The Greatest Gangster Rapper Ever

By Sam Clemons.

Before crime was simply a starting point for mainstream rappers and before murder, extortion, and drug selling was just a staple in everyone's first verse, there were "gangsta rappers". The creation of the gangsta rap sub-genre can be traced back to the late 1980's and early '90's, officially started in Philadelphia by Schooly D and then perfected on the West Coast by the likes of Ice T and NWA. Now, don’t get all your khaki’s in a bunch, but when I say perfected I don’t mean that west coast gangster rappers were necessarily the best. I would just say that they hijacked the label and kept it through the rest of the 90’s, like real gangsters do.

Due to classic tracks like “Colors” and “Six in the Morning” Ice T should be the greatest gangsta MC in history, if it weren’t for the Hollywood chapter still being written right now. It could be said that storming Hollywood is the most gangsta move Ice ever made, but I can’t agree. I personally love Ice T, with all my heart, but he plays a cop for God’s sake, on a show created by Dick Wolf. That’s just not gangsta.

Ice Cube, while definitely one of the greatest rappers ever (up to 1993 of course, before “Are We There Yet” and his other late career bullshit) was just too political, to introspective in his post-NWA career to be simply labeled a “gangsta rapper” (although the media definitely did just that).

Personally, when I think of growing up in the golden age of gangsta rap, the voice I hear most prominently in my memory is Easy E’s. Easy was the first to popularize the idea of turning one’s crack money into rap money and really didn’t have any interest in being a rapper himself. But, as the legend goes, when the Rutheless Record’s signed group H.B.O. didn’t show up for their recordong session Dr. Dre suggested that Easy spit the lyrics to “Boyz-N-The Hood” himself, which he did, birthing a classic. But Easy didn’t write the lyrics, Ice Cube did, and he didn’t really write any of the lyrics he would go on to record in his career before having his life cut short by AIDS. You have to write your own stuff to really be in consideration for the “greatest”.

Someone I would like to briefly mention is the underrated Boss who was the toughest and most classic lady gangster rapper. I still to this day quote her 1993 song “Receipe For A Hoe”  whenever my buddy Jose does something hard headed: “You gotta let a hoe be a hoe!” (the hoe standing in for the shortened version of the name Jose).

Boss also did the stand-out track from the “Strapped” soundtrack titled “I Don’t Give a Fuck!” which drops the f word at least a hundred times within three minutes. Boss ran into trouble early in her career when rumors started swirling about the media that she grew up very ‘un’gangster: private school and upper middle class upbringing. Regardless, I salute her for outgangstering many of the men at the time with her lyrics and delivery during the most gangsta of rap eras.

Now, our number one. This is of course one man’s opinion but I would be surprised if someone can come up with a better rapper or storyteller with a classic gangster twist than Kool G Rap. Coming up in the “true” golden age of the late ‘80’s with the Juice Crew, G Rap could really rap about anything and keep your attention due to his lisp, voice, and multisyllabic delivery. But the man born Nathaniel Thomas Wilson chose to dedicate his gifts to the tragic world of the gangster, where he not only painted vivid illustrations of the everyday struggles of your average street corner hustler, he also brought us into the world of the New York mafiosos where he brought stories to life like a studio Scorsese.  

The stand out album for me is “Live and Let Die”, controversial for it’s cover art (a photo of G Rap and DJ Polo executing two undercover DEA agents), and genius for it’s lyrical content. Films play out in your mind in vivid color as Kool G Rap takes on the mantel of the noir era anti-hero. The sex and violence are relentless, backed by the flawless production of Sir Jinx (who also happened to produce Ice Cube’s best albums from that era). Not only did G Rap have an incredible influence on a generation of top tiered rappers (Jay-Z, Nas, and Biggie all cited him as an inspiration) he continued the rich legacy of American crime writing that, through him, spilled into rap as the updated version of what had previously been found in the books of Elmore Leanard, Jim Thompson, and David Goodis.

To close I’ll leave you with the lyrics from the third verse of Kool G Rap’s gangsta classic “On The Run”  which only gives you an idea of the song; it must be heard to really be expierenced:

“The next thing I know, it was daylight

And I been sleepin in this motherfucker all night

I started pullin on my hoe

C’mon man what? wake up bitch, we gotta go!

Pulled out the alley, then I dipped

Looked down and picked up the nine and put more rounds in the clip

You know I’m headin south no doubt

And I don’t give a fuck where, as long it’s a hideout

Finally we crossed the border, I pulled into a station

To fill up the tank, and get a drink of water

Pullin over to park my ride

That’s when I noticed this limousine comin up on my left side

Then the sucker started rammin me

Then I looked, it was the luciano family

Looked at my bitch she started cryin, my finger on the trigger

I pulled it -- bullets started flyin

Now I’m hittin all them bastards

I’m droppin em fast, splashin blood out niggaz asses

Then I’m finally done and

I took em all out, but I caught one in the stomach

Now I’m lookin for survivors

So I ran up on the side of the car, and hit the driver

And then I laid low

The only motherfucker left was don luciano

So I snuck up the sucker

Put my gun to his head, whassup now motherfucker?

He said, wait, I want to talk

*five gunshots* I put his brains on the sidewalk

Another life I had to waste

He fell on his back, and then I spit right in his guinea face

He saw the barrel of the devil’s gun

Now I’m no longer on the motherfuckin run.”

-Kool G Rap

-12/29/12

Storming The Organic Grocery

I recently moved to a new apartment and with the change of smell, noises, and neighbors comes the adaptation to a new local grocery store. My old neighborhood had a Safeway, and while it sucked in many ways I had become familiar with it’s layout and could navigate it’s aisles with ease, be it two in the afternoon on game day or scrambling for a bottle just before closing. I had my confidence there.
This new neighborhood has an Organic Grocery and for the first week I scoped it out without going in, driving by late at night or walking along the sidewalk with one eye cocked towards it’s storefront. What I saw kept me away. Everyone seemed a good deal older and more sophisticated than I as they talked with the workers, read the nutrition information on their purchases, and concentrated very hard while inspecting the fruit with long sensuous finger massages. This was a secret world I wasn’t a part of.

At Safeway people used to buy chips. They bought other things on occasion but mostly chips. Sometimes soda.

I was intimidated and needed to do some research before I braved my way into the new store. I went on Yelp and things got worse. There were thousands of entries debating the level of quality and the prices at the OG. Younger people, people closer to my age, wrote of rabid “gray hairs” that rudley elbowed them in the aisles. Hundreds of posters claimed that only the “elite” could shop there and one person claimed the parking lot was “packed with European Luxury Cars”.
There was lots of talk concerning brands of tofu I had never heard of and debates about rice that were way over my head. I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my new neighbors, grabbing the wrong thing and then paying out the ass for it while getting mercilessly mocked by the cashier (in my head: a beautiful woman that had studied medicine in school but had chosen to live a simple life as a cashier at the local Organic Grocery).
I hid in my new apartment for days until I had run out of food and woke up weak and feeble on a Saturday, desperate for nourishment. All I had left was one box of Cream of Wheat sitting still packed in one of my moving boxes. I just needed a cup or two of water to make it work but I would be damned if I was going to eat it dry and bland.
I stepped outside, a stranger in this new neighborhood, and walked the four blocks to the Organic Grocery. It was around 9:30 AM, only a few people inside to my relief. I first searched for sugar but came up empty, unfamiliar with the store’s layout. It’s a small place and soon I had wandered around it’s entirety three or four times, still no sugar, and starting to feel like I was getting looks from the workers and the patrons. I fell upon honey and figured that would do but, sweet Jesus, there seemed to be hundreds of different brands, all in different sized containers yet all priced around twenty dollars.
I quit the search for a sweetener and made my way in a panic to the dairy aisle, refusing to leave without some milk. I felt the blood flow to my face when the first small carton of milk I spotted was priced at eight dollars. I was horrified until I realized it was goat’s milk. Everything on the shelves seemed to be goat’s milk, at least thirty different cartons and glass bottles of goat’s milk. Finally, at the end of the aisle, I spotted a carton that simply said Milk for a dollar eighty nine and I made a break for it.
Back home I realized it was non-fat milk, which I dislike, but I poured it on my Cream of Wheat regardless and celebrated my first sortie into the unknown. Next time I'm getting some honey, even it kills me.

 12-12-12

Skyfall, a Review.

James Bond has always swum with the current of his times be it Sean Connery scuba diving with nuclear weapons during the Cold War, or Roger Moore swinging his way through the 70’s, or even Pierce Brosnan wenching it up in luxury during the boom of the 90’s. What we have in Daniel Craig is the post-9/11 Bond, the cold blooded killing machine that has little time for martini’s when there are secret terrorist cells popping up in every shadowed corner of the globe.
We were introduced to this new Bond beautifully in the fantastic “Casino Royale” from 2006. This was followed up with the considerably weaker “Quantum of Solace” in 2008 which brought Bond’s story line with his love Vesper Lynd to a close. So where do we you go from here? The producers, directors, and writers of “Skyfall” seemed to have all answered in unison “we do a Bat Man!”
It truly does pain me to say that this new Bond movie is a Christopher Nolan Bat Man rip off everywhere you look. London stands in for Gotham City and we got it all: the villain, the climax, the resurrection, the come back; there’s even a God damned Alfred in this flick (played by Albert Finney instead of Michael Cain). When I realized it (“this seems very familiar” kept popping up in my head) I couldn’t help but make the logical conclusion that “Skyfall” is pretty lame, and actually kind of boring. If you savored “Casino Royale” good for you, because it’s becoming apparent that a James Bond film like that doesn’t come around very often and may never come again.
Let’s start with Silva, the villain played by Javier Bardem. He’s a near perfect replica of Heath Ledger’s Joker, grotesque, asexual, psychopathic, genius (always ahead of the good guys by four or five steps), and only happy when handing out death and destruction. There is even a scene where Silva dons a police uniform and struts around as did the Joker in Dark Knight when he and his goons attempted to shoot the mayor at Gordon’s funeral.
The way the writer has tried to make Silva unique is by giving him a revenge motive while the Joker had none. But it’s stupid. He’s trying to kill an old woman (no offense Dame Judi Dench) over an old betrayal, and while he does cause a considerable amount of havoc in London, when it come to actually killing the old woman he is surprisingly incompetent.
The worst part is when they return to Bond’s childhood home and trade the character in for Bruce Wayne. His parents died when he was young, he hid out in weird caves under the house, and was raised by the groundskeeper (butler) named Kinkade (Alfred). Why? Why do we need to know all this?
“Casino Royale” was brilliant because it toyed with the idea of revealing Bond’s origins with a beautiful scene between Bond and Vesper where they guessed their respective backgrounds based on knowing each other for only a few minutes (both guessed orphan). But it never actually revealed anything. The current film wants to slow down the action to slog through the past for a while, while “Casino Royale” never slowed down, not even during a poker game, and it still packed an emotional punch while revealing a very defined Bond character. Instead of putting Bond in even more and more impossible situations, the makers of “Skyfall” want us all to imagine little James Bond on a creepy Scottish estate grieving for his dead parents and vowing to dedicate his life to fighting injustice (freaking Bat Man!)
James Bond should have no past because he doesn’t live in the past, he lives in the present. If the present is 1976 then he’s played by Roger Moore and he’s bedding a woman in 0 gravity on a cheesy swinger space shuttle. If it’s 1987 then he’s played by Timothy Dalton and he’s tobogganing on a cello while fighting Colombian cartels. Once you start giving him some moody past that involves the death of his parents and the motivation for his career in espionage then you don’t have James Bond, you have Bruce Wayne.
Everything I just listed forces me to say that that this movie is a bit of a bummer, but that’s just one man’s opinion.

11-23-12

15: Crime SuspenStory

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