West Coast... What Happened?
By : Extra Large
At
one point in time, the West Coast was the center of a thriving hip hop scene,
full of talent and infinitely diverse. Ice T and Too Short led the pimps (and
Suga Free took over for the younger generation), NWA and all of their solo
endeavours gave birth to the G-Funk Era and helped to inspire some of the hip
hop music from the Bay Area (Spice 1 also gets much credit for that).
On the flipside of
things you had artists like Freestyle Fellowship, Pharcyde, and the
Hieroglyphics Crew providing music from a less violence-infused point of view.
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, it seemed like it was about the music and
nothing else, low-budget videos and album artwork often serving as proof. We
as fans didn’t seem to mind that much. Nor did we mind the lack of exposure
and/or love that hip hop magazines and video stations were giving us. No, our
movement was too big and too strong to worry about hate from the outside.
The powers shifted in late 1995 or early 1996. Not that it was necessarily a
bad thing though, it had to be helpful to the hip hop community as a whole to
finally see a string of East Coast artists dropping platinum records. It
started with Biggie’s now-classic Ready To Die, and continued with The Fugees’
The Score and Nas’ It Was Written, another arguable hip hop classic. It wasn’t
a problem, because on the West we had Snoop, Dre, Pac, Warren G., Nate Dogg,
etc. Let us also not forget the artists who got airplay back then who we may
have forgotten somewhat - The Twinz blew up with "Round And Round," The Click
was doin’ it bigg when they dropped "Hurricane", and so on and so forth.
Westside Connection wasn’t wrong for being critical of critics when they
released their album Bowdown, either. To write off gangsta rap as trite and
designed only for shock value was disrespect to an entire genre. Listen to the
conceptualism and lyrical excellence that Ice Cube demonstrated on 1991’s
Death Certificate and you almost need to look no further. Back then, we were
loving it - and the sales showed it. So what happened after that? While there
is no one answer, a few different factors may be to blame.
Before Tupac’s passing and the decline of Death Row Records, 1996 was a
balanced year in hip hop, with successful releases coming from both sides of
the map, not to mention the South being represented well by Outkast’s ATLiens.
Somehow, when Pac passed, he took some of the West’s burning flame with it. By
1998, the once prolific and outspoken Cube was clubbing on wax, and Snoop had
broken South to sign with Master P. Dre would go largely under the radar until
he dropped 2001 in late 1999. What this meant was that some of the West’s
biggest and most visible icons had seemingly lost their sure-footedness during
this span of time. It didn’t seem like the end of world to us though,
especially when Dre and Kurupt dropped albums on the same day in ‘99. Besides
having two more West Coast classics to chalk up, Dre was exposing two young
guns from his arsenal (Hittman and of course, Eminem), while Kurupt used his
album to showcase a phenomenal new artist by the name of Crooked I, while at
the same time giving some new shine to West Coast underdog Xzibit, who was
simultaneously building a newfound buzz off his guest appearance on Snoop’s
"Bitch Please". Battlecat produced a sizeable string of hits (E-40’s "Na Na",
Chico and Coolwadda’s "High Come Down", "Fun" with Snoop and Lil Kim, "You"
with Snoop and Lucy Pearl), Xzibit’s Restless was a smash, and it finally
seemed like DJ Quik was going to get some nationwide shine when he dropped
Balance and Options.
Again, there wasn’t really one event that sent things in a downward spiral,
but it seemed like, over time, our triumphant comeback to the forefront of hip
hop music deteriorated once again. Dre continued to focus his attention on the
multiplatinum Em, while Hittman eventually left Aftermath, only to fall under
the radar afterwards. We were basically forgotten by same media who grilled "gangsta
rap" and helped boost record sales only a few years before. Internet
bootlegging definitely didn’t help, either. In fact, it may have struck a
critical blow to a music scene that was already struggling. Music listeners
were tired of ballooning CD prices, especially when that $18+ that they spent
on one album usually yielded a handful of good cuts and the rest, nothing more
than filler. It made perfect sense to download those one or two good songs
from Napster or Kazaa when quality control seemed to be on the down and out
for hip hop as a whole.
Yes, it continues to be the fault of many of our own artists for putting out
subpar material. It has become so much easier to put out an album, with the
technology becoming more affordable as well as available. The independent
movement, pioneered by E-40 and The Click years ago, showed so much potential
before the market became saturated with enough wannabe stars to fill an arena.
Now it is hard to sell your album out of the trunk, because your potential
customer took a chance on someone else’s independent production last month and
didn’t like it at all.
While we can’t change the way hip hop magazines and video shows seem to shun
the West Coast, if we had more magazines and video shows of our own, we
wouldn’t have to worry as much about that. More important than that, however,
are the fresh faces that could revitalize the West Coast scene with the proper
exposure. A new crop of talented MC’s and producers could mesh with our older
favorites and bring a wave of prosperity back to Cali not seen since the 1849
Gold Rush (in a musical sense, of course). Lately there have been a string of
young artists who have proven themselves capable of blazing mixtapes and guest
appearances. If these same young artists could also prove themselves capable
of dropping tight albums and recording conceptual songs then the West’s
comeback would be inevitable. Much of today’s "gangsta rap" (inspired by so
much West Coast music) consists of many unprovoked murders, drug dealing for
the glory, and drug use for the image. Gangsta rap of yesteryear had an
unmistakable political edge (think pre-1995 Ice Cube, Above The Law’s Uncle
Sam’s Curse, anything from Kam) mixed with a witty, street-wise intelligence
that made so much West Coast music unforgettable. Let’s hope that one day that
creativity returns to Cali and hip hop in general.
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