Where Brooklyn At? Part Two

3rd Bass! What are they doing now? You're right, "The Cactus Album" used its samples very artfully. It was also a novelty to hear a rap album that borrowed from "The Outer Limits," Steve Martin and Tom Waits more than James Brown, "Flash Light" and "Bop Gun."

From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, hip hop was pretty much the only popular music I listened to. The whole genre felt like punk and New Wave in the late 1970s, when it seemed there was a new must-listen album coming out every hour. Public Enemy, Tribe Called Qwest, Digital Underground -- the genre was exploding with creativity.

Then the gangsta rappers rolled in. For every truly talented gangsta rapper like Ice Cube, it seemed there was a legion of bums yelling about gats and hos. It wasn't the violence that bothered me -- I love crime novels, so what kind of a hypocrite would I be if I tut-tutted about the Geto Boyz while reading a stack of Jim Thompsons? -- but the tediousness of the rhymes and the vacuity of the lyrics. The gangstas blanketed hip hop like a B-52 laying down a cloud of Agent Orange, and I lost interest.

I have friends who swear there are all kinds of new groups that dismiss the gangstas and carry on the good work, but I've lost the thread.