Despite the fact I was the first person in my household to purchase a rap CD (Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy, which I still rank in my Top 100 Favorite Albums), I've never been much of a rap/hip hop guy. Which is not to say that I'm one of those people who instantly dismiss the genre with a kneejerk "all rap sucks!" response (my diplomatic answer is usually along the lines of, 'I'm not going to say this is bad, just that I'm obviously not its target audience," which, incidentally, is also my usual response to most country music). I guess the way I feel about rap/hip hop is the same way that I feel about most "classic rock," which is to say, it's been around for so long now that it's pretty much a dinosaur genre (though inexplicably there are still people out there who prefer to remain thinking that it's still fresh/hip/cutting edge or whatever). Of course, like with most musical genres, I can still find certain acts or albums associated with the term to be enjoyable: aside from Public Enemy and some of the other groups linked to the "golden age of hip hop," there are a few modern acts I like as well, such as Danny Brown and Nicki Minaj. And when I was writing my novel Harlem Smoke I spent a lot of time listening to/researching many different horrorcore acts (like Insane Poetry), and I came to like certain aspects of that subgenre.
The subject of today's post, LAbyrinth by Randall Sullivan (2002), is obviously linked to rap and hip hop music, what with its focus on Death Row Records, and the (still unsolved) murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. (which I vaguely recall hearing about during my high school days, but most of which went over my head because I wasn't really into rap culture at that time). I only have one song by Tupac on my computer ("I Just Don't Give A Fuck," which I got from the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack box set), and one by Biggie ("Hypnotize"), but I still found this book interesting nonetheless. If memory serves I got it shortly after I began working at Barnes & Noble in 2004, which coincidentally was also the year that the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was released, so obviously the subject matter was of some interest to me at that time in my life. Sullivan does a good job of summarizing rap and hip hop culture, not only how it originated but also how it developed into "gangsta rap" in the late 1980s, and the same can be said to his history of the various L.A. street gangs. Aside from focusing on the murder of the two rappers and the possible links to Death Row Records, the book is also a devastating critique of the Los Angeles Police Department, which in the 90s was plagued with scandals, torn apart by racial conflicts, and incredibly corrupt. The main star of the book is the homicide detective Russell Poole, who comes off as a dedicated investigator obsessed with following the truth/clues no matter where they led . . . but when he discovers that certain Black LAPD cops are also working for Death Row Records, and becoming more criminal than the crooks they catch, he finds his investigation stymied both by his superiors (who are terrified of racial scandals) and by the liberal Los Angeles media (the line of text from the book which best sums up the story is this quote from Jan Golab: "You can't tell a story in which the good guy is a white detective and the villains are all black. That isn't allowed, even if it's true.")
I guess this book inspired a film called CITY OF LIES, which I have not seen yet, but plan to next year.
