Learn About Hip Hop Gangsters

Gangsta rap, a form of hip-hop music that became the genre's dominant style in the 1990s, is a reflection, and product of the often violent lifestyle of American inner cities afflicted with poverty and the dangers of drug use and drug dealing. The romanticization of the outlaw at the center of much of gangsta rap appealed to rebellious suburbanites as well as to those who had firsthand experience of the harsh realities of the ghetto.