Can Good Guys Challenge Gangster Rap?
A LOT OF PEOPLE ARE WAITING for the rap pendulum to swing. Sooner or later, the reasoning goes, gangster rap will lose its novelty, once the market becomes saturated with songs about amoral, gun-toting, woman-hating superstuds. And once that happens, there will be more room for rap that aspires to do more than shock and titillate; there may also be more acceptance of melody and textural variety than there is in gangster rap’s rough-and-ready backup tracks. Some rappers still want to be good guys most of the time, among them newcomers like Afro-Plane and the Fugees (Tranzlator Crew) and the better-known Arrested Development. The self-righteous justification for gangster rap — that it reflects ghetto reality, and the world should know — has grown thinner in recent years, as street-level authenticity has given way to repetitive formulas. A backlash has begun, from Congressional hearings to gangster-free radio formats to the spoof film “Fear of a Black Hat” to hip-hoppers’ own anti-gun p
