An assault team storms eight-year-old Walker Ruffneck' Story's rural Pennsylvania family compound, killing both of his parents. Ruffneck escapes and is smuggled out of state to Detroit. Under the watchful eye of Granny Sinclair, Ruffneck re-emerges 11 years later, hungry for power and revenge. He challenges the elitists in the dope game for control. Betrayed, Ruffneck is put behind bars for two years, and Granny Sinclair and Ruffneck's cousin are murdered. Out of prison, Ruffneck has only revenge on his mind. All fingers point to one man: the Mayor of Detroit.'
Spiritual Gangsta is part memoir and part self-help book ensconced in a search for the truth. Bailey not only pulls from his 20 plus years of experience navigating the waters of Hollywood as a professional actor but shares heartfelt stories about his spiritual journey across the globe to finally settling down and becoming a new father to twins and a toddler. Bailey will teach you how to rise above our self-defeating emotions and see things for how they truly are. He also shares some very spectacular personal failures and how he has used them to increase the level of happiness and meaning in his life. Bailey Chase is a highly-acclaimed actor who starred in Saving Grace, Longmire, As the World Turns, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the soon to be released remake of Twin Peaks and 24: Legacy on Fox. He attended Duke University on a football scholarship and graduated in 1995 with a BA in Psychology. Bailey was compelled to write Spiritual Gangsta because he was tired of seeing others suffer from common, fixable frustrations and how disenfranchised our society has become. He not only shares the gems he has learned from studying psychology, meditation, parenthood, acting and sports but explains how you can find the truth in any situation and make that human connection as well.
Journalist Soren Baker’sThe History of Gangster Rap takes a deep dive into this fascinating music subgenre. Foreword by Xzibit Sixteen detailed chapters, organized chronologically, examine the evolution of gangster rap, its main players, and the culture that created this revolutionary music. From still-swirling conspiracy theories about the murders of Biggie and Tupac to the release of the film Straight Outta Compton, the era of gangster rap is one that fascinates music junkies and remains at the forefront of pop culture. Filled with interviews with key players such as Snoop Dogg, Ice-T, and dozens more, as well as sidebars, breakout bios of notorious characters, lists, charts, and beyond, The History of Gangster Rap is the be-all-end-all book that contextualizes the importance of gangster rap as a cultural phenomenon. “History has so often been written by the victors, that you very rarely ever get the real story behind anything. So it’s really important to hear from the people that were there, which is exactly what Soren Baker shares in this book. He writes about it and he’s honest about it.” —The D.O.C.
Rabaka explores funk as a distinct multiform of music, aesthetics, politics, social vision, and cultural rebellion that has been remixed and continues to influence contemporary Black popular music and Black popular culture, especially rap music and the Hip Hop Movement. The Funk Movement was a sub-movement within the larger Black Power Movement and its artistic arm, the Black Arts Movement. Moreover, the Funk Movement was also a sub-movement within the Black Women’s Liberation Movement between the late 1960s and late 1970s, where women’s funk, especially Chaka Khan and Betty Davis’s funk, was understood to be a form of “Black musical feminism” that was as integral to the movement as the Black political feminism of Angela Davis or the Combahee River Collective and the Black literary feminism of Toni Morrison or Alice Walker. This book also demonstrates that more than any other post-war Black popular music genre, the funk music of the 1960s and 1970s laid the foundation for the mercurial rise of rap music and the Hip Hop Movement in the 1980s and 1990s. This book is primarily aimed at scholars and students working in popular music studies, popular culture studies, American studies, African American studies, cultural studies, ethnic studies, critical race studies, women’s studies, gender studies, and sexuality studies.
Respect My Gangsta Part Two Get`em Girl Never have a Ho's hustle always have a Nigga's hustle was a lesson Sorrow was always taught by her brothers. So when Duke puts them in a life or death situation she had to man-up. She went full throttle into Gangster mode to retrieve his money, pay off his debts and make sure he never had to hustle again. When Duke returns his head was still filled with street dreams and he was seduced by the Money, Power and Respect that the streets had for the Cash Empire. Duke starts acting a fool and unknowingly bites the hand that feeds him. Blood is shed, lives are taken, and worlds are turned inside out as the new Duke emerges and the old Sorrow (Panther) resurfaces. Will Sorrow Stay a ride or die chick for Duke? Or will Sorrow have to make Duke Respect Her Gangsta?
Is Gangsta Rap just black noise? Or does it play the same role for urban youth that CNN plays in mainstream America? This provocative set of essays tells us how Gangsta Rap is a creative "report" about an urban crisis, our new American dilemma, and why we need to listen. Increasingly, police, politicians, and late-night talk show hosts portray today's inner cities as violent, crime-ridden war zones. The same moral panic that once focused on blacks in general has now been refocused on urban spaces and the black men who live there, especially those wearing saggy pants and hoodies. The media always spotlights the crime and violence, but rarely gives airtime to the conditions that produced these problems. The dominant narrative holds that the cause of the violence is the pathology of ghetto culture. Hip-hop music is at the center of this conversation. When 16-year-old Chicago youth Derrion Albert was brutally killed by gang members, many blamed rap music. Thus hip-hop music has been demonized not merely as black noise but as a root cause of crime and violence. Fear of a Hip-Hop Planet: America's New Dilemma explores—and demystifies—the politics in which the gulf between the inner city and suburbia have come to signify not only a socio-economic dividing line, but a new socio-cultural divide as well.
Respect My Gangsta Part One Life of Sorrow For Sorrow Sanae' Hunter (affectionately known as Panther) life has designated struggle and death as her permanent shadows. The product of her mother's infidelity, the stage is set from birth for the abuse and neglect Sorrow will have to endure. If not for the love of her two brothers, she would surely perish in the bowels of the streets. And when the circumstances of their mother's reckless doped-up behavior led the brothers to drugs and murder Sorrow (unknowingly to them) becomes their willing protégé. They taught her how to hustle, protect herself, and, most importantly, make the world Respect Her Gangsta. And for a moment, she knew happiness. She even finds her first love. But there would be no fairytale endings for this little girl as the love she reveled in was suddenly taken away by a mindless act of violence. Sorrow's life spirals downhill, and her so-called mother takes her freedom away. Unable to stomach the horrific reality of the streets any longer, Sorrow enrolls in College. And vows never to deal with the street life again. With her new beginning, Sorrow falls for a college basketball player without ties to the streets. Sorrow felt safe for the first time in her life. But Duke, too, had demons. His secret desire to feel the respect his own brother earned in the streets constantly tormented him. When Duke gets the opportunity, it doesn't take much convincing for Duke to decide to take over the Cash Empire. Despite her love for Duke, will she stay with him after he gets involved with the thing she was trying to escape? When Duke has had his fill of playing gangster, will he take Sorrow down with him?
'Sound Targets' explores the role of music in American military culture, focusing on the experiences of soldiers returning from active service in Iraq. Pieslak describes how American soldiers hear, share, use & produce music, both on & off duty.
Asserting that hip hop culture has become another locus of postmodernity, Osumare explores the intricacies of this phenomenon from the beginning of the Twenty-First century, tracing the aesthetic and socio-political path of the currency of hip hop across the globe.
Reality first appeared in the late 1980s—in the sense not of real life but rather of the TV entertainment genre inaugurated by shows such as Cops and America’s Most Wanted; the daytime gabfests of Geraldo, Oprah, and Donahue; and the tabloid news of A Current Affair. In a bracing work of cultural criticism, Eric Harvey argues that reality TV emerged in dialog with another kind of entertainment that served as its foil while borrowing its techniques: gangsta rap. Or, as legendary performers Ice Cube and Ice-T called it, “reality rap.” Reality rap and reality TV were components of a cultural revolution that redefined popular entertainment as a truth-telling medium. Reality entertainment borrowed journalistic tropes but was undiluted by the caveats and context that journalism demanded. While N.W.A.’s “Fuck tha Police” countered Cops’ vision of Black lives in America, the reality rappers who emerged in that group’s wake, such as Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac Shakur, embraced reality’s visceral tabloid sensationalism, using the media's obsession with Black criminality to collapse the distinction between image and truth. Reality TV and reality rap nurtured the world we live in now, where politics and basic facts don’t feel real until they have been translated into mass-mediated entertainment.
