“Wait! Wait! Go back . . .” I tell my wife, sitting in the passenger’s seat.
She’s flipping through the radio stations, spending half a second on each.
I prefer the randomness of the radio to the surety of the curated playlist.
“What?” she asks.
“Go back one,” I tell her.
She hits the back arrow and lands on exactly the song I thought – hoped – I’d heard.
“Gangster’s Paradise,” by the late Coolio.
Power and the money, money and the power, minute after minute, hour after hour . . .
Damn, I love that song.
Which makes no sense, if you think about it.
I mean, why does a middle-aged dude from the ‘burbs get so excited by a song that laments the hopelessness and desperation of life in the inner city?
Yeah, that opening hook is pretty damn catchy. But, if you really listen to the lyrics, you’ll find our man Coolio was nothing short of disturbed. It’s depressing.
But I still love it.
And it’s not just Coolio. My high school rap phase encompassed everything from Kool Moe Dee to Ice-T (before he went all Hollywood).
To this day, I can still rip through the entire first verse of Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” without taking a breath.
I did so at a party a few years back, much to the delight of my neighbor.
“Do it again! Do it again!” she’d said, like a kid who’d just seen a magic trick.
And it isn’t just me.
All my high school friends were into gangster rap, despite having never driven a single, low-riding mile through Compton.
Maybe it was all a set-up.
When Run DMC did “Walk This Way” with Aerosmith, mall-wandering kids everywhere started sporting gold chains, Kangol, and Adidas high tops. We went all-in.
Then came the Beastie Boys, the skinny, sarcastic, hyperactive dudes from Brooklyn whose genius gave rise to an entirely new sub-genre. How could you not get on that train?
And what about Yo! MTV Raps? I mean, was there a better show on television in 1990?
All of that served to condition us for what followed: Eazy E and NWA.
That was the stuff.
Remember those guys? Hard to believe that Ice Cube, star of the family-friendly Barbershop movie series, was once an angry, f-bomb-dropping, gangster rap prodigy.
So what explains all this?
And why was it cool to have Public Enemy blaring from every speaker at damn near every high school party I ever attended in rural Michigan, while a person would likely have gotten shot for playing the Eagles in South Central?
Strange.
In high school, it had everything to do with rebellion.
Had my mother heard a single note of Eazy E coming from my Walkman, she would have immediately shipped me off to church camp.
Gangster rap was profane. And a little dangerous. I liked that.
But that’s not the full explanation.
It’s like this: I need you think I’m a badass.
Even better, I want you to be a little afraid of me.
It’s part of the male condition.
Gangster rap speaks to that.
And to be an authority on the genre is to make you a little bit more of a badass.
Michael Bolton understood that.
I’m talking about the Office Space character, not the singer.
In the opening scene of the movie, we see Michael belting out some Scarface while stuck in traffic. He rhythmically waves his imaginary pistol at the windshield, until a harmless-looking dude selling flowers approaches his car at an intersection. Michael then sheepishly lowers his voice, rolls up his window, and sinks down into his seat.
Like the suburban gangster he is.
So, you see, this thing I have for rap is not an uncommon phenomenon.
But I still find it curious.
Even as I continue to embrace my inner Flavor Flav.
Yeeaaahhhh, booooyyyyyy!
I’m not going to stop loving gangster rap.
So, yeah . . . Bring the Noise!