To understand what factors drive and influence the messages conveyed in gangsta rap lyrics, one must look to the environmental influences of the artist themselves. Kubrin examines the motivating factors represented in gangsta rap lyrics through the analysis of a sampling of music from 1993 to 2000. Kubrin's analysis excludes music produced after 2000 as she notes that 2000 marks a turning point in rap music industry "whereby production values more clearly addressed commercial competition, pushing cultural production and reproduction aside" (Kubrin, 367). Kubrin notes that gangsta rap differentiates itself from other types of rap as it is a musical expression of ghettocentricity," which engages "black youth cultural imagination that cultivated varying ways of interpreting, representing, and understanding the shifting contours of ghetto dislocation" (361). Kubrin identifies "the extreme, concentrated disadvantage and isolation of black inner-city communities coupled with the quantity and potency of drugs and availability of guns" as...
[ View Full Essay]