Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
and controversial labels of the 1990s. Free from the
political baggage which frequently makes White’s
book heavy going, Ro is damning of the violence
enveloping the Death Row clique but he’s equally
critical of the publicity-seeking moral guardians
and the political indifference which created the very
environment the gangsta rappers glamorised.
The stock response to criticism of gangsta rap is
that it’s just entertainment, exaggerated story-telling
of ghetto life which sells bucketloads to middle-class
white teenagers. The problem with Death Row was
that the line between entertainment and reality became
increasingly blurred. According to Ro’s account, as
Knight became more and more like the movie gangsters
he idolised he surrounded himself with members of the
BUY Tupac Shakur music online from and
notorious Bloods gang and transformed the traditional
one-upmanship of rap into a Bloods vs. Crips, East vs.
West contest – a rivalry which was actively encouraged
by many sections of the rap media. Ro and White both
point accusing fingers at journalists who were full of
remorse after the high-profile deaths of Tupac and Biggie
Smalls but who actively encouraged the rivalry and
violence which caused them.
What both Ro and White’s books demonstrate is
that the rappers’ deaths were only a small part of a
bigger picture. The true tragedy is that, by embracing
the clichés of gangsta rap, many talented Black artists
glamorised rather than challenged the stereotype of
violent Black American youth and simply swapped one
form of oppression for another. �
474
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