gangsta rap had muscled its way onto the charts, reflecting the raw reality of street life, while also voicing the sentiments of communities targeted by the violence of police harassment.
Curry: Those songs are markers for moments in time that people are supposed to be able to harken back to. No matter where you are, you remember the space we were in during that time. That’s the Rodney King era. You know what I mean? So you know where we was at.
Lee: New York was no longer the uncontested center of the rap universe. But back in the birthplace of hip-hop, rap music began to mature, become more sophisticated, a new generation of artists. This third wave of MCs began to flex, lyrically painting vivid pictures of the world around them with a level of pure verbal artistry that will push the craft in ways unimaginable just 10 years earlier.
There was wit and wisdom, confidence and cockiness, a kind of intellectual verbosity that could challenge the greatest poets of their time, or any other, showing off their finely tuned technical abilities. Gone were the old-school nursery rhymes. Hip-hop had matriculated.
One of the most heady and prolific rappers during this time, and of all time, is one of my personal favorites, Nas, whose debut album Illmatic is widely considered the Bible of hip-hop.
Nas, It Ain’t Hard to Tell: (Music Playing)It ain’t hard to tell, I excel then prevail. The mic is contacted, I attract clientele.
Lee: Illmatic was released in 1994, the same year President Clinton’s crime bill passed, and reflects all the ambitions, laments and revelations of a generation bound up and wound up by the system, captured by this verse from The World Is Yours.
Nas, The World Is Yours: (Music Playing) To my man Ill Will, God bless your life. To my peoples throughout Queens, God bless your life. I trip, we box up crazy bitches, aiming guns in all my baby pictures, beef with housing police, release scriptures that’s maybe Hitler’s. Yet I’m the mild, money-getting style, rolling foul. The versatile, honey-sticking wild golden child dwelling in the Rotten Apple. You get tackled or caught by the devil’s lasso. Shit is a hassle.
Lee: Much like the origins of hip-hop itself, a product of a physical landscape, shaped by poor urban planning and racist housing policy, Nas was shaped greatly by the world from which he sprang, the Queensbridge Housing Projects, the largest public housing development in North America. And his rhymes are littered with references to the life and times there.
Nas, One Time 4 Your Mind: (Music Playing) And I’m from Queensbridge, been to many places. As a kid when I would say that out of town, niggaz chased us. But now I know the time, got an older mind, plus control a nine, fine, see now I represent mine. I’m new on the rap scene —
Lee: Even the title of this series, Street Disciples, is an homage to Nas, which at 17 made his debut feature on Main Source’s Live at the Barbeque and spit one of the illest rhymes ever.
Nas, Live at the Barbeque: (Music Playing) Street’s disciple, my raps are trifle. I shoot slugs from my brain just like a rifle. Stampede the stage, I leave the microphone split. Play Mr. Tuffy while I’m on some Pretty Tone shit, verbal assassin, my architect pleases. When I was 12, I went to hell for snuffing Jesus. Nasty Nas is a rebel to America.
Lee: To me, Illmatic is among the brightest lights of rap’s golden age, and the apex of modern hip-hop. Rap would never be the same after Illmatic.
McDaniels: When Nas came, you know, we’re listening to at that point, A Tribe Called Quest is a boom bap.
Lee: Ralph McDaniels, known as Uncle Ralph by a whole generation of younger hip-hop heads who looked up to him, had been hosting Video Music Box for a decade when Illmatic came out.
McDaniels: And he was young. Like when Nas came, there (ph) was like a bunch of little guys. I used to say, okay, here comes Queensbridge. Yeah, a bunch of little guys, you know. And we —
Lee: Teenagers still, right?
McDaniels: Yeah, they were still teenagers. Yeah.
Lee: Ralph went on to direct the video for Nas’ second single, It Ain’t Hard to Tell, and they’ve been close ever since.
McDaniels: I knew that he had it, I just didn’t know how powerful the shift was. Because when the shift comes, it comes with the whole generation of kids. And that’s what happened.
Lee: A generation of kids across the country. And even though many Black communities shared a similar story of being mauled by the cogs of the system, and resilience, there was an obvious variation of self-expression by region.
Southern rap music by artists like OutKast and UGK was heavily influenced by car culture, creating sounds for tricked-out rides, with incredible sound systems in cities like Houston and Atlanta.
OutKast, Elevators (Me & You): (Music Playing) Me and you, your momma and your cousin too, rollin’ down the strip on vogues, comin’ up slammin’ Cadillac doors. Back in the day when I was younger, hunger, lookin’ to fill me belly with that rally’s bullshit, pull shit. Off like it was supposed to be —
Lee: Miami boasted a sound defined by heavy bass, with a group like 2 Live Crew, who flexed their First Amendment rights with graphic lyrics about sex and partying, which fit the city’s party vibe.
2 Live Crew, Shake a Lil’ Somethin: (Music Playing) Pump, pump, pump, get it, get it. Shake, shake, shake, shake a lil’ somethin’ that’s the way, yeah. That’s the way, you go girl. Bitch, I want to see you shake it, bend on over, butt-ass naked. Now pump, pump, pump, get it, get it. I got 135 beats a minute. It’s your brother, Marquis.
Lee: And as hip-hop was spreading its wings, so was hip-hop media. Magazines like “The Source” and “XXL” were delivering the culture to mailboxes and newsstands all across the country. And while urban radio formats were spreading, New York City radio was giving up and coming stars a launching pad.
Broadcasting from Columbia University in Manhattan, The Stretch and Bobbito Show was keeping a pulse on the city’s percolating hip-hop scene, showcasing lyricism from all over the country and sharing it with the world. From 1990 through 1998, every Thursday from 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Bobbito hosted the show and Stretch would DJ, curating a live mixtape of underground rap music.
Bobbito Garcia: So what we were doing, unknowingly, just by virtue of our love for lyrics and beats, we were raising the bar of artistry by giving MCs and producers an outlet to express themselves in the way that they were, and in the way that other stations weren’t. You know, so yo, you got a home.
Archival Recording: You know, give a shout-out to everybody that’s been cool out here on the East Coast.
Archival Recording: All right. Cool. So you want to swap a little freestyle or something? The mic is open, kid.
Archival Recording: All right, here we go. Four years still I’m 25, now I got up a 45 caliber, don’t take no jive just for the fix. Don’t want to be 86 Route 66 ain’t in my mix. Don’t flap your lips about me taking no trips.
Lee: The radio show became so popular that it left Columbia and found another home at New York’s first hip-hop radio station, HOT 97. For an artist, having your music played on the show was both a rite of passage and a badge of honor, recognized all over the world.
Garcia: Our shows were getting bootlegged worldwide. First time I went to Tokyo, Japan, I went to a record shop and they had 40 cassettes behind the counter, you know, the premium placement behind the cashier, 40 Stretch and Bobbito tapes, you know. So we were helping create an ecosystem for independent and unsigned artists globally, by virtue of the artists that we were playing.
Lee: While hip-hop began to experience an incredible international cultural exchange, back home, the reach of tough on crime legislation from the ’80s and ’90s was only growing further, snatching at whole Black communities.
McDaniels: Amid mass incarceration and all this other stuff going on, and you were like, where’s everybody going? You know, the parties used to be packed. Now, it’s like, oh, they’re not here no more, you know. It was crazy.
Lee: Anti-drug laws of ’80s had established mandatory minimum sentences for even minor drug charges, especially crack. And by the mid-90s, every state had their own mandatory minimum laws on the books. The ’94 Crime Bill discouraged states from releasing people early. And by 1996, more than half the states in the nation, including California, Texas, and New York, had so-called three strikes laws on the books, which generally means committing a third felony offense comes with an automatic sentence of 25 years to life.
Together, these forces cause prison populations to swell dramatically as more people were put away for longer periods of time. Soon, nearly all federal and state prisons were operating above capacity. And across the country, the people most likely to be locked up were young Black men. In ’96, nearly 50 percent of those incarcerated were Black, despite Black people making up less than 13 percent of the U.S. population.
Garcia: It’s staggering. You know, it’s stupid, you know? Yeah, I mean, that’s another way that that hip-hop has just been so uplifting, and that we’ve been able to touch people who, you know, whether incarcerated or not.
Lee: A lot of these men behind bars had grown up with hip-hop, and they still found ways to keep up with the culture. Ralph’s Video Music Box was played on TVs in prisons and jails throughout the New York area. And people tuned in to The Stretch and Bobbito Show on their radios or listened on cassette tapes.
Garcia: You know, our first community of diehards was the incarcerated population of the Tri-State Area. And they’re the ones who, you know, wrote letters back home or when they get out, like, yo, you know, these dudes on Thursday night, you know, you gotta listen to them and —
Lee: Soon, Bobbito says the show was getting letters from their fans who were locked up.
Garcia: I’m talking about hundreds of letters. People who were incarcerated would write, you’re helping me get through this a bit (ph). I’m losing my mind in here. But I think about Thursday, I look forward to it. I listen, I write home.
Lee: People also wrote in with shout-outs, which Bobbito would read on air.
Garcia: People will call in for shout-outs, you know? But I’m like, yo, he’s incarcerated. He can’t call in. You don’t have access to a payphone. I would encourage people inside like, yo, you know, write, do some shout-outs. And so, you know, I was providing a voice to a voiceless community.
McDaniels: The TV show was very important to people in prison.
Lee: Video Music Box would do segments from shows and clubs around New York City. Ralph says that became a way for incarcerated people to keep up with what was going on at home.
McDaniels: Guys would write and say, watching Video Music Box is like a visit. You know, it’s like a visit from one of my friends, because when I’m watching the clubs, especially if they live in that particular area where I was at, where a club was at, they would see their friends dancing and carrying on. And they might see their girlfriend in the club (ph).
(LAUGHTER)
And the girl is gonna like, oh, I don’t go out. I’m just home Well, you’re lying. I saw you on Video Music Box.
But more importantly, it was therapy.
Lee: And guards from Rikers, New York City’s infamous island jail, told him that the fighting actually calmed down when Video Music Box was on. Once, Ralph had a show from Rahway State Prison in Jersey.
McDaniels: There was a guy, he’s like 6’8, 6’7. This guy is big, you know, and he told me his Video Music Box collection in his cell. And he was just very articulate and very, you know, well-spoken, soft-spoken brother. Sort of the main inmate said, you know what that guy did? And I was like, nah.
He said he killed eight people and chopped them up. But he said, Ralph, I’d be honest with you, I never heard him talk that much in my life, like he was talking to you just now.
That meant a lot to me, that for whatever reason, I was able to bring something out in that brother that he might not have been able to communicate prior to that.
Lee: As more people got locked up, and hip-hop remained that lifeline, a symbiotic relationship grew between those inside and the culture outside. Like, how sagging your jeans was giving the hip-hop by jail culture, because inmates weren’t allowed to have belts. And hip-hop showed love to those incarcerated to music, like Nas’ One Love.
Nas, One Love: (Music Playing) Dear Born, you’ll be out soon, stay strong. Out in New York, the same thing is goin’ on. The crack-headsstalkin’, loud-mouths is talking. Hold, check out the story yesterday, when I was walkin’ —
McDaniels: You know, we lost a lot of people at that particular time, you know, that we’re just gone. You know, just a simple mistake and you were gone. It was very painful.
Lee: But combined with the popularity of gangsta rap, others in the industry saw dollar signs.
Davey D: The fascination with hood politics was amplified by magazines and radio stations. That’s what really brought this to a halt.
Lee: Bay Area DJ and journalist, Davey D, says this is how the infamous East Coast versus West Coast rivalry started.
Davey D: To give it some context, it was a beef between two artists that extended between two labels, right, Death Row and Bad Boy.
Lee: Death Row on the West Coast had Tupac Shakur, and Bad Boy in New York run by Sean P. Diddy Combs had The Notorious B.I.G., aka Biggie. These two rappers exemplified the golden age of the ’90s and when these two giants,on top of their games, started feuding, it was a problem for everyone. Tupac with his furious bravado like in this explicit declaration of war had hit him up.
Tupac Shakur, Hit Em Up: (Music Playing) Westside when we ride, come equipped with game. You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife. We bust on Bad Boy, niggaz fucked for life.
Lee: And B.I.G., whose warning to rivals was delivered with equal parts of melody and mayhem.
The Notorious B.I.G., Warning: (Music Playing) There’s gonna be a lot of slow singing and flower bringing. If my burglar alarm starts ringing, what ya think all the guns is for? All-purpose war, got the Rottweilers by the door and I feed ’em gunpowder, so they can devour the criminals trying to drop my decimals.
Lee: But egged on by media, beef between the two went from sizzling to flambe.
Davey D: Biggie and Pac had beef. And Pac felt that when he got robbed, that Biggie had something to do with it. Biggie said he didn’t and, you know, was off and running.
Lee: But Davey D says the feud went well beyond these two men.
Davey D: So there were a lot of West Coast folks that was like, man, I went to New York, and they wouldn’t play my stuff. I was in New York, they booed us. Right? So then it became lines drawn in the sand that was accentuated by this real-life beef.
Lee: As a co-founder of Death Row and a major producer and writer at that time, The D.O.C. was right in the middle of it all. When you were coming up on the West through music, was there an actual East Coast-West Coast thing even brewing then beyond just, like, we trying to show who’s the best? Was that a chip on the shoulder, some fuel?
Curry: You know, it’s so funny, bro. The best, what the (EXPLETIVE DELETED) does that even mean, bro?
Lee: Right.
Curry: So many great people standing on the shoulders of so many great people, right? It’s cow (EXPLETIVE DELETED) for sales.It has nothing to do with the music. But rap is a gladiator sport now, and we all want to be the GOAT, you know. I ain’t got no voice, but I can still serve a (EXPLETIVE DELETED) if he walked the wrong way.
(LAUGHTER)
Lee: There’s still debate on if there was an actual war going on, though a long line of artists and associates on both coasts died violently in the late ’90s.
But the fact is that hip-hop was built on realism and machismo and a lot of baked-in violence, born from the conditions from which so many of these artists evolved, and some still dwelled. So the line between violence aimed at rivals in songs and violence in real life became razor thin.
Curry: But show business is a cold animal, man. It will make you feel ways that’ll have you doing things that are not in your best interest, man. You know, popularity is a (EXPLETIVE DELETED).
But that turned from art to the streets, the real streets where there’s guns everywhere, and there’s paraphernalia everywhere, and there’s all the stuff that I’m not really into, was everywhere, and we held on to it as long as we could. And then it just fell apart.
Lee: Tupac Amaru Shakur was killed on September 13th, 1996. And Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace was killed on March 9th, 1997, just six months later.
Curry: And we mourned, and then most of us picked up and kept doing the same (EXPLETIVE DELETED). That’s just the nature of the game. But as you grow into a man, you start to move away from the emotion of all this kind of (EXPLETIVE DELETED) and understand that we love the art.
Lee: On April 3rd, 1997, just weeks after The Notorious B.I.G.’s death, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam summoned a group of hip-hop’s elite to Chicago for a peace summit.
Two years earlier, Minister Farrakhan assembled the largest gathering of Black men in history at the Million Man March in D.C., a show of unity and strength.
Louis Farrakhan: Socially, the fabric of America is being torn apart, and we can’t gloss it over with nice speeches, my dear Mr. President.
Lee: And he hoped to do the same for the rap industry. Representatives from all regions of hip-hop attended, like the West Coast Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony from the Midwest, Chuck D and Fat Joe from the East Coast, and the Goodie Mob from the South.
Davey D: It was an incredible gathering.
Lee: Davey D was there that day.
Davey D: Kwame Ture spoke to us for a long time. He talked to us about the hidden hand. He talked about the manipulation that was going on. He talked about the profiting of Black dysfunctionality. Some of the stuff I’m saying now, he talked to us at length about it. He detailed it. He gave us his history of SNCC. It was just incredible.
Lee: The summit was off the record. There are no photos or videos. And even to this day, Davey D hasn’t revealed the specifics of what they talked about.
Davey D: We were all, you know, asked not to give everybody’s personal stuff. But I can say this, many of the people who made promises and made testimonies that day, went on to fulfill those things. And you know, from time to time, there would be a renewing.
Lee: But just like Self Destruction couldn’t be expected to single-handedly solve violence in America, this summit couldn’t stop the music industry machine from pushing and profiting from violence and rap. So while the artists pledged peace, the industry execs weren’t ready to wave the white flag.
Davey D: People started to handpick, can you sound gangster? Have you ever been shot? And it just kind of got amplified.
Archival Recording: It was inevitable that, you know, Corporate America would seize the opportunity to exploit it.
McDaniels: And the more money is made, the more commercial it gets.
Curry: It’s the machine, bro. That’s what it does. That’s what it’s supposed to do, and that’s what it was designed to do. You can’t get mad at it. You have to understand it in order to defend yourself.
Lee: Next week, as we continue our series Street Disciples, we explore the entrepreneurial juggernauts of the industry. And we look at the pros and cons of working within the machine and wielding the new power that emerges from it.
Archival Recording: Why can’t the hip-hop generation be the next NRA? The NRA consistently has maybe 5 million members. Hip-hop was selling like 80 million records a year, right. They had such a powerful, multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-geographical base that was connected to this message, this energy around justice and freedom that I thought, actually, if we could organize and turn the hip-hop generation to the next NRA, that we could see the building of power.
Lee: That’s next on Street Disciples Part 4: If I Ruled the World.
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, using the handle @intoamericapod, or you can tweet me @trymainelee. That’s @trymainelee, my full name. If you haven’t yet, check out the earlier installments of Street Disciples on our website or click the link in our show notes. And if you’re loving the series, take a moment to rate and review Into America on Apple Podcasts or wherever you’re listening right now.
Into America is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Mike Brown, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacobs, and Janmaris Perez. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. And we want to give a special shout-out to Bobby Simmons of Stetsasonic for his help behind the scenes.
I’m Trymaine Lee. We’ll be back next Thursday with Part 4 of Street Disciples.
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