Coolio
Dogg Food
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Two of the biggest rap albums of ’95 put this critique to the test–Coolio’s Gangsta’s Paradise and Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food. Like no other contenders, they are at least trying to demonstrate hip-hop’s continued significance. When put together they offer a de facto morality play between the Bad Rap Duo and the Good Rap Hero, staged in a media theater as big as the nation. Tha Dogg Pound–Dat Nigga Daz and Kurupt the Kingpin (Delmar Arnaud and Ricardo Brown)–demonstrate their “cultural impact” by earning all the official condemnation any self-respecting outlaw could want. Time Warner dumped the crew’s label, Death Row/Interscope, after the outcry over an album that does indeed embody Bob Dole’s “nightmares of depravity.” Coolio (Artis Ivey) couldn’t be more different. On Gangsta’s Paradise, his second album, this former delinquent and crack head has made a monumental effort to deepen the success of his rose-colored 1994 hits “Fantastic Voyage” and “I Remember” without selling out. Unlike any other multiplatinum rapper, he tries to show the “reality” of his hood without playing a gangbanger, a strategy that could potentially make him a rap superstar for everybody.
Ironically, these two contrasting albums became such big sellers for the one element they both have in common–music that came straight outta Compton. These days that refers not only to a neighborhood in South Central LA, but also to the influence of its most famous resident, Dr. Dre. With the multiplatinum success of his 1993 album The Chronic, Dre single-handedly replaced hardcore rap’s harsh, declamatory vocal style and deep, tricky mixes with casually disdainful raps and plush, simple grooves. If you want to be nice about it, you might say Dre opened hardcore to the pop market without compromising its rebel stance. If you don’t, you can say he turned the west coast sound into pimp music. Either way he’s largely responsible for rap’s newfound commercial strength, as both Coolio and Tha Dogg Pound have once again proven.
