H I P H O P M AT T E R S

trying to get the fuck out. I mean, before I was a rapper, what in the hell do you think I was robbing for?” he asked a London reporter

in 1993, �śto stay broke?” Following their own ambitions and com-

mercial instincts, gangsta rappers created their own world and, in the process, emerged as an unlikely group of music makers who turned

the blighted conditions of ghetto poverty into an oasis of adolescent fantasy and popular entertainment.

Los Angeles, in addition to serving as the home for a growing

collection of hard-core performers, had already produced the most ill-famed gangsta rap crew, N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude). Their

combustible lyrics and profane gestures earned them public scrutiny and even a warning from the FBI after the group recorded its anti-authority street anthem, �śFuck Tha Police.” But their reputation as truth-telling street reporters and ghetto ethnographers also gained them a national following and, eventually, platinum-level music

sales. When the chiefs at Interscope were introduced to Marion

�śSuge” Knight and Andre �śDr. Dre” Young, co-founders of Death

Row Records, they were certainly aware of the potential upside of getting into the gangsta rap game. There was, too, as Interscope

would learn in 1996 during the backlash against hard core rap, and Time Warner in particular, a serious downside as well.

. . .

In an industry that has produced its share of unlikely moguls and in-triguing personalities Suge Knight stands out in true ghetto fabulous fashion. Standing taller than six foot five and weighing more than three hundred pounds, nothing from his background suggested, at

least at first glance, that he could run a powerhouse record label. He had ties to the infamous Bloods, a gang in Los Angeles. After a brief and undistinguished career in pro football, he used his size and in-timidating presence to work as a night club bouncer and security

guard.

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