[Opinion] Straight Outta Locash 2012: How Hip Hop Became A Real Life CB4
Over a sample of NWA’s classic tale about where they’re from, Chris Rock, Allen Payne and another guy who’s name I can’t remember without the help of a Google search Deezer D tore through a huge strip of plastic paper with Rock dropping an opening line that stood the test of time for hip hop and movie aficionados:
“Straight outta Locash, a crazy mother f*cker named Gusto.”
If you’ve seen CB4, you know exactly what I’m talking about. Rock and Nelson George’s parody movie about three suburban hip hop fans that idolize street life and get into the rap game only to find out that they ain’t bout that life was, in so many ways, ahead of its time. These days, the outlandish nature of the movie is sadly, hip hop’s reality.
While NWA’s “Straight Outta Compton” had its share of profanity, it painted a very real portrait that America was dually appalled and enthralled by. On the flip side, “Straight Outta Locash” is intentionally over the top, and the background story of Albert and company being kids from a good home, never having owned a gun—let alone fired one—makes the tale that much more ridiculously hilarious.
Today, we live a real life CB4 and while the results vary, they’re seldom funny. Hip hop started out in the park, breathing new life into our parents’ records via the sample. Today, people are sampling lives—real ones, fake ones—and making themselves into some type of last action hero. Which is where the problem lies. The label “gangster rap” died out a long time ago, but what we’re left with now from certain facets of society is super sexed up gangster rap.
Take the Chief Keef and Fat Trel “Russian Roulette” video. Stick a camera in the 16-year-old Keef’s face and he’ll likely give you some tired, cliché answer about packing enough sonic guns to neutralize atomic bombs in his video is just the way it is around his block. Let Chicago SWAT run up on the block as a result of “keeping it real” and these same people will become First Amendment scholars overnight, talking about “it’s just entertainment.”
Which makes the whole ultra-violent, hyper-masculine culture (because it’s still bigger than hip hop) so problematic. If the Wild West mentality was limited to movie screens and mix tapes, the preoccupation with violence would still be disturbing, but maybe not alarming. But this is real life. As David Banner rapped on “Malcolm X (A Song to Me)”:
“And if you selling in the hood, why you proud n*gga?/them our folks, getting high n*gga/These our kids, in real life/You rapping bout what they living like.”
All so true, but sadly those who need to hear this will never read it or understand it.
The short answer is that the gangsta genre of rap music is purely economical and a response to the mainstream’s demand for it (Demand equal supply). On a more pleasant note it would appear that this fugazi persona is diminishing as rappers are choosing less aggresive characters to play with the success of Drakes et al
Because… All the suburban, two-parent, middle-class kids (and believe I’m talmbout Black kids right now) want to hear that.
Because it is entertainment. Because it’s the only way they will experience that life. From a reasonable, safe distance, of course.
1. It’s sad that some of our kids do have to deal with extreme poverty and violence.
2. At the end of the day, life is life, entertainment is entertainment. They make intersect sometimes, but just because you like ignorant entertainment doesn’t mean you stop trying to live like you got some sense. And if life sometimes imitates entertainment, you can’t penalize all the entertainers and try to clean it all up, because that’s just censorship, and usually doesn’t change anything.