What’s crackin’, Hip Hop history month community! The month is quickly coming to an end, but we have a few more challenges left to continue in our celebration and discussion of hip hop culture and music.

We were on the East coast yesterday, so it’s only right that we head out to the West Coast today. And it goes a little something like this-

In this clip we can discern many of the things that define West Coast hip hop- the G Funk (short for ‘gangsta funk’, generally marked by the use of 70s funk samples for a more laid back contrast to the more hardcore gangster rap that was coming out around the same time) vibe, the LA Kings hat, the specificity of calling out Compton, the storytelling, the limited socio-economic options that were a reality for so many Black people in LA throughout the 80s. And at its center, a young Black man voicing not only his place in the world, but a complexity of feelings about his community:

Now, Compton is the place where the homeboys chill, you see
But then, I found that it wasn’t no place for me
‘Cause way back in the day, somebody must of wanted me to quit
Because they broke in my house, and cold stole my shit

From Genius.com

This is the thing I value most about West Coast hip hop- its relentless desire to be understood, to articulate the struggle of being a Black man in America, and to represent Black life on the West Coast in particular, where a lot of Black folks ended up during the second Great Migration, which happened between 1940 and 1970 (this was how my paternal grandma ended up in Denver, Colorado, moving from the segregated South during this time).

The music has a particular style that can be defined not just in the way it differs from East Coat rap, but in the way it is just as shaped by its culture and landscape. Rap music from this part of the US blew up in the late 80s, primarily around N.W.A’s 1988 ‘Straight Outta Compton’. There was a full blown rivalry with the East Coast for popularity and a bigger slice of the collective hip hop imagination in the early 90s, and we should note that all West Coast rap is not gangsta or G-Funk stuff, nor is it just from California; artists like Sir Mix A Lot (from Seattle) made their mark as well.

Ok, it’s your turn! Tell us about West Coast rap and help us get a sense of its shape, sound, and scope.

1.) The tricky/fun thing about this 30 day ‘challenge’ is that you get one choice (see, it’s a challenge!). It’d be nice to have a mix of some less well known folks and some canonical stuff for our new listeners/explorers! Imagine that you’re helping to build a ‘West Coast Rap’ playlist, for example.

2.) In order to keep the thread from borking, please limit yourself to no more than 3 YouTube/media links per day-that way more folks have a chance to post. If someone ‘beats you to it’ and posts a song you would’ve posted, reply under their post saying why you like this song/why it was your pick as well, etc. Let’s not give Disqus a reason to make the thread hard to navigate for those of us listening to the songs!

3.) Let’s keep this as positive as we can. Don’t yuck anyone’s yum, don’t snark on someone who may not be as familiar as others, don’t ‘Um, actually’ people, etc. Ain’t nobody earning any Internet Points out here.