Final Project: The history of G Funk in association to black rights.

 

Eazy- E - Real Muthaphuckkin G's, Released in 1993, Compton California.

This form music does not just serve society, but furthers our societal evolution as a whole. 

    This is G Funk, a sub genre in early 90's rap culture known for it's connections to Jaz as well as the use of more electronic based sounds. This is theorized to be due to the influence of DJing in this era of the rap genre, which I previously discussed briefly in my last blog entry when I was discussing the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Although it was discussed briefly there is so much more to this culture and their music and why it was created and how it gained influence. This piece in particular shows a great example of G Funk, with the work comes long electronic whines which go from high to low ranges producing a fluctuation in the pitch. 

    The sound produced is long and overdone but on purpose as it makes the song feel lazy, like other works in the early west coast era these elements of G Funk are quite easy and fun to notice. The song builds with adding more sounds to be layered making a little more chaos, adding the effect of a aggressive rap without actually doing so. The bass is also favored in rap, the fundamentals of rap only include the bass and a set of lyrics, so generally even in examples of G Funk you will notice this to be quite prominent as well. 

    This particular work gives a glimpse into the gangster life of early 90's Compton California, Eazy describes his new found hatred for another west coast rapper Dr. Dre. As to which he was previously affiliated with in a rap group called N.W.A which started the west coast rap movement, so we now have an example of developed and perfected west coast rap. Which personally I think sounds great, it has all of the lovable electronic elements used in many other world famous works which is my favorite element of G Funk as seen in such works for instance the Snoop Dogg examples in my last post or other rappers such as Ice cube.  

N.W.A - Fuck Tha Police, Released in 1988, Composed by MC Ren & Ice Cube, Compton California.

    Moving further back into the west coast era of rap we can get a glimpse of where it all starts, this is really where you start to see their impact on society and how much influence on our culture music really has. The rap group N.W.A released the hit song in retaliation to the police brutality on the black community, the fear of the police and outrage for abuse of authority were some of the major concerns the rap group wanted to present in their work. You can hear that this piece feels more angry rather than groovy, more record spinning which really gave the song a rough texture and added to the gangster feeling which also highly reflects the topic as to which they're rapping about. The group states in the song at 36 seconds "so police think they have the authority to kill a minority", this sheds light on how our society can have police that uses authority for abusive dominating behavior due to prejudice being the pre conceived notion of their racist actions.

     In addition the group was also majorly stereotyped in other degrading ways, Such as assuming one is a drug abuser or thief based off of their skin color. Looking deeper into the songs lyrics the groups frustration with the ridiculous actions of the police begin to grow a long with the music, they state at 55 seconds "Searchin' my car, lookin' for the product thinkin' every ni**a here is sellin' narcotics" as well as describing the unequal opportunity that the black community had compared to white. The group describes how the police would rather see black people jailed than succeed in the American dream. They specifically mention this at 1:01 when they state "You'd rather see me in the pen than me and Lorenzo rollin' in a Benz-o". 

    The pen meaning jail cell was in reference to the derogatory term "pig" that was aimed towards the police, not only did the police force attempt to arrest the young black men publicly for their song but also threatened the group with legal action if they played it publicly. Which to most was considered a violation of freedom of speech, which caused further uproar from the listeners of N.W.A but also others that did not approve. 

    With all that is mentioned in the song, and in history as to which was the reason for creating the group, we can see that in our current day society black rights are carefully kept. The police are more controlled on the matter due to the police now having a stereotype of their own in our society, cases of police brutality were handled a lot differently in 1988 and I have no doubt in my mind that this music played a part to the mass hysteria spreading of police brutality that came a long with the g funk era and the creators who kickstarted it. 

    In conclusion, g funk sub genre was historically influential in many ways. It was one of the largest forms of music to carry the message of what it is like living in poverty at this particular time in history as well as being in this living situation as a black person, the police brutality that occurred on the black community and last but not least that black people are not going to stand for it and change will be made. An honorable mention I would also like to make before I end my last entry would be Ice T, as a rapper he was very influential on the west coast g funk music scene and is a pioneer of that era. Not only did he release hits in the same year of 1988 but he made quite the influence as well, but sadly he did not fit into what I was discussing today, but he is important and if you would like to do more research of your own this is a great rapper to look into. 

Comment: who is your favorite West Coast rapper?

Bibliography 

Student. (2015, December 15). Music politics. https://www.musicpolitics.as.ua.edu/projects/straight-outta-compton/

Theremin. Carolina Eyck. (n.d.). https://www.carolinaeyck.com/theremin#:~:text=How%20does%20the%20theremin%20work,his%20hands%20and%20the%20antennas.

https://nwashirt.com/the-cultural-impact-of-n-w-a-how-they-revolutionized-hip-hop-and-african-american-culture/