N.W.A Greatest Hits (Ruthless)
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Commercially speaking, they couldn’t be more wrong. With its fantasies of casual murder, woman-bashing, chronic substance abuse, and lawlessness, gangsta rap is an affront to the core values of society, and in that, it’s pure rock ‘n’ roll. Gangsta rap, like rock, became popular because it seemed dangerous (and like rock, it became less dangerous as it became more familiar). Did Elvis Presley’s pathetic passing so much as scratch rock’s cherry-red finish? Did Kurt Cobain’s grisly suicide halt for one moment the lowing herd of alternative bands that followed? Do parental advisory stickers deter kids from buying records? No, Tupac’s death won’t hurt sales; just this week, his five-million selling All Eyez on Me, an album distinguished only by its monumental hubris, rushed back into the Top Ten with a bullet.
Their 1989 major-label debut album, Straight Outta Compton, proved them savvy provocateurs and cynical profiteers of the culture war. Tapping into both minority resentment of racist law enforcement and white fear of race/class insurgency (and presaging the videotaped beating of Rodney King), “Fuck tha Police”–thanks to a highly publicized protest by the Fraternal Order of Police–made N.W.A a household name: “Fuck the police, coming straight from the underground / Young nigger got it bad ’cause I’m brown / And not the other color, so police / Think they have authority to kill a minority.”
Like punk, gangsta rap sustained its popularity long after its subversive power was spent, by dressing the timeworn tropes of rebellion in new outfits–the promarijuana zealotry of Cypress Hill, the misprised mysticism of the Wu-Tang Clan. N.W.A told us that “real niggaz don’t die”; Tupac, late to the gangsta rap game and possessing but a fraction of N.W.A’s talent, was forced to up the ante, blurring the line between art and life, staying in the literal line of fire as an existential–and heart-stoppingly handsome–thug. He was a mediocre rapper at best, an idea only a few dared venture in the flurry of postmortems, most notably Donnell Alexander in LA Weekly: “Tupac’s career had more to do with his elegant eyelashes and high African cheekbones than it did with rapping.” And his death, ultimately, may have had less to do with rap’s violent roots than it did with its mature, overcrowded market.
