![]() ![]() The kids are making it, and not just because of their keen wits and messages-raw talent alone does not guarantee a successful music scene. From Scarface’s “Money Makes the World Go Round” to Lil’ Keke’s “Money in the Making” and DJ Screw’s Makin’ Cash Forever, capitalism is the biggest thrill of all. There’s a new, higher calling identified with Down South, and it is right in sync with mainstream society: making money. In fact, the thug life as subject matter seems to be losing some of its luster. Put in perspective, rap has much in common with jazz in the twenties, which the Ladies Home Journal once described as “Bolshevik-inspired,” or Elvis-era rock and roll, which was banished from the jukeboxes at the public pools in San Antonio because the music, according to the city council, “attracted undesirable elements given to practicing their spastic gyrations in abbreviated bathing suits.” For all the anecdotal evidence about rap’s dark imagery being a bad influence, its fans are no more likely to act violently than fans of a heavy metal group are likely to drink blood or engage in devil worship. More often than not, though, it is a fantasized version of the truth, taken to the extreme. If the explicit language is disturbing, it’s meant to be, as a reflection of reality in the bad parts of town. Rappers’ rhymes are peppered with plenty of profanity-laced trash-talking about niggas pimping hos and bitches, toting MAC 10’s and other gats (guns), slanging rocks (selling crack cocaine), and smoking chronic and dank (choice marijuana). ![]() The often violent lyrics only make the perception worse. To outsiders, that monstrous, vibrating bass is an irritant, something wholly alien and aggravating to adult sensibilities. However, don’t look for signs at the Houston airports welcoming you to the “Real” Music Capital of Texas. These days, that familiar hard, thumping sound of a Roland TR-808 drum machine (the mating call of the young urban male) vibrating so low you can feel it in the pit of your stomach from a block away might just be coming from a pickup driven by a young Bubba. You can hear rap on the Box and other radio stations, in neighborhood rec halls and nightclubs like Jamaica Jamaica and the Voodoo Lounge, in films like Gregory Carter’s dramatic Fifth Ward, and at events like the Foundation’s weekly get-togethers at the Waxx Museum, where rapping, deejaying, break-dancing, and graffiti art demonstrations draw fans from all over the city and as far away as Monterrey, Mexico. Rap has insinuated itself everywhere in H-town, crossing over into the pop R&B of the hit girl-group Destiny’s Child, into the gospel of Christian rapper Nuwine, and into the white world of I-45, the Anglo hip-hop crew pulling in the crowds at Fitzgerald’s. The phenomenon is particularly pervasive in Houston, the capital of the Down South-Gulf Coast scene that is currently dominating the rap game. It has hurdled geographic, cultural, and color barriers to become the sound of the city, as well as the leading growth sector of the music business. Rap, or hip-hop, as it is globally known, is no longer just the sound of the housing projects. Some think I’m young, but they can’t hang with me!Įveryone in Houston, it seems, is rappin’ hard, and not just for the Madd Hatta. North Side, North Side, that’s where I be, One by one they get on, and their syncopated rhymes skip along with the heavy beats in the background: The phone lines to KBXX-FM are jammed with callers eager to have Hatta air their raps.
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