| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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influences, and impacts of the music on listeners. Basic distinctions, such as the difference between hip hop and gangster rap, were nonexistent. There is a palpable sense among those who write about hip hop culture and music that large numbers of critics and the public “out there” disagree intensely with the music and dismiss it. At first, it appeared that this was based upon some huge generational divide. Yet very little of the intense criticism that is felt has made it into print, and when it has—as in comments by black leaders such as Calvin O. Butts and C. Delores Tucker—the authors have made the same critical points that are leveled by supporters of the music. Thus, the writing on hip hop and gangster rap has a quality of battling ghosts. It appears that no one outside of the field takes hip hop and gangster rap seriously and that those who do will not touch it in print. Insiders have told me that one reason why journalists, in particular, did not write critically about the music early in gangster rap’s development was that some were assaulted and others’ lives were threatened. Finally, neither critics nor supporters realize that psychological and communications studies have been conducted on the topic and bear implications for their discussions about the music.
Professionally, many different roads led me to write this book. I teach at a state university with a sizeable number of students from all the ’hoods in Northern California. I am also a research sociologist heavily engaged in HIV/AIDS research and drug-abuse prevention research in African American communities since 1988. Through the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Health, and a host of other sources, colleagues and I have made observations and talked with and interviewed hundreds of crack-cocaine-using adolescents and their parents (as well as heroin injectors) during the crack-cocaine epidemic. Our work led to the definitive connection of the behaviors associated with crack-cocaine use as HIV/AIDS high-risk behaviors (Edlin et al., 1994; Fullilove, Fullilove, Bowser, & Gross, 1990). We have also followed up on this work and collaborated with community-based programs in effective and innovative prevention and outreach that continues to this day. What we learned about communities was tested empirically for prevention