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Schoolly D and Ice - T invented gangsta rap, not Dre

Schoolly D's eponymous 1985 LP is arguably the first gangsta rap album since he rapped about gangs and urban violence. Ice - T (yes, the guy who is now on "Law and Order SVU") was inspired by Schoolly D and switched to writing about Los Angeles gang life for a series of LPs in the late '80s. Dre was in NWA before he went solo, and of course NWA's Straight Outta Compton gangsta rap album was an enormous hit.

I would argue that Public Enemy's 1988 It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back most deserves the comparison to Sgt. Pepper's. The album is a staggering artistic triumph; it sounded completely unlike anything that had come before. ITANOMTHUB had much faster beats than any rap record that preceded it, and the music was an incredibly dense (up to 80 tracks layered together) and chaotic mix of samples, sound effects, and noise that was closer to musique concrete than traditional rap music. On top of the blistering music was Chuck D's highly political black nationalist, consciousness - raising lyrics. There's a reason the PE album has repeatedly been named the greatest rap album of all time in music polls, and why its the only rap album in the top 100 of Rolling Stone's 500 Best Albums list.


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  • Schoolly D and Ice - T invented gangsta rap, not Dre - Rob Doorack 05:28:41 05/30/17 (1)

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