Awards

• Short-listed for PROSE Awards 2021 (United States)

Overview

"How gangsta rap shocked America, made millions, and pulled back the curtain on an urban crisis. How is it that gangsta rap-so dystopian that it struck aspiring Brooklyn rapper and future superstar Jay-Z as ""over the top""-was born in Los Angeles, the home of Hollywood, surf, and sun? In the Reagan era, hip-hop was understood to be the music of the inner city and, with rare exception, of New York. Rap was considered the poetry of the street, and it was thought to breed in close quarters, the product of dilapidated tenements, crime-infested housing projects, and graffiti-covered subway cars. To many in the industry, LA was certainly not hard-edged and urban enough to generate authentic hip-hop; a new brand of black rebel music could never come from La-La Land. But it did. In To Live and Defy in LA, Felicia Viator tells the story of the young black men who built gangsta rap and changed LA and the world. She takes readers into South Central, Compton, Long Beach, and Watts two decades after the long hot summer of 1965. This was the world of crack cocaine, street gangs, and Daryl Gates, and it was the environment in which rappers such as Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and Eazy-E came of age. By the end of the 1980s, these self-styled ""ghetto reporters"" had fought their way onto the nation's radio and TV stations and thus into America's consciousness, mocking law-and-order crusaders, exposing police brutality, outraging both feminists and traditionalists with their often retrograde treatment of sex and gender, and demanding that America confront an urban crisis too often ignored."

Full Product Details

9780674976368

Table of Contents

Reviews

Rich with drama and details, To Live and Defy in LA tells the story of Los Angeles hip-hop during the eighties, a much-mythologized but often misunderstood period. -- Hua Hsu, author of <i>A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific</i> This book was really fun to read...[Viator] gives a comprehensive, interesting view of how this genre came to change our culture. * Los Angeles Review of Books Radio Hour * Rattling hatchback trunks and terrifying suburban parents, gangsta rap went harder and further than everything that preceded it. Suddenly, everyone was listening and the media wagons began to circle...Viator excavates this music's unique political, social, and mercantile origins. -- Raymond Cummings * The Wire * Zero[es] in on how economic devastation and militarized policing bred a subgenre whose extreme lyrics were fueled by indigence...A fast-paced and engaging read for music fans, history buffs and anyone with an interest in social justice...Eye-opening. * KQED * Much more than the story of the creation of gangsta rap, the rise of NWA, or the history of early West coast rap in general. It's a cultural history. What one is left with at the book's end is the powerful idea of how art can be formed out of pain and suffering, and how injustice can be the crushing weight that can incite change. * Under the Radar * [Viator's] understanding of the hip-hop music and the musicians that first emerged from the streets of L.A. in the '80s is deep and profound. * LA Weekly *

Rich with drama and details, To Live and Defy in LA tells the story of Los Angeles hip-hop during the eighties, a much-mythologized but often misunderstood period.--Hua Hsu, author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure across the Pacific

Author Information

Felicia Angeja Viator is Assistant Professor of History at San Francisco State University. Prior to writing about music, she worked as a DJ in the Bay Area, where she was born and raised.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available