I came of age during the height of gangsta rap. The albums that defined my high school years were 2pac's "Me Against the World" and "All Eyez On Me", Snoop's "Doggystyle", Bone Thugs n Harmony's "E. 1999 Eternal", Biggie's "Ready to Die", Cypress Hill's "Black Sunday" and Wu-Tang's "Enter the 36 Chambers" just to name a few. I even wrote a piece for my freshman English 102 class titled "Lyrical Assassins" that explained the history of the East Coast/West Coast rivalry of the mid-90s.

Like every other teenager growing up in suburban America I was angry. We were the kids that came four years after Nirvana and took parental rebellion to its logical conclusion. It culminated in the anoinment of Eminem as our collective voice; one of anger, resentment, self depreciation and, oddly enough for a bunch of white kids from the burbs, black power.

It's not like we were breaking ground or anything. The songs of southern plantation workers were the basis for the blues which was the foundation for rock n roll. Robert Johnson meet Bret Michaels.

The blues were often about the plight of black America. According to Tupac and others, gangsta rap was the new blues articulating a life of economic disparity and dirty living just to get by.

To fans of gangsta rap, myself included, we saw the nuance in the lyrics. If the lyrics sounded like code to outsiders, black culture was the primary decoder ring. Listening to rap was an immersive process, one that required knowledge of people, groups, associations, and affiliations. Unlike any other music genre I can think of, it created a near genre wide narrative thread. This narrative, created and nurtured in the streets but shined and polished in the studio reflected the urban minority experience like like a hall of mirrors but like a hall of mirrors, each reflection still reflected a real reality, a real truth.

But, gangsta rap also reveled in its excess and its growing popularity, especially in bedrooms like mine, caused concerned parents to blame gangsta rap for societal ills. Like 2 Live Crew's hypersexual lyrics and Led Zeppelin's music played backwards, gangsta rap was another way that the recorded arts was destroying America.

To that end, Tupac was interviewed by Tabitha Soren for MTV in 1995 where he was asked "do you feel like rappers should be more responsible with their lyrics?"

His answer. "Yes."

"What would you define as irresponsible?"

His answer was remarkable. "You talk about murder and death and you don't talk about the pain. Or you talk about killing, robbing, and stealing and you don't talk about jail, death and betrayal and the things that go with it."

To Tupac, his idea of the moral high ground was to provide context. It's not just a video game life of big tits, big guns, big money and big fame, though those dreams exist within hip hop. Nope. They occur and contrast themselves against it being a hard knock life with consequences and negativity around every corner. His music was a reflection of this contextualization of black urban life. It ran the gamut from songs about Mom ("Dear Mama") to teenage pregnancy ("Brenda's Got A Baby"), booty calls ("What'z Ya Phone #"), to getting out of jail ("Picture Me Rolling"), reppin his set ("California Love") to taking time out to set a woman straight ("Wonda Why They Call U Bitch").

And yes it also included ego trippin ("Me Against The World"), gang banging ("Troublesome '96") and claims of sleeping with Biggie's wife Faith Evans ("Hit Em Up"). If you take those songs out of context, out of the narrative then what you're left with is a video game view of gangsta rap. It's when that happens - the lack of context - that you turn into Bill Cosby.

The AP ran a story on April 15, 2008 quoting Bill Cosby contrasting his new upcoming album with gangsta rap. Cosby said that his album is "the opposite of what I think is the profanity for no particular reason, the misogyny for no particular reason", referring to gangsta rap. He's got it right: it's all about context.

Immersed in albums from Nas to Scarface, Tupac to Biggie, Luke to the 69 Boyz, and Will Smith, in the mid-90s listeners of rap knew the lay of the land. But new revelations make me question the importance of keeping it real.

It's all Akon's fault.

Akon is the popular R&B singer best known for singing R&B hooks on rap records with 21 Billboard Hot 100 credits to his name. He's the most popular R&B/rap crooner since Nate Dogg. His backstory (remember the importance of narrative), explained time and again in interviews, is that he was the leader of a notorious Atlanta car theft ring with four chop shops that served criminals and celebrities alike. He got ratted out by some underlings, did 3 years in jail where he fought daily and honed his songwriting ability. Upon release he got a deal, called his label Konvict Muzik and his second album "Konvicted". His music is a reflection of that narrative.

The only problem is, he's a fake.

For a genre that's based on "keepin' it real" after wholly embracing him, this has got to be a problem.

The Smoking Gun is reporting that Akon's criminal record is nothing more than cynical marketing exaggerations. His story is one that he's perpetrated in order to identify with the "real" part of his audience. White America may control the Billboard hip hop charts but they still like their thugs with a prison record. 50 Cent had to get shot 9 times before we'd buy his records.

So this revelation that Akon isn't the thug he says he is should be a devastating blow to his career. If this had happened in the mid-90s I would have said his life is in danger. He's a fake thug, a busta, a wanksta. According to the narrative of gangsta rap, he's done. What will be interesting to see is if that actually plays out.

Many people have argued that gangsta rap passed into parody long ago. If it remained intact through the bling era, surely the imitators of the bling era had to be thought of as the XFL to Snoop, Pac, Dre and Biggie's NFL. But, I think this will be the first real test to see if that is true.

I think you could make a pretty good comparison between gangsta rap and comic books. In both, the figures are bigger than life. The actions are bigger than life. The rewards are bigger than life. And in both, the tits are huge. In Comics, there were the various factions: X-Men, X-Force, X-Factor, the Brotherhood of Mutants, the Justice League; the various personalities: Batman, Spider-Man, Superman, Wolverine; and the dramatic universe-altering story arcs. In gangsta rap you had the various factions: Death Row, Bad Boy, Dungeon Fam, No Limit, Wu-Tang, Flipmode Squad; the various personalities: Pac, Dre, Snoop, Suge, Biggie, Puffy, Busta Rhymes; and the dramatic rap world altering story arcs. Keeping tabs on the factions, personalities, and feuds while providing an outlet for anger was basically what sold records (and comics). If the X-Men had the Dark Phoenix saga, rappers had the rebirth of 2pac at Death Row.

To this point, the issue of "keeping it real" was supposed to matter. My guess is that it has always mattered more the closer you got to the hotspots of rap. But my sneaking suspicion is that "keeping it real" means much less to your average angry surburban teenager than it does on Crenshaw Blvd. To rap's target market, pop culture has room for a healthy dose of ironic self-parody.

This is a crowd who would find an Akon and Milli Vanilli mashup funny.

That being said, I do believe that Akon's outing to be a line in the sand. Either his career is over or gangsta rap in the pop music sense has truly ceased to be a voice for truth and an outlet for the voice of the disenfranchised. It will have as much in common with the explosive lyrics of Ice Cube and 2pac as Bret Michaels does with Robert Johnson. The qualities that separated the narrative of pop music gangsta rap from comic books: keeping it real, will be gone leaving only a comic book narrative.

Now that's keeping it real.

Shouts to Alicia Keys and J Smooth.

04/18/2008