Nuthin' but a "G" Thang: The Culture and Commerce of Gangsta Rap

by Eithne Quinn

Overview

In the late 1980s, gangsta rap music emerged in urban America, giving voice to—and making money for—a social group widely considered to be in crisis: young, poor, black men. From its local origins, gangsta rap went on to flood the mainstream, generating enormous popularity and profits. Yet the highly charged lyrics, public battles, and hard, fast lifestyles that characterize the genre have incited the anger of many public figures and proponents of "family values." Constantly engaging questions of black identity and race relations, poverty and wealth, gangsta rap represents one of the most profound influences on pop culture in the last thirty years.

Focusing on the artists Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the Geto Boys, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur, Quinn explores the origins, development, and immense appeal of gangsta rap. Including detailed readings in urban geography, neoconservative politics, subcultural formations, black cultural debates, and music industry conditions, this book explains how and why this music genre emerged. In Nuthin'but a "G" Thang, Quinn argues that gangsta rap both reflected and reinforced the decline in black protest culture and the great rise in individualist and entrepreneurial thinking that took place in the U.S. after the 1970s. Uncovering gangsta rap's deep roots in black working-class expressive culture, she stresses the music's aesthetic pleasures and complexities that have often been ignored in critical accounts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231124089
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	11/17/2004
Series:	Popular Cultures, Everyday Lives
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	0.75(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Eithne Quinn teaches American Studies at the University of Manchester, UK. Her work on rap music, cultural studies, and African American popular culture has appeared in edited books and journals, including the Journal of American Studies and Black Music Research Journal.

Table of Contents

1. A Gangsta Parable
2. Gangsta's Rap: Black Cultural Studies and the Politics of Representation
3. Alwayz Into Somethin': Gangsta's Emergence in 1980s Los Angeles
4. Straight Outta Compton: Ghetto Discourses and the Geographies of Gangsta
5. The Nigga Ya Love To Hate: Badman Lore and Gangsta Rap
6. Who's the Mack? Rap Performance and Trickster Tales
7. It's a Doggy-Dogg World: The G-Funk Era and the Post-Soul Family
8. Tupac Shakur and the Legacies of Gangsta

What People are Saying About This

Barry Shank

This is a profound and important book. Its aim is to explain the development and the popularity of gangsta rap. It accomplishes this aim masterfully, through a complex interdisciplinary argument that brings together deep readings in sociology, political economy, African American social history, folklore, and popular music studies. This book will appeal to readers who want a complex understanding of one of the most important popular cultural forms of our time.

— Barry Shank, author of A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture

Robin D.G. Kelley

Eithne Quinn has written the richest, most insightful analysis of gansta rap I've ever read. She takes both a long view of the gangsta genre, locating it within a very old expressive culture, and also places it within contemporary commercial culture and flows of global capital. She shows how the historic pimp and rap artist are collapsed in interesting and contradictory ways, for the genre produces a critique of capitalism and white supremacy alongside a celebration of wealth and name-brand consumer items.

S. Craig Watkins

Quinn's book constitutes an original statement on the contradictory currents that continue to pattern popular American culture. Quinn explores the intricacies of black working-class culture, ideology, and agency with great skill and nuance. Above all, Nuthin' But a "G" Thang shows how gansta rap is not simply a pop culture fad but instead embodies profound shifts in American culture and everyday life.

— S. Craig Watkins, author of Representing: Hip Hop Culture and the Production of Black Cinema

Robin D. G. Kelley

Eithne Quinn has written the richest, most insightful analysis of gansta rap I've ever read. She takes both a long view of the gangsta genre, locating it within a very old expressive culture, and also places it within contemporary commercial culture and flows of global capital. She shows how the historic pimp and rap artist are collapsed in interesting and contradictory ways, for the genre produces a critique of capitalism and white supremacy alongside a celebration of wealth and name-brand consumer items.

— Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and The Black Working Class

Editorial Reviews

Quinn's narrative skillfully interweaves cultural trends and economic contextualisation with a thoroughness rarely encountered in studies of popular music.

Popular Music - Tom Perchard

This book is a welcomed addition to a growing body of scholarship on hip-hop and a good contribution to the study of race, class, gender, and black cultural production.

Journal of American History - Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar

This book is a welcomed addition to a growing body of scholarship on hip-hop and a good contribution to the study of race, class, gender, and black cultural production.

Journal of American History - Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar

This book is a welcomed addition to a growing body of scholarship on hip-hop and a good contribution to the study of race, class, gender, and black cultural production.

— Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar

Journal of American History

Quinn's narrative skillfully interweaves cultural trends and economic contextualisation with a thoroughness rarely encountered in studies of popular music.

— Tom Perchard

Popular Music

Since the days of N.W.A. in the late 1980s, gangsta rap has played a critical role in the culture of hip-hop. Quinn (American studies, Univ. of Manchester, U.K.) has written an impressive academic study of gangsta rap's music and culture that traces its roots to antebellum days, through toasting and the legends of the badman and the trickster. Quinn shows that gangsta was a logical progression in the development of urban culture, exploring its meaning in the black community, including its impact on fans, artists, and others involved in creating the music. The biggest flaw is that limited personal insight is given about those behind the music (e.g., Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Snoop Dogg). Besides a final chapter on Tupac Shakur, not much is revealed about the lives or motivations of the artists discussed. An interesting, if dry, study of the gangsta culture; recommended for music and cultural studies collections in academic or larger public libraries.-Craig Shufelt, Lane P.L., Oxford, OH Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal