http://www.sacbee.com/122/story/85668.html
Sacramento's underground rappers have sold millions of CDs and you probably know little, maybe nothing, about them. Bee pop music critic Chris Macias and photographer José Luis Villegas spent five months exploring the south Sacramento hip-hop scene that is known across the country for its extreme lyrics, gangsta images and big beats.
-- Sarah Lopez Williams, features editor
Across the country, they're bumping to south Sacramento hip-hop. Twenty-fourth Street. Twenty-ninth Street. Meadowview Road and Amherst Way.
The south Sacramento beats are burned onto millions of CDs sold by local rappers, reaching Oklahoma City; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle. In Denver, they're lipping along to lyrics about the "Garden Blocc" lifestyle. In Little Rock, Ark., they're spinning CDs about murders in Meadowview.
Middle America is a prime market for south Sac's underground hip-hop, exported to the cities and suburbs of Phoenix; Kansas City, Mo.; and Gary, Ind. The music is a dark, hard window into a world that fans may never really know. The rappers who grew up in south Sacramento's neighborhoods known as Meadowview and the Gardens keep the beat going, album after album, with rhymes about convenience store stickups, murdered friends and the struggle of the streets.
Some rappers call it a gangsta lifestyle set to beats, recorded and shrink-wrapped on CDs. Others, many of them Crips and Bloods, describe it as an expression of the stress and urban frustrations of living in south Sac.
Why would suburbanites from places such as Seattle and Portland be drawn to hardcore gangsta rap out of south Sac? Why would they connect to lyrics such as these from the underground album "Gas Chamber"?
Amherst and Meadowview is where they make the hit/
Walked into the store and unloaded the clip.
"Because people like what they can't have," says Brandon Elston, the rapper known as G-Macc.
He is 28 and makes a full-time living rapping about the harder side of south Sac. He's been in and out of jail over the last five years and raps about 24th Street like the neighborhood's a horror show, surrounded by evil and the specter of death.
For him, it's the sound of money in the bank.
"I did five minutes of rapping last night and got $1,000," he says, on his way to record a verse in Greenhaven. "It pays. It pays a lot. If it's not paying in the album sales, it's going to pay when someone calls you and says, 'Hey, I'll give you $700 to rap on my album.' And when I get the money, I give some of it to the little homies so they can get what they need to survive out here because it's hard. A lot of us are dying out here."
To call Meadowview and the Gardens home means living with one of the highest violent crime rates in Sacramento. Eight people have been killed in Meadowview this year, including three people murdered in August during a 30-hour stretch, Sacramento police say.
The Crips claim sections of 21st, 24th and 29th streets near Florin Road, also known as The Gardens or the Garden Blocc; the Bloods in south Sacramento claim such areas as Meadowview, Valley Hi and Oak Park.
Shampel Jackson, known in the underground rap world as Pain, moved here from Minnesota to be closer to the south Sac hip-hop scene and says her music is more than just beats: It's her outlet and salvation.
"We care about us and we address our issues," says Pain. "Our only recourse is the music that we do. It's the only way to even the scales. And without that, we have no get-back."
The hip-hop scene in south Sac is decidedly underground. The subject matter tends to be too extreme for commercial radio and TV.
But there's an audience of millions around the country, large enough that Sacramento rappers such as Brotha Lynch Hung and C-Bo have each sold upward of 2 million albums over their careers.
South Sacramento rappers make their living selling music from Web sites, out of the trunks of their cars and off homegrown labels, some run out of town houses and apartments.
Sacramento's underground rappers have sold millions of CDs and you probably know little, maybe nothing, about them. Bee pop music critic Chris Macias and photographer José Luis Villegas spent five months exploring the south Sacramento hip-hop scene that is known across the country for its extreme lyrics, gangsta images and big beats.
-- Sarah Lopez Williams, features editor
Across the country, they're bumping to south Sacramento hip-hop. Twenty-fourth Street. Twenty-ninth Street. Meadowview Road and Amherst Way.
The south Sacramento beats are burned onto millions of CDs sold by local rappers, reaching Oklahoma City; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle. In Denver, they're lipping along to lyrics about the "Garden Blocc" lifestyle. In Little Rock, Ark., they're spinning CDs about murders in Meadowview.
Middle America is a prime market for south Sac's underground hip-hop, exported to the cities and suburbs of Phoenix; Kansas City, Mo.; and Gary, Ind. The music is a dark, hard window into a world that fans may never really know. The rappers who grew up in south Sacramento's neighborhoods known as Meadowview and the Gardens keep the beat going, album after album, with rhymes about convenience store stickups, murdered friends and the struggle of the streets.
Some rappers call it a gangsta lifestyle set to beats, recorded and shrink-wrapped on CDs. Others, many of them Crips and Bloods, describe it as an expression of the stress and urban frustrations of living in south Sac.
Why would suburbanites from places such as Seattle and Portland be drawn to hardcore gangsta rap out of south Sac? Why would they connect to lyrics such as these from the underground album "Gas Chamber"?
Amherst and Meadowview is where they make the hit/
Walked into the store and unloaded the clip.
"Because people like what they can't have," says Brandon Elston, the rapper known as G-Macc.
He is 28 and makes a full-time living rapping about the harder side of south Sac. He's been in and out of jail over the last five years and raps about 24th Street like the neighborhood's a horror show, surrounded by evil and the specter of death.
For him, it's the sound of money in the bank.
"I did five minutes of rapping last night and got $1,000," he says, on his way to record a verse in Greenhaven. "It pays. It pays a lot. If it's not paying in the album sales, it's going to pay when someone calls you and says, 'Hey, I'll give you $700 to rap on my album.' And when I get the money, I give some of it to the little homies so they can get what they need to survive out here because it's hard. A lot of us are dying out here."
To call Meadowview and the Gardens home means living with one of the highest violent crime rates in Sacramento. Eight people have been killed in Meadowview this year, including three people murdered in August during a 30-hour stretch, Sacramento police say.
The Crips claim sections of 21st, 24th and 29th streets near Florin Road, also known as The Gardens or the Garden Blocc; the Bloods in south Sacramento claim such areas as Meadowview, Valley Hi and Oak Park.
Shampel Jackson, known in the underground rap world as Pain, moved here from Minnesota to be closer to the south Sac hip-hop scene and says her music is more than just beats: It's her outlet and salvation.
"We care about us and we address our issues," says Pain. "Our only recourse is the music that we do. It's the only way to even the scales. And without that, we have no get-back."
The hip-hop scene in south Sac is decidedly underground. The subject matter tends to be too extreme for commercial radio and TV.
But there's an audience of millions around the country, large enough that Sacramento rappers such as Brotha Lynch Hung and C-Bo have each sold upward of 2 million albums over their careers.
South Sacramento rappers make their living selling music from Web sites, out of the trunks of their cars and off homegrown labels, some run out of town houses and apartments.
