Cuyamaca College Gangsta Rap Music Discussion

I’m working on a music discussion question and need a sample draft to help me learn.

cGangsta rap was—and remains—controversial. One of the more striking  criticisms about gangsta rap was that gangsta rap is a “modern-day  minstrel show.” (Spike Lee and Stanley Crouch are two examples of  prominent figures who have discussed gangsta rap in these terms.)  Minstrel shows were an American musical theater genre popular from the  early part of the nineteenth through the beginning of the twentieth  century. Minstrel shows caricatured black people for the entertainment  of white audiences. White performers would blacken their faces with  burnt cork or greasepaint and then perform songs and skits that mocked  African Americans as lazy, buffoonish, dumb, and superstitious.

How  do you respond to this criticism? Why do you think this comparison to  minstrelsy was made? What demographic are/were the largest consumers of  gangsta rap? What bearing does that have on this criticism of gangsta  rap.

Given the sensitive nature of this topic, I will remind you all to be thoughtful and sensitive in your discussion.

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