Hip Hop Artist Tony Tone, a part of the pioneering rap group the Cold Crush Brothers, noted that rap preserved a lot of lives. Hip hop culture became a way of coping with the struggles of life as unprivileged within America, and an outlet to handle violence and gang culture. MC Kid Lucky mentions that people used to break-dance against each other instead of fighting. Inspired by DJ Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa developed a street organization called Universal Zulu Nation, focused around gangster rap, as a means to draw teenagers out of gang life and violence.
The lyrical content of numerous early rap groups focused on social issues, particularly in the seminal track “The Message”, which talked about the realities of life in the housing projects. Young black Americans coming from the civil rights movement used gangster rap culture in the 1980s and 1990s to demonstrate the constraints of the movement. Gangster rap gave young African Americans a voice to let their problems be heard. Like rock-and-roll, rap is vigorously opposed by conservatives since it romanticises violence, law-breaking, and gangs. It also gave young blacks a chance for financial gain by reducing the rest of the world to consumers of its social concerns.
The 1980s also saw many musicians make social claims through hip hop. In 1982, Melle Mel and Duke Bootee recorded “The Message” officially credited to Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, a song that foreshadowed the socially conscious statements of Run-DMC’s “It’s like That” and Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos”.
During the 1980′s, gangster rap also embraced the development of rhythm by using the human body, via the vocal percussion technique of beatboxing. Pioneers such as Doug E. Fresh, Biz Markie and Buffy from the Fat Boys made beats, rhythm, and musical sounds using their mouth, lips, tongue, voice, and other body parts. “Human Beatbox” performers would also sing or imitate turntablism scratching or other instrument sounds.
With the commercial success of gangsta rap in the early 1990s, however, hip hop artist focus altered from social issues to drugs, violence, and misogyny. Early advocates of gangsta hip hop included groups and artists such as Ice-T, who recorded what some have to say is the first gangsta rap record, 6 in the Mornin’, and N.W.A. whose second album Efil4zaggin became the first gangsta rap album to penetrate the charts at number 1. Gangsta rap also played an important part in rap being a mainstream commodity. The fact that albums such as N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton, Eazy-E’s Eazy-Duz-It, and Ice Cube’s America’s Most Wanted were selling in such high numbers meant that black teens were no more hip hop’s sole buying audience. As a result, gangsta rap became a platform for New Hip Hop Artist who chose to use their music to spread politic and social messages to regions that were formerly not aware of what went on in the ghettos of place like Los Angeles and New York. While rap music today appeals to a broader demographic, media critics argue that socially and politically conscious rap has been largely disregarded by mainstream America.
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