The 10th anniversary of the Los Angeles riots took place this month, and with it the usual pause for reflection and re-interpretation. Most of us weren't there, and most of us were too young to really understand what was going on. MTV, the bastion of education and historical preservation for a generation that considers Nirvana "classic rock," put out a "then and now" retrospective about how much things haven't changed. According to MTV, the hood really hasn't overcome poverty and violence in the past decade. The poor are still poor, and the streets are still dangerous. But it was 10 years ago that something else was born out of West Coast racial violence - Gangsta Rap. As you can tell from the picture above, I am white and Jewish .. as I assume many of you are. So, you must be saying, "What does he have to say about Gangsta rap?" To which I respond by pulling out my gat and smoking 'yo a**. Suburban white kids, such as myself, grew up with music born in a place and frame of mind they could never get to. We never had to live in fear of a drive by. "The Man" never kept me down (not to my knowledge, at least). And, what the hell is "it" that I'm supposed to be keeping real? To those who are emulating the street lifestyle in the middle of Iowa, you are laughable. But, I do respect your appreciation for hip-hop . just take the dew rag off your head. I know as much about rap as P. Diddy knows about Led Zeppelin, but I respect the music without pretending to be part of it.

I'm obviously not Fubu material, but that doesn't mean I can't throw a little Tribe Called Quest into my repertoire. It doesn't mean that I don't hold Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" as a seminal album of my youth. It doesn't mean that I can get my freak on and possibly lose my cool . up in here. I grew up with this music too. In 2002, rap music isn't black music or white music (as Eminem has demonstrated) . it's music for the Gangsta in all of us.

Calling rap "Black music" is about as antiquated as calling the Temptations "race music." What started as urban poetry of black youth turned into a cultural zeitgeist that isn't going to die out anytime soon. Sure, they may be talking about bitches and hos, 40s and blunts, but it's all grounded in context. It's not like anyone believed that Vanilla Ice was from the streets. The legends of hip-hop all had the street credit that made them amazing performers. Fab Five Freddy, Kool Moe Dee and Grand Master Flash were all from the mean streets, so when they rap about their hard life on the streets you can nod and say, "I do believe these gentlemen know what they're talking about."
The problem with suburban kids taking on the same role is that they wouldn't know which way to run if they were suddently dropped in Compton. They couldn't even tell a Crypt from a Blood. Rap is all about being honest about where you're from, so there is something inherently wrong about people pretending to be from the hood. You, Mr. Small Town America, driving into the school parking lot with your 10s blasting and your 12s thumping; nobody likes that.

So, if Gangsta rap was this untapped music of aggression and response to the racial tension in the Los Angeles riots of 1992, then what is going on with the rap scene now? Corporate rap! That's right, rap, like most other music, has been comidified, formulized, packaged and shipped for your entertainment.
The formula of the month seems to be sexy R&B singers coupled with hyper-emasculated rappers. For example, J-Lo and Ja Rule. They seem to have done a million records together. It's always the same video of J-Lo wandering around the hood, looking like she lost the keys to her Mercedes, and Ja Rule coming up strutting behind her, like he owns her. Ashanti and Fat Joe have the same type of thing. P. Diddy, however, decided to duet with Usher in a song about how much he misses Jennifer. Puffy, I think you made the wrong move. It's never good to put out a video in which you're crying on a man's shoulder, whining about how your girl is making videos with more successful rap artists.
Corporate rap. It's the kind of stuff that gets played all the time on Jammin'94.5. Nothing really intelligent, offensive, or even cool. I guess it was when Puff Daddy and Mase wore matching reflective jump suits that I knew they were no longer welcome in their old neighborhoods. Can you really picture Mase walking through the projects of Brooklyn looking like some disco base jumper? Rap has entered the hit factory.

But, like I said before, I'm no authority on the genre. I'm not sentimental for the days that I used to sit on the stoop of my brownstone in Harlem and listen to the Sugar Hill Gang. It just seems that there used to be some emotion behind the music, and now there's just the loot. Nobody wants another riot on the streets of Compton . but to inject a little soul into a music that used to have so much can't be a bad thing.

Groups like A Tribe Called Quest, Jurassic 5, and the Roots seem authentic in these days of market-tested rap. If you play live hip-hop and/or have no rhymes about how badass those particular rhymes are, you're okay in my book. Rap was about rebellion, just like rock 'n' roll. Ten years after the riots of Los Angeles, however, it's interesting to see how the music of urban blight, like the paved-over rubble from the riot, has been gentrified.