Stop Hip-Hop at 50: Save our Youth (NPR)

Jeff Weiss (NPR); Black Jen White (1A), 8/10/23; Dynamite Hack "Boyz in the Hood"; Cypress Hill; Krump; Seth Auberon, Sheldon S., Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Drakeo the Ruler, Kendrick Lamar, DJ Quik and N.W.A Collage by Jackie Lay/NPR (Walik Goshorn/Bennett Raglin/Michael Loccisano/Theo Wargo/Getty Images/AP

.

How LA proved hip-hop could go global — by staying thoroughly local

As hip-hop celebrates its 50th birthday, NPR is mapping its story on a local level, with more than a dozen city-specific histories of the music and culture. See the entire list. Look what this music has done to 50-year-olds. We must stop this menace and save our youth.

(big block) N.W.A "F*ck Tha Police" (Let's get real in high quality video)

The primordial essence

Uncensored: Hustle On (Best Buy)

If one grew up in Los Angeles during the '90s, one could teleport to the dawn of West Coast hip-hop through a simple twist of the dial.

In the years before the 1996 Telecommunications Act deregulated and degraded regional radio, the "urban contemporary" FM stations (Power 106 and 92.3 The Beat) still regularly mixed the old-school car wash classics rumbling right before the Big Bang.

It was like staring into the Hubble telescope ­— except no NASA project could compete with the supersonic levitation of Zapp's "More Bounce to the Ounce."

Understanding the foundational component of LA hip-hop meant understanding The Funk. This was intuitive to the Raiders-hatted and Kings-jacketed masses mesmerized by productions from Dr. Dre and DJ Quik, Daz and Battlecat, Sir Jinx and Warren G, DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill, and Hutch of Above the Law.

Cypress Hill's Latin contribution to hip-hop/rap: "I Ain't Goin Out Like That"

Cypress Hill: Tiny Desk Concert

(NPR Music) July 20, 2023. The first thing I noticed as Cypress Hill strolled into NPR headquarters was Sen Dog cradling his signature bucket hat. I asked him if my assumptions were correct; it was indeed the original hat seen in all the videos from the early '90s. Before I could process that confirmation, B Real asked me, "Yo, is your greenroom a green [mota] room?" We got everything we expected and more from Cypress Hill at the Tiny Desk. While the term "pioneer" is used loosely in hip-hop and pop culture today, few terms describe Cypress Hill's impact over the past three decades more adequately. They are the first Latino hip-hop group to achieve platinum and multi-platinum status. B Real, Sen Dog, and producer DJ Muggs crafted a sound in the '90s that stretched beyond regional boundaries. It was dark, psychedelic, and at times directly addressed mental health before the topic was commonplace. Many dismissed the group as "stoner rappers," yet the members were fervent advocates for the legalization of weed long before it came to fruition. Touring members Eric Bobo and DJ Lord joined the duo along with Money Mark from Beastie Boys fame. The band summoned a horn section to fill out this rare minimalist approach to five, funky Cypress Hill things. Between each song, B Real took his time to shed some historic light on the group's journey thus far. #tinydesk #cypresshill #nprmusic

SET LIST: "When the S*** Goes Down" "Hand On the Pump" "How I Could Just Kill a Man" "(Rap) Superstar" "Insane in the Brain"

• VIDEO: Cypress Hill with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Summer 2023

After all, it was "the G-funk era." Dre and 2Pac recruited Roger Troutman to sing the hook on what became the de facto California state anthem. Ice Cube remade "One Nation Under a Groove" with George Clinton sitting on a throne in the video.

Defying commercial logic, Snoop Dogg released singles with a grown-and-sexy Charlie Wilson. Even "Pistol Grip Pump," the biggest crossover from the subterranean hip-hop tabernacle Project Blowed, was unreconstructed militant funk.

Funk was the primordial essence in the collective DNA. Several years before Kool Herc's South Bronx "Back to School Jam," a B-boy tidal wave crested out of a South Central community college cafeteria.

That's where commercial art student Don Campbell invented "locking" by hybridizing the "funky chicken" and the "robot." The locomotion's genius lay in its open-source design.

The Asian contribution: FM

Korea-Town's Far East Movement feat. white joke rapper Riff Raff (FM)

After Soul Train relocated from Chicago to Hollywood in 1971, Campbell became a featured dancer and his interlocking joint freezes and rapid-twitch movements were soon expanded upon by polyester Baryshnikovs across syndicated America. Wild style mutated.

In Southern California, locking merged with popping, a spastic hiccup of jerky arm, leg, and chest pops from the Bay and Fresno.

By the late '70s, both coasts simultaneously codified the four elements. In LA County, Central California transplants teamed with Long Beach natives to form the iconic crew the Electric Boogaloos.

With gymnastic ground-floor innovations imported from New York, breakin' swept the inner city. DJs and B-boys dominated. During the last days of disco, the founders of the pioneering World Class Wreckin' Cru and Uncle Jamm's Army — Alonzo Williams and Rodger Clayton — spun funk, R&B and soul in foggily remembered nightclubs.

In '79, Williams consecrated Eve After Dark in Compton, the future Eden for the Wreckin' Cru's teen breakout star, Dr. Dre. But the West Coast remained a step behind. Park jams required expensive permits.

Best rapper of all time: Eminem?

Considered a fad, LA hip-hop lacked its own Sugar Hill Records. In 1981, two Air Force veterans, Disco Daddy and Captain Rapp, released LA's first official rap record after meeting at a club night welcoming Magic Johnson to the Lakers.

"The Gigolo Rapp" was a brazen imitation of "Rappers Delight," right down to the label (Rappers Rapp) being owned an ex-Sugar Hill record salesman. Beyond the skill disparity, a key difference stood out:

While The Sugarhill Gang interpolated the sleek disco-soul of Chic's "Good Times," the self-described "terrible two" from LA rhymed over the orgiastic sleaze of Rick James' "Super Freak."

Sorry, Drake, this form of music will never be commercially viable and will never catch on!

James Brown invented funk. Most of its second-wave geniuses emerged from the rusting factory towns of the Midwest. But LA is where they eventually hung their sequins and Lycra.

Motown's arrival in 1972 augured the city's arrival as a world capital of Black music.

By decade's end, Casablanca Records, the disco locus behind Parliament-Funkadelic, relocated to the Sunset Strip. Soul Train spawned SOLAR (Sound of Los Angeles Records), which discovered The Whispers, Shalamar, Lakeside, and Midnight Star.

To make the bridge between eras more explicit, SOLAR co-founder Dick Griffey eventually co-founded Death Row with Suge Knight. If synth-funk supplied the vulcanized spine of LA hip-hop, it's because that's what its rappers, producers, and DJs absorbed during their adolescence.

Unity in the Black Eyed Peas

As late as Bill Clinton's second term, terrestrial radio taught the sound of '82 alongside Tha Dogg Pound and Suga Free. What followed cannot be extricated from what informed it: Parliament's "Flashlight" and "Atomic Dog," Frankie Smith's "Double Dutch Bus" (where Snoop discovered his "izzle" slang), The Dazz Band's "Let It Whip," The Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me," One Way's "Cutie Pie," Ronnie Hudson's "West Coast Poplock," anything remotely in the purple shade of Prince and every moment that Roger Troutman touched a talk box.

Funk animated the spirit of Los Angeles because it encapsulated the light-noir dialectic. Sparkling sheen and champagne excess clashed with pornographic rawness and grimy realities.

It was hard enough for Bloods and Crips to boogie to, but smooth and bespoke enough to appear on Soul Train and American Bandstand.

It is propulsive driving music made for perilous freeway chases and Sunday Crenshaw cruises. In the City of Quartz fractured by racial and class conflict, internecine gang wars, the barbarism of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and the debilitating effects of the crack epidemic, funk was both brick and mortar.

Parliament "Flashlight"

High George Clinton brought the funk to funkadelic ("psychedelic funk")

Fault lines rupturing It was fitting that the first region to shatter the monopoly of the five boroughs would reflect its diametrical opposite.

Dense claustrophobia, cold weather, and arthritic subway cars made little sense in a horizontal land of abundant sunshine and Alpine subwoofers. If East Coast producers dug in the crates for rare soul and jazz samples, '80s LA gravitated toward the hardcore (punk and funk).

Why does it have to be so sexual?

If New York was an island, the rest of the nation appeared closer to the strip mall sprawl of LA. Whether it was gangsta rap or bass music, Latin hip-hop, or the triple-time chop technique incubated at the Good Life, this natural point of opposition only spurred its originality.

California has always represented America's frontier, its future. The fault lines ruptured in 1983. The low-budget documentary Breakin' 'N' Enterin' chronicled fluorescent MC and B-boy battles waged at the city's first iconic hip-hop club, Radio.

KDAY hired Dr. Dre as "mixmaster" and Greg Mack as its musical director, setting 1580 AM on its path to become the world's first all hip-hop radio station. More

• Prepared Hero | Be the hero your family depends on