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.R E M I X I N G A M E R I C A N P O Pties television sitcoms, local news, comedy skits, game shows, and the sometimes profound, sometimes profane world of ghetto street culture.Nine months after its release The Chronic was double platinum and still in the Billboard Top Ten.During its run it was the biggest-selling hard core rap album of all time.From the date of the album’s launch, Interscope and Death Rowaggressively pursued their bid to enlarge gangsta’s appeal and pres-ence in American pop culture.Dr.Dre, the consummate artist, tookcreative control of the album’s musical direction and the videos that made regular appearances on MTV and BET.His use of samples fromGeorge Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and Donny Hathaway evoked amore upbeat era in black American life even as it reveled in thedowntrodden and profane world constructed in the gangsta imagi-nation.The videos he directed were at once homespun, hilarious,and hard-hitting.Shot in homes and hoods across South Central LosAngeles’s vast summery ghettoscapes, the videos were intimatelyconnected to the passion, pleasure, and pain that reverberatedthroughout the hip-hop movement.Dre’s directorial nuances ex-panded his creative repertoire and reputation as a boundary-crossing artist.Talking from the set during the making of the “Let Me Ride”video, Iovine boasted: “There aren’t three people like him in themusic business.He can rap, he can produce.and he can direct a video with humor.Do you know how hard that is? Famous movie directors can’t do that.”The Chronic was clearly the high-water mark in the strange career of gangsta rap.The album’s G-funk grooves, success with radio, and crossover appeal make it the most memorable recording from thetremendous output of gangsta inflected titles that, between 1988 and 1994, defined rap and a significant aspect of youth pop culture inAmerica.The Chronic came complete with all of the fixings—drugs, death, money, sex, misogyny, and commentary about racial aban-donment and oppression—that made gangsta rap delicious and dis-tasteful.But Dr.Dre successfully blended the fantasy-driven motifs in hard core rap—sensational stories about drug dealing, murder,49 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]