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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 endeavors 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), and 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.
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 endeavors 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), and 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.
