Dr. Dre

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Dr. Dre's 'The Chronic': 25 Years Later

Take a look back at the super producer's solo magnum opus from the inside out

Kathy Iandoli

GRAMMYs

Dec 15, 2017 - 10:19 am

In 2010 Kanye West heaped some high praise on Dr. Dre's The Chronic: He called the album the hip-hop equivalent of Stevie Wonder's 1976 Album Of The Year GRAMMY winner, Songs In The Key Of Life.

"It's the benchmark you measure your album against if you're serious," West wrote for Rolling Stone's 100 Greatest Artists list, which ranked Dre at No. 56.

The Chronic was a series of coincidences backed by like-minded individuals all with one goal in mind: to create a work that would stand the test of time. It was a perfect storm — yielding one GRAMMY for Best Rap Solo Performance for "Let Me Ride." The Chronic would go on to sell millions, and like West mused, would serve as the prototype for any serious musician who existed within the hip-hop space.

A quarter-century later, its presence is still felt in the aftershocks of an earthquake that was more than a year in the making.

When The Chronic arrived on Dec. 15, 1992, Dr. Dre was living life in a vacuum. He was coming off the high of the post-N.W.A era, where his friendship with Eazy-E had rotted considerably and de-facto group leader Ice Cube vehemently parted ways with both N.W.A and Ruthless Records to pursue his own solo trajectory.

Dre was still somewhat wound around the pen of manager Jerry Heller that inked his recording contract years earlier, though Suge Knight — a then-strong-yet-silent enforcer — would handle the messiness while Dre focused on his solo debut LP via Death Row Records (with Interscope Records serving as the distributor).

Societally, the country was in a state of flux. The Los Angeles riots had finally dwindled in mid-May 1992, though the scars of the Rodney King verdict and a constant cloud of police brutality lingered in the streets. While The Chronic boasts a sufficient amount of fun, weed, money, and women, there still exists an element of anger fueled by both Dre's beef with Eazy as well as the ongoings of a world as seen through Dre's then-27-year-old eyes.

Once Dre met Snoop Doggy Dogg (as he was then called) through stepbrother Warren G, it was truly trouble when Compton and Long Beach, Calif., came together. Dre had already laid a foundation for his sound by the time the final N.W.A album, 1991's Niggaz4Life, would drop, but there was a vibe he was after. Snoop — possessing a mix of gang ties and weed smoke — when paired with Dre's P. Funk sampling, mixed with breaks and live instruments, provided an aggressive yet relaxed sound.

Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg at the 1993 MTV Movie Awards
Photo: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic.com/Getty Images

"It wasn't actually a sound, rather it was a production method," explains Dan Charnas, author of The Big Payback: The History Of The Business Of Hip-Hop and professor at New York University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. "It was [Dre's] blending of breakbeats undergirded by real instruments. There was sort of this cleanliness and presence to his production that very much contrasted the noise ethos of the Bomb Squad and Public Enemy."

The product was called G-Funk, an amalgam of the past, present and future. It would come to life as soon as the team started working on The Chronic.

"As soon as we left the N.W.A situation, came 'Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang,'" explains The Chronic collaborator and songwriter Colin Wolfe.

But The Chronic would be put on hold mid-process and attention would be diverted to Snoop and Dre's other collaborative work, the soundtrack to the 1992 film Deep Cover. By then Dre and Snoop were branded as a dynamic duo and once the crew switched gears back to The Chronic, the direction would be set thanks to "… 'G' Thang."

The studio sessions were all love, where Hennessy and weed permeated the atmosphere as Dre and his tightknit team conceived his magnum opus.

"There was no grand scheme, it was everyone coming together to make really great songs and the album began to take shape on its own," remembers The Chronic songwriter The D.O.C. "The weed smoke and the energy of the crew Snoop brought around. We worked vicariously off that energy. It was the space and time where everything came together as it should have."

"The greatest part was watching the guys write and learn how to make bars," explains The Chronic mixer Chris "The Glove" Taylor. "D.O.C. would say [to the other artists], 'Write 16 lines on this legal pad and when you get to 16 lines, you're done.' Imagine a studio of cats believing they were taking over the world and doing whatever the hell they wanted to because we had Suge outside. There was an invincibility that we felt."

The songs were products of their environment. "F*** Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')" would bring a comedic yet venomous dis pointed at Eazy-E and his cohorts, while "Lil' Ghetto Boy" would speak to the state of Los Angeles in the midst of the riots. Other songs like "High Powered" and "Stranded On Death Row" were both menacing yet honest, reflective of the world in which Dre & Co. lived.

"We had to change some of the lyrics," Wolfe recalls, "as the tone was too intense given what was happening in L.A."

"It was too insightful at times. We were sitting [in the studio] watching the news. It was scary," Taylor adds. "Not only that but we had to change locations for the videos because of our high 'gang visibility.'"

The crew would later have to move Snoop's "Gin And Juice" video to another location (Taylor's mother's house) for that same reason.

The aforementioned "Nuthin' But A 'G' Thang" was soaked in gangster vibes yet it was the Moog synthesizer Wolfe used to create the now infamous whistling keys in the intro that would define an entire decade of West Coast rap. Together, it was a project for everyone. While N.W.A was arguably too abrasive for some listeners, Dre's solo debut struck a balance of street meets stoner, thereby broadening the album's reach.

"A lot more white folks smoke weed than are in gangs, so it was something they too could sink their teeth into and the whole world could just vibe on the same plane," says The D.O.C.

It even crossed coasts, despite the project's very identifiable West Coast sound.

"When Dre dropped that monster, you just couldn't deny it. I never saw so many people in New York banging it in their systems," says rapper Sauce Money. "I think the beauty of The Chronic was that each song carried a message that all together made up the culture of the West Coast."

Coincidentally, there was a bigger machine behind it as well. Los Angeles' KPWR-FM (Power 106) was in the early stages of bringing a hip-hop skewed format to pop radio. By the time The Chronic dropped, the station was already geared to move their evening jocks, the Baka Boyz, to daytime — marking the biggest move for hip-hop in L.A. radio history.

"I think the beauty of The Chronic was that each song carried a message that all together made up the culture of the West Coast."

"The Chronic was the flagship record for the launch of the very first hip-hop-branded pop station," says Charnas, who also hosted a segment during the Baka Boyz's "Friday Night Flavas." "It was just after that when Power 106 came up with the slogan 'Where Hip-Hop Lives' and the first album to live there was The Chronic. It was a cultural explosion."

Twenty-five years later, the ripple effect of The Chronic lives on.

From the weed rap of artists like Wiz Khalifa to the modified gangster rap of Kendrick Lamar, what Dr. Dre built with his team was a movement that would be picked apart and serve as inspiration for years to come.

In many ways, The Chronic was Dr. Dre's crowning achievement, as his later work and top albums by his peers would be lined up against it. It was lightning in a bottle, and lightning rarely strikes twice.

But like many timeless albums, it took a village — from Dre, Snoop, The D.O.C., Warren G, Nate Dogg, and Kurupt to Wolfe, Taylor and the engineers. Even Suge Knight. Everyone played a role, and the results made history.

"We loved each other enough to really focus in on making that art as best we could make it, even with all the bulls*** we were surrounded by and all the drama that was going on in the outside world," says The D.O.C. "We were all lasered in on making that album great. In my humble opinion, The Chronic is the best hip-hop album ever made."

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(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

Kanye West and 50 Cent at the 2007 MTV VMAs

Photo: John Shearer/WireImage.com

Feature

How The 50 Cent, Kanye West "Beef" Of 2007 Was A Hard Reset For Hip-Hop

Relive an epic moment in music history when two heavyweight rappers battled it out for album sales supremacy and ended up putting hip-hop in the middle of the pop culture zeitgeist to stay

Kathy Iandoli

GRAMMYs

Sep 7, 2017 - 1:34 pm

Since 2001, the date Sept. 11 has been solely reflective of one pivotal moment in American history, though a decade ago music fans' attention was temporarily redirected. It was all thanks to hip-hop, as 50 Cent and Kanye West willfully entangled themselves in September 2007 in a playful beef that attracted major headlines.

Both were at turning points in their respective careers; both were dropping their all-important third albums. 50 Cent was geared to release Curtis on Sept. 11, 2007. West was readying Graduation for a Sept. 18 release, though he bumped it up a week to set the stage for what was perhaps the biggest nonviolent event in hip-hop history — as the two duked it out in a contest to see who would take home a bigger haul of album sales.

Of course, we all know the results: West's Graduation won with a staggering 957,000 units sold, while 50 Cent topped out at 691,000 units. The effects of this epic matchup, however, have reverberated to this day, as hip-hop music made a hard left and hasn't returned since.

Prior to Sept. 11, 2007, anything hip-hop related never really echoed on a grandiose scale, save for the tragic losses of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. in 1996 and 1997, respectively. When a beef would casually surface or a rapper was rolling out a new project, it was hip-hop's little secret. Sure, communally speaking it was a big deal, but the rest of the world lacked enthusiasm despite hip-hop's growing popularity within the mainstream. The year 2007 was perhaps the tipping point for the crisis hip-hop was going through two years prior.

In 2005 50 Cent released his monumental sophomore effort, The Massacre, giving Fif a significant feather in his cap with what would be the second best-selling album of that year, trailing only Mariah Carey's The Emancipation Of Mimi. In the first week alone, The Massacre moved 1.14 million units (ultimately selling more than 5 million copies in the United States).

West was still riding high off the fumes of his 2004 debut, The College Dropout, so by that following year his sophomore work, Late Registration, gave him an impressive 860,000 sales in its first week on its way to more than 3 million copies sold.

These figures alone indicated that while 50 Cent's breed of "street rap" that nearly carried him through the early aughts was arguably still thriving, something different was brewing by necessity.

"You couldn't out-thug 50 Cent. Nothing street was gonna come next that was gonna eliminate him," explains Vanessa Satten, editor-in-chief of XXL Magazine. "That was as street as we could get."

The shift became more visible in 2006. Lupe Fiasco released his debut, Food & Liquor, and was met with rave reviews. Jay Z would poke his head out of post-"retirement" to release Kingdom Come, as the industry collectively questioned whether that was the idyllic return to form for the rapper-turned-president of Def Jam. By the close of 2006, Nas would declare "Hip Hop Is Dead" on his eighth studio album.

Entering 2007, the crumbling framework of the old guard was too blatant to deny. DJ Drama was arrested that January for selling mixtapes, a huge indicator that every aspect of rap was changing. Dr. Dre didn't release Detox, which he had been working on since 2001; Raekwon didn't release Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…Pt. II as planned — though it did drop two years later; and Eminem ducked Relapse — any combination of which would have suggested that hip-hop's current character was still somewhat in tact.

That spring, 50 Cent earned a cool $100 million as a minority owner of Vitamin Water through Glacéau's $4.1 billion sale to Coca-Cola. By the time the feud with West rolled around, it wasn't money that motivated him; it was principle. But he was too late.

"My theory is we were coming up on a time period where the internet started taking over," Satten says. "The Kanye success and moving away from the streets came with the internet, giving the nerdy person who was obsessed with fashion — which wasn't the cool person back then — the opportunity to have a voice."

"I feel like fashion was pushing it," adds Kris Ex, writer and co-author of 50 Cent's 2005 memoir, From Pieces To Weight. "The ascension into super high fashion was already happening, and Kanye tapped into that. He's kind of the harbinger of that."

Kanye West and 50 Cent at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 9, 2007
Photo: Jason Squires/WireImage.com

Ye's July 2007 release of "Stronger" with Daft Punk only punctuates that claim. The single veered away from traditional hip-hop, accented with visuals that further reflected West's infatuation with Japanese art, particularly that of Takashi Murakami (the Japanese artist behind the Graduation cover art) as well as high fashion. It was synesthesia at its best.

"I remember sitting in Joe Levy's office when the publicist came by and played us ['Stronger']," recalls former Rolling Stone Associate Editor Evan Serpick. "We just looked at each other like, 'This s*** is phenomenal.'"

Serpick penned the piece breaking the story on the Curtis/Graduation competition — having interviewed both artists — a week before Rolling Stone would roll out its double cover story pitting Ye and Fif face-to-face. He describes the genesis of the phenomenon as fascinating.

"[The competition] reminded me of when boxers have sort of that fake press conference and talk trash for the cameras," Serpick says. "To varying degrees, I think they both saw it as a marketing opportunity, to be honest. I think Kanye especially likes to think of himself as this center of the universe. For him, this was just a classic heavyweight battle, and he loved to set it up that way. 50 was happy to play it up."

Both Kanye West and 50 Cent were at a crossroads, where their beginnings were nearly parallel in a bizarro sense. Each artist was known for his enormous personality, stemming from surviving near-fatal traumas that would ultimately self-crown them as Teflon: 50 Cent's was shot nine times in 2000 and West survived a serious car accident of 2002.

Both were archetypes of candor in their own minds, making them both caricatures.

However, in the money game, only one would be the victor, and it all came down to safety. Sure West didn't hold back his opinions, evidenced by his bold "George Bush doesn't care about black people" declaration during a nationally televised telethon for Hurricane Katrina relief in 2005. 50 Cent, though, had a bark with a bite to match. His rift with G-Unit ex-pat The Game grew nefarious, as did the violence stemming from his beef with Ja Rule. While both 50 Cent and West were tantrum-prone, only one was a real liability.

"The labels were aware of that," Kris Ex adds. "You always knew 50 was smart and had tricks up his sleeve, but it was starting to become a Def Jam Vs. Interscope battle. 50 wasn't in the best place with Interscope at that point. It was not something that he was ever going to win from jump, because he was going machine after machine."

Kris Ex also points to Def Jam's history of making first-week sales a win when they needed to. Jay Z's historical issues with 50 Cent were another factor, plus Hova was wrapping his tenure as Def Jam president, so a West win would be the swan song.

"Jay was the battery in Kanye's back," Satten says.

Sonically, Kanye was in tune with hip-hop's changes, while 50 Cent was only partially invested. In addition to "Stronger," the pre-Graduation first single "Can't Tell Me Nothing" showed Ye diverting from his chipmunk-tinged soul samples and looking toward the future. Meanwhile, the pre-Curtis offerings of "I Get Money" and "Ayo Technology" with Justin Timberlake didn't exactly scream evolution.

Graduation

"50 was kind of just sticking to his guns," adds Kris Ex.

Curtis

The 50 Cent-Kanye West matchup's stakes were raised substantially when the former claimed he would stop rapping upon defeat. The competition became lighthearted to the point of almost cartoonish, the aforementioned Rolling Stone cover being proof of that. The two would flank each other onstage at BET's "106 & Park," giving the public what they wanted: nonthreatening rap personas vying for audience participation. By Sept. 11, 2007, it was clear who the real winner was: it was both of them.

Kanye West and 50 Cent appear on BET's "106 & Park" on Sept. 11, 2007
Photo: Brad Barket/Getty Images

"Kanye put his money where his mouth was, but at the end of the day it was good for both albums," says DJ Premier, who collaborated with West on the Graduation track "Everything I Am."

While the following week's sales figures proved West quantifiably won, 50 Cent was able to pivot from the "scary" street persona that made him a figure of consternation. Still, it solidified rap's new direction and placed it directly in the hands of Yeezy.

"The impact was tenfold because ever since that day, hip-hop has moved in the direction of Kanye," says Sickamore, senior vice president and creative director of Interscope Records. "Kanye literally influenced everything after that. I don't think people really realize that."

By the milestone 50th GRAMMY Awards telecast, the change was set in stone. Graduation was nominated for Album Of the Year (ultimately losing to Herbie Hancock's River: The Joni Letters) and took home Best Rap Album honors. "Stronger" would win Best Rap Solo Performance, topping 50 Cent's "I Get Money" and even Jay Z's "Show Me What You Got." "Good Life" won Best Rap Song, beating himself ("Can't Tell Me Nothing" was also nominated) and 50 Cent's "Ayo Technology" in the process. West also won best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group for the track "Southside" with Common.

GRAMMY scoreboard: West 4, Fifty Cent 0.

"A lot of people said hip-hop was dead, not just Nas. A lot of people just said the art form wasn't popping like that anymore. I wanted to cross the genres and show people how we can still express ourselves with something fresh and new. That's what hip-hop has always been about." — Kanye West, Best Rap Album GRAMMY acceptance

Many have argued that West's wins were the sole identifier in rap's switch being flipped, though the warning signs were there. A year later we would be introduced to Kid Cudi, and Drake a year after that — arguably the purveyors of what Kris Ex calls the "Kanye-lite" sound. Though he won his own GRAMMY two years later, 50 Cent would never return to reclaim the rap throne, though his business portfolio — including his recent win as an actor and producer for the hit Starz series Power — could easily be a delayed right hook to West's ego.

One thing remains certain: Hip-hop became the zeitgeist of pop culture after this fateful feud, and nothing has been "Stronger" since.

(Kathy Iandoli has penned pieces for Pitchfork, VICE, Maxim, O, Cosmopolitan, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Billboard, and more. She co-authored the book Commissary Kitchen with Mobb Deep's late Albert "Prodigy" Johnson, and is a professor of music business at select universities throughout New York and New Jersey.)

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Lil Wayne

Photo: Jamie McCarthy/WireImage.com

Feature

"Lollipop" To "A Milli": Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter III' 10 Years After

Look back at how Weezy's sixth studio "event" changed the game and inadvertently became his magnum opus

Kathy Iandoli

GRAMMYs

Jun 6, 2018 - 3:13 pm

Few hip-hop albums are referred to as an "event" rather than a "release." However, on June 10, 2008, Lil Wayne created an event with the third installment of his Carter album series, the aptly titled Tha Carter III.

Before delving into this project, it's important to reflect upon two years prior. At the close of 2005, Wayne dropped Tha Carter II, an album that true Weezy aficionados regard as one of his most potent works, though the buck stops there. By the time the calendar turned to 2006, Wayne's fifth album flew under the mainstream rap radar, as other projects from budding acts took precedent, including the Game's Doctor's Advocate, Rick Ross' Port Of Miami, T.I.'s King, Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor, and Nas' declaration heard 'round the world, Hip Hop Is Dead.

"I feel like in 2006, every great artist — save for Eminem and Dr. Dre who were in hiding at the time — made their album," recalls Ambrosia for Heads Editor-In-Chief Jake Paine.

Meanwhile, Wayne dropped Like Father, Like Son, a 2006 collaboration with Birdman, an album described as a cult classic by Complex. In the two-year period between Tha Carter II and Tha Carter III, Wayne was seemingly everywhere.

"Here's Wayne bulldozing through songs — being featured on songs every other week, more song leaks, mixtapes — there was a flood of Wayne music coming out," says Yoh Phillips, DJBooth senior writer. "If you were tuned in, it was a very exciting time because every week there was new music and every song was better than the last."

This period of ambiguity ultimately created what Jay-Z referred to as "Mixtape Weezy," an artist who saw commercial success yet voluntarily spelunked into the underbelly of rap's mixtape scene. Mean and full of lean, Wayne did the opposite of what most rappers did during that period, which was go into hiding into his next major release.

"He was at the top of his game," recalls Young Money/Cash Money Records' Senior Vice President Katina Bynum, who was VP of Marketing at the time. "Every verse he was dropping was different and next level. Just by him being on a song could save a career or break a new artist."

Anticipation was certainly reaching a boiling point for Tha Carter III based on these chess moves.

"He teased us with all of these incredible blows and wordplay and punchlines, so he had to wow us with his next album," Yoh expresses. "I don't think a rapper has done that well of a balance as Lil Wayne during that time. It all helped build the anticipation of what this album was going to sound like."

Then it happened — at a time when summer releases could get lost in the proverbial shuffle — Tha Carter III was unleashed June 10. Before the week's end, projections reported it was already bound for a cool milli in sales.

"I think Nielsen reported the million first week projections very quickly and that was the currency of rap thanks to 50 Cent," Paine explains. "Wayne was completely legitimized in that moment."

The album skyrocketed to No. 1, indeed pushing more than 1 million units in the first week alone — at that time marking the first artist to do so since 50 Cent in 2005. To date, it's certified triple platinum.

At 16 tracks deep, Tha Carter III is lengthy, yet packs enough diversity to solidify any listener as a Lil Wayne fan. Commercial releases like "Lollipop" gave Weezy his most successful single to date, while "A Milli" showcased his unwavering lyrical skill.

"When I heard 'Lollipop' I knew he had created a new lane," adds Bynum. "There was nothing that sounded like it on radio or anywhere else."

"Mrs. Officer" fed the ladies (despite being one of many arguably misogynistic songs on the project), and "Mr. Carter" was an unlikely win due to its collaborators, since no one expected Wayne and Jay to show up together. Then there are songs for the mixtape heroes like "Dr. Carter," where Swizz Beatz lays a boom-bap foundation for Wayne to lay on (rumor has it the beat was originally for Jay-Z).

"It's a David Axelrod loop, and was such a satisfying moment to hear Wayne rap over a DITC-sounding beat and just kill it," Paine says.

Other songs like "Tie My Hands" bring a politically charged Wayne with lines such as "Born right here in the USA/But due to tragedy, looked on by the whole world as a refugee."

Lil Wayne and T-Pain perform at the 2008 BET Awards

Lil Wayne: 10th Anniversary Of 'Tha Carter III'

Of course, what's a Wayne album without braggadocio and loose gang ties? "He's still set trippin', he's still making threats to anonymous adversaries, feeling his own fame," Paine says.

And while it's frequently slept-on beyond live performances, "Phone Home" anchored Wayne's trademark as extraterrestrial. "[Wayne] did an unbelievable freestyle over Jay-Z's 'Show Me What You Got' from [2006's Kingdom Come]" explains Dre of Cool & Dre, who produced "Phone Home." "On it he says, 'We are not the same. I am a martian,' and it always stuck out to me.

"Me and Cool were in the studio and wanted to flip that line. but make a beat that sounds out of this world. We had the whole sound effects, we were beaming him down to Earth. I laid down the hook, 'Phone home, Weezy! Phone home!'"

At the time, Wayne was recording at New York's Hit Factory, and it only took a short while for the hit to be made.

"A few hours later Wayne called him to come down to the studio," Dre continues. "He goes, 'I went to the boogeyman in the closet, Dre. And I came out with this.' We were blown away, and he even kept me on the hook." Per Dre, the heavy use of rock elements on the song led to the concept for Wayne's 2010 Rebirth album.

Strategic collaborations came with the aforementioned Jay-Z, but also T-Pain on "Got Money" (a precursor to the 2017 T-Wayne mixtape) and production from Kanye West, David Banner, Alchemist, and more. While Tha Carter III traveled in many directions, the undeniable focus of Wayne was evident on the work; though its success was also hinged to his omnipresence at the time.

The result was his most commercially received project. He won Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song for "Lollipop" and Best Rap Solo Performance for "A Milli" at the 51st GRAMMY Awards, in addition to scoring a nomination for Album Of The Year.

"We still can't get over not winning Album Of The Year at the GRAMMYs that year," Dre says with a laugh.

Tha Carter III's impact remains a huge footnote in the history of Weezy F. Baby. So much so that Wayne's Weezyana Fest this year will be dedicated solely to the milestone anniversary of the album, a further testament to its "event" status.

At the end of "Dr. Carter," Wayne smugly declares, "Welcome back, hip-hop, I saved your life," an obvious response to Nas' death claim from two years prior. While it's a large badge to place upon his chest, Wayne did save hip-hop in a sense. From itself.

"Wayne completely changed the game," Bynum says. "He's an original, a classic and there will be no one like him ... period."

How The 50 Cent, Kanye West "Beef" Of 2007 Was A Hard Reset For Hip-Hop

Roxanne Shanté circa 1988

Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/WireImage.com

News

Roxanne Shanté: Biopic Reveals The Story Of A Hip-Hop Music Pioneer

Ahead of the Netflix premiere of 'Roxanne Roxanne,' go inside the lasting influence and legacy of the indomitable emcee

Lakeia Brown

GRAMMYs

Mar 15, 2018 - 12:40 pm

Throughout history, many important movements have omitted the significant contributions of women. History simply became his-story. The same is true in hip-hop, a genre that is historically and largely dominated by men.

But hip-hop pioneer Lolita "Roxanne Shanté" Gooden is adding more proof that #TimesUp with her new biopic, Roxanne Roxanne, which premieres March 23 on Netflix.

Starring Chanté Adams (portraying Roxanne Shanté) and Mahershala Ali, the movie takes viewers back to the early '80s when the fiery Queens, N.Y., rapper emerged as a streetwise hip-hop teen legend on the strength of her recording of "Roxanne's Revenge," which is cited as the first (ever!) battle response song recorded and released in hip-hop.

As the film spotlights, before female hip-hop artists like MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, Lauryn Hill, and Lil' Kim sold millions of albums, the young Shanté was in the trenches fighting for a spot that already belonged to her and laying the groundwork for the great women who would follow in her footsteps.

"We all stand on the shoulders of someone," says GRAMMY nominee MC Lyte. "Because she was a solo artist so early on, she paved the way when it came to people being able to accept a female MC as an entity of its own."

That might be one of the reasons executive producers of the film, Mimi Valdes and Nina Yang Bongiovi, reached out to Shanté about making a movie. While hosting an event for the American Black Film Festival, Shanté remembers being approached by the ladies.

"They came down from the balcony after the show," Shanté recalls. "We've been looking for you and we want to make a movie about your life."

Within a year's time, Shante was at the Sundance Film Festival with a critically acclaimed movie about battling both on and off the mic.

Hip-hop was born in New York City. Before anyone had even given the music genre a name, Shanté was in the thick of it. Raised in gritty Queensbridge — the nation's largest public housing development and home to hip-hop legends such as MC Shan, Nas and Mobb Deep — Shanté was a ferocious competitor who played with verbs and nouns on street corners. In 1984, when she was only 14 years old, Shanté recorded the epic "Roxanne's Revenge" at the apartment of DJ Marley Marl, a neighbor and music producer.

It was a powerful, unforgettable and game-changing rebuttal to UTFO's "Roxanne, Roxanne," a song about a woman named Roxanne who ignored the group's advances. Shanté's lyrics were delivered off the top of her head — no pad and no pen — and she literally did it in between laundry loads. On that night, she adopted the name Roxanne, added her middle name Shanté into the equation and emerged as a rechristened shining star.

"I was about 14 or 15 years old sitting in my living room in London when I first heard Roxanne Shanté," recalls Monie Love, British MC and member of the legendary hip-hop group Native Tongues. "She was articulate, smart and just a beast. She gave the guys what they dished out but with a woman's touch. She didn't have to become a man to beat a man, and I loved that."

Take Note: Women In Music

Indeed, Shanté was a powerhouse. Her voice and heart were bigger, stronger and more powerful than her petite teenage frame. She was brave, maybe even the bravest.

"She went toe to toe with the guys and that was exciting," recalls MC Lyte. "It was unbelievable."

"Roxanne's Revenge" would go on to sell more than 250,000 copies and spark the "Roxanne Wars," one of the most infamous and longest-running feuds in hip-hop. She had tapped into something — a girl beating the guys at their own game. She was hip-hop through and through but she was still a young teen, and many didn't think the two made a good couple. Case in point, Shanté recalls entering a rap competition that crowned the winner with a "best rapper” distinction.

"I went against 11 opponents in one day. All men," says Shanté, who remembers the whispers about how great her performance was throughout the day, which led her to feel confident that she'd win. "Kurtis Blow, who I'm great friends with today, was one of the judges, and he asked what it would take for me to lose. They told him that Shanté would lose if he gave her a 2."

And he did. Shanté was crushed. She had won but lost.

"[Roxanne Shanté] paved the way when it came to people being able to accept a female MC as an entity of its own." — MC Lyte

Despite these types of obstacles, Shanté has the spirit of a champion. She continued as a force in hip-hop as a member of the groundbreaking hip-hop collective Juice Crew. She released two solo albums, 1989's Bad Sister and 1992's The B*** Is Back, but neither achieved major mainstream success. Always up for a battle, she waged war against a slew of popular female rappers in 1992 with her single "Big Mama."

"She dissed all of us rappers by name. But I didn't respond," Monie Love remembers. "I had too much respect for her to answer back. She empowered me and inspired me to become a rapper."

That's the funny thing when it comes to women in hip-hop. There can only be one queen. While the genre is competitive by nature, history has shown that men often collaborate and work well together. Women, on the other hand, are often pitted against each other.

"It's just the way it’s been structured for women in hip-hop," Shanté says.

But there's so much more to Shanté's story. Life doesn't suddenly end once the music stops, and it doesn't restart once a movie is made about you. Life is all the stuff in between and beyond. For Roxanne Shanté, it's about being a survivor, pioneer, trailblazer, mother, wife, friend, daughter, and an unbreakable spirit. Her life is marked by the power of believing in yourself despite what the world keeps showing you.

Years after that rap competition, Shanté bumped into Kurtis Blow. He told her that she really had won that rap battle years ago.

"At that time, hip-hop was just getting started, and people were starting to get major [record] deals," she recalls. "There was no way hip-hop was going to be taken seriously if the best of the best was a 15-year-old girl."

Too bad hip-hop didn't know who it was back then.

Catching Up On Music News Powered By The Recording Academy Just Got Easier. Have A Google Home Device? "Talk To GRAMMYs"

(Lakeia Brown is a freelance writer and host of the podcast, Decoded with Elle Bee. She has been published in publications like O, The Oprah Magazine, Essence and Complex. You can follow her on IG @decodedwithellebee.)

Kehlani, Lil Uzi Vert, SZA, and Travis Scott

(l-r) Lil Uzi Vert, Kehlani, SZA, and Travis Scott
Photos: WireImage.com

Feature

How Hip-Hop And R&B Crushed Their Competition: Can Rock Bounce Back?

Chart success, streaming, GRAMMYs and smashing guitars — how the R&B and hip-hop genres beat rock at its own game

Kathy Iandoli

GRAMMYs

Feb 19, 2018 - 2:20 pm

There was a time in the not so distant past when hip-hop was likened to disco. A flash in the pan genre defined by its hyperbolic expression of sound and style, disco fizzled out in the early '80s once the fashion and sonic trends attached to it expired.

Hip-hop was presumably following in its footsteps, especially when so many break records were layered with disco samples to create the early framework of hip-hop's sound — think the Sugarhill Gang's 1979 hit "Rapper's Delight" (GRAMMY Hall Of Fame, 2014), which sampled Chic's 1979 No. 1 smash, "Good Times."

But hip-hop persevered and brought with it an evolution of the R&B genre as well. Combined, the two genres became unstoppable, eclipsing a flimsy stigma of being confined to an "urban" box. Now, four and a half decades since hip-hop's inception, the genre has seemingly taken the music industry over along with R&B, beating rock at its own game. How did we get here?

Theoretically, the move has been gradual, though 2017 marked a quantifiable shift leaning in hip-hop and R&B's favor. First, there are the sales figures: Hip-hop and R&B accounted for 25 percent of music consumption in 2017, with rock trailing at 23 percent. Add to that an uptick in audio streaming in 2017 by 72 percent — with 29 percent of music streamed online being hip-hop and R&B combined, matching rock and pop, which also combined for 29 percent of music streamed online. The two previously gigantic leaders in major genres are now neck-and-neck with the "underdogs" of R&B and hip-hop.

But per Nielsen's 2017 year-end report, eight of the top 10 albums were, in fact, hip-hop or R&B albums, including Drake and Kendrick Lamar for More Life and DAMN., respectively. Meanwhile, Drake and Lamar held down the top two spots on the list of most popular artists based on total consumption (sales and streaming), while Bruno Mars, Eminem, Future, The Weeknd, and Lil Uzi Vert were also among the other artists that proved hip-hop and R&B were the most widely consumed collective genres this past year.

The 60th GRAMMY Awards further punctuated that claim, as artists like Jay-Z and SZA found homes in the General Four categories, with Mars — who earned Record, Album and Song Of The Year — and Lamar sweeping wins across the board.

Watch: Bruno Mars Wins Album Of The Year

Phrases like "the death of rock and roll" have been continually tossed around since this cycle of news arrived. The latest strike against rock came when Coachella announced that for the first time in its 19-year existence there wouldn't be a rock act headlining the festival. The three headliners for the 2018 installment will be Beyoncé, Eminem and The Weeknd.

"I think it speaks to the strength of the music and the strength of the fan base," explains Jeriel Johnson, Executive Director of the Recording Academy Washington, D.C. Chapter. "The fans dictate who shows up on those stages."

While the 2017 tallies may suggest that sales and streams have finally caught up, industry insiders have seen the trends shifting over the last 5 to 10 years.

"Now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

"R&B and hip-hop have always had a huge influence and impact on our culture, regardless of the time period — from fashion to slang to our tastes in music [and] cars," says GRAMMY-nominated producer Harvey Mason Jr.

However, with rap artists growing into cross-cultural icons, hip-hop poured into rock and vice versa.

"I immediately think of artists like Run-DMC, Lil Wayne, Jay-Z, Kanye West, and Kid Cudi. These are a few of the pioneers who helped lay down the foundation for artists like Post Malone, Lil Uzi, [the late] Lil Peep, and Lil Pump to become the new generation of artists to continue the push forward the borders of hip-hop," explains Matthew Bernal manager of media for Republic Records. "From their trend-setting fashion, genre-bending sounds and riot-like live performances, millennials grew up watching these icons and the influence is clear in their music today."

Artists such as Rae Sremmurd, who released the groundbreaking "Black Beatles" with Gucci Mane in 2016, extended that aesthetic — the music video for the hit single showed the duo breaking TV sets with electric guitars.

Behind the song: Post Malone's "Congratulations"

"Post Malone's 'Rockstar,' which was the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks last year, is a strong indication of how today's hip-hop artists view themselves: as rock stars," continues Bernal.

"Urban culture is the new rock," adds GRAMMY-winning producer Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins. "[In] every era there's a change that takes place, and right now Migos, Kendrick Lamar — they're the new rock stars."

"I feel like it was bound to happen," says Nicole Johnson, industry relations at music streaming service Pandora. "Back in the day, rock and roll was started by an urban genre and urban people. But then it became 'sex, drugs, and rock and roll' and, now, isn't that what these hip-hop [artists] are now talking about? Here are rappers just living their best lives, being themselves, tattooing their faces if they feel like it, wearing dresses on the cover of their album if they feel like it. It's all about self-expression."

Johnson adds that Pandora's Next Big Sound has been driven by hip-hop and R&B as of late, leading to the service's launch of the weekly urban station, The Sauce. "There are now so many [sub]genres within hip-hop, of course, it's gonna take over.”

But in the wake of hip-hop and R&B's takeover, so was the digital boom. Urban music jumped onboard streaming services early, with platforms like SoundCloud birthing its own scene, SoundCloud rap, which has given way to artists such as Chance The Rapper and Rico Nasty who have equally dominated the space as other hip-hop artists.

"I think R&B/hip-hop is benefitting from changes in technology," says Mason, underscoring how today's fast turnaround in music creation has placed hip-hop and R&B at a unique vantage point, especially when it comes to topical music. "R&B and hip-hop really seem to have their ear to the ground culturally and in society with everything our country is going through.

"It just seems to be such a transparent outlet for people with feelings and opinions, and now so, even more than ever, music can be created and put out so much more quickly so when something is happening, urban music is reflecting that really quickly."

So where will we go from here? Is rock really fading away? And, if so, can it come back? While the cyclical nature of music would reflect an inevitable return, perhaps rock will have to once again evolve the way hip-hop and R&B had to in order to rise up.

"It'll rebound in a different kind of way, I believe," says Jerkins. "Someone will come along and do it in a newer and cooler way. But right now? Hip-hop, R&B — that's pop. Because pop music is anything that's popular."