Now wait a minute--I have to defend some gangsta rap too. The original gangsta rap wasn't concerned at all with the niggas and bitches thing. It was about police brutality, the politics of extreme poverty, and the grassroots response to the so-called "war on drugs" that came hand in hand with what I, and a good number of other people including Maxine Waters, believe was the deliberate introduction of crack cocaine to the most impoverished sections of urban America by the CIA.

That, to me, is what rap music comes out of--that rage of the crack wars, and the fight for the survival of a completely ostracized American community--the poor and working class inner city black community. Our government declared war on that community in the wake of the 60s and early 70s radicalism of those communities--crack cocaine was introduced by agents outside that community, to destroy it.   THAT is what gangsta rap was all about. And thank god they fought back with that music, otherwise that community may well have been destroyed, the same way many other marginalized poor communities have been destroyed over the centuries.

If you didn't live in an inner city neighborhood that was being destroyed by crack, then you have no idea what that music was about, unless you have made an effort to learn about it. Absolutely no clue.