To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America

Viator, Felicia Angeja

ISBN 10: 0674976363 / ISBN 13: 9780674976368

Published by Harvard University Press, 2020

May have limited writing in cover pages. Pages are unmarked. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0674976363I4N00

Synopsis:

How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis.

How is it that gangsta rap―so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as “over the top”―was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land.

But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world. She takes readers into South Central, Compton, Long Beach, and Watts two decades after the long hot summer of 1965. This was the world of crack cocaine, street gangs, and Daryl Gates, and it was the environment in which rappers such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E came of age.

By the end of the 1980s, these self-styled “ghetto reporters” had fought their way onto the nation’s radio and TV stations and thus into America’s consciousness, mocking law-and-order crusaders, exposing police brutality, outraging both feminists and traditionalists with their often retrograde treatment of sex and gender, and demanding that America confront an urban crisis too often ignored.

About the Author: Felicia Angeja Viator is Assistant Professor of History at San Francisco State University. Prior to writing about music, she worked as a DJ in the Bay Area, where she was born and raised.

Bibliographic Details

Title: To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap ...
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Hardcover
Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket