N.W.A.'s 1987 Gansta rap anthem, "Straight Outta Compton," that made them a public enemy to people in power, and instant heroes to millions of young people in 1987, across racial lines. Let's face it, when you listen to this rap, you feel tougher than you really are. Everybody growing up wants to feel like a bad muthafucker at some point.
From goofy white kids in suburbs and trailer parks to Latinos to the millions of young black kids living in the urban suburban hoods of America, as well as other ethnic groups, this rap, and this album made Thug Life and Compton cool and famous. Suddenly a huge chunk of my generation wanted to not only become rappers, but thugs and gangstas as well. I didn't listen to rap much, but I heard this from many different friends playing it over and over. I heard that first line, "You're about to witness the strength of street knowledge," dozens of times, because producer Eddie Roman sampled it in the 1992 Mat Hoffman BMX video, Headfirst, the most influential BMX video of all time. And I watched that video more times than I can count.
Yes, an album that had suddenly had millions of teens and young adults wanting to be thugs had a lot of bad influence. Definitely. But this album became so popular, in part, because it gave a voice to millions of the voiceless living in poverty, ghettos, and really tough circumstances, around the U.S. and the world. That's why it resonated, and it broke a ton of new ground in the music world. It got kids in the hoods, all kinds of hoods, interested in writing rhymes. Expressing themselves. Poetry. Words became important to millions of kids who probably weren't the best students. That, in my opinion, also had a tremendous positive affect on lots of young people.
Yes, Straight Outta Compton and the whole gangsta rap culture glorified guns, selling drugs, thug life, gangs, misogyny and a lot of bad shit. At the same time, it gave hope, of sorts, to a whole generation of poor kids, black, white, and every other color and background. While these raps sparked a lot of negativity, they also talked about those that never got talked about in mainstream media. This rap, and the others of the era, helped spark urban street culture, graffiti, all forms of hip hop, break dancing, slam poetry, clothing companies, and a lot of hustlers turned entrepreneurs. That happened in places where most kids saw little hope of a successful future.
Along with the explosion of wannabe rappers and thugs, came an explosion of African American-centric slam poetry, hip hop and R&B music, videos, dancing, and the emergence of multiple entire industries. That's my point in this blog post, Straight Outta Compton, came from guys on the streets, and, among other things, was innovative. These crazy young thugs in this video, which is how most of us saw them then, invented something new.
What they invented, like a lot of new things, was something many people of the time though didn't need to exist. All kinds of parents and authority figures hated rap music then. But hip hop resonated with young people, all kinds of young people. That happens with all kinds of innovations. Gangsta rap eventually led to thousands more mainstream rappers, writing and rapping about their personal world, and that happened all around the world. The hip hop/rap culture of the hoods of America, that NWA helped create is not only still around, it's worldwide, it's a whole world of businesses bringing on over $15 billion a year in 2014, with estimates of $30 to $60 billion a year these days, and predictions of $130 billion in annual sales by 2030. It's still growing, and evolving, 35 years later. To put that in perspective, the total revenue of the NFL, (all 32 teams together) was $12.2 billion in 2020, down from $15.2 billion in 2019, pre-Covid. By total income, hip hop has been bigger than the pro football for 5 or 6 years now.
Innovation is nearly always frowned upon when it's new, whatever direction is comes from. The powers at be usually see only trouble, if they notice the innovation at all. They miss the opportunities that come with the fresh, new, and often crazy-looking, innovation. Hip hop was scary, especially for old white people, in the late 80's and the Gangsta Rap/East Coast-West Coast rivalry of the early 90's. And then suddenly it wasn't, and the corporate bucks started rolling in.
Innovation, new ideas, look weird and crazy and scary at first, and then, if they resonate with people, they become the mainstream a generation later. Then something else innovative comes along and freaks people out.
Nobody around the young geeks Bill Gates and Paul Allen, in the mid 1970's, really understood their vision for the future of writing computer software. IBM, the computer behemoth of the time, didn't see what they saw. They were true geeks back when geeks got harassed and beat up just for being geeks. Young Steve Jobs was a vegetarian, sometimes fruititarian, who often went without showers and didn't wear shoes much of the time, in his 20's. He co-founded Apple Computers with fellow geek Steve Wozniak, in a San Jose garage, the trillion dollar plus business now simply called Apple. Mark Zuckerberg and friends were dorky rich kids who created a software site to get laid at Harvard, called The Facebook. Jack Dorsey and cohorts, at what is now Twitter, were working on becoming the kings of podcasting in the early 2000's, when almost no one was really into podcasts. Then this idea for a short, "burst" message platform came up in a weekend brainstorming session. They blew off the podcast business and started Twitter. If any of us had seen these guys in their early years, we would have said, "What a bunch of fucking losers!" They were all weird, in different ways, and they were all innovators. So were the thugs in NWA, and the other early rappers in the 80's and 90's, to mainstream, "normal" adults.
There are a lot more people on "the streets" than thugs. And I am anything but a thug. This blog post is about the breadth of what you might call "street knowledge," and how that ties to innovation and creativity. A lot of thugs die young, and while most of us do some really stupid shit in our teens and 20's, we don't want to die young. N.W.A.'s debut album in 1987 threw black rappers rhymes about ghetto reality at the world with an attitude that still resonates. This album introduced us to Ice Cube, MC Ren, Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Arabian Prince, and DJ Yella, as young guys, all in their late teens or early 20's.
Most respectable adults in 1987, if they saw the video above, would expect those guys to either die young in gang violence, or spend most of their lives in prison. That's all most adults, and the major record labels at the time, could see. But it's now apparent that there was a lot more to these young rappers, and many other innovators in hip hop, than we could see back then.
It's 2022 now, 35 years after Straight Outta Compton came out. These guys have families now. They also have successful businesses. Arabian Prince is an author and radio host, as well as a rapper. Ice Cube is now listed as an actor, producer, and writer on IMDB. He's also got a professional 3 on 3 basketball league, Big 3, going. A Google search shows his net worth is estimated at $160 million. MC Ren is married, has five kids, and has been involved in music and some film work most of his life. He's doing well financially, as well. Eazy-E became a legend of gangsta rap, in the late 1980's, and early 1990's, He was married and had one kid, and another on the way when he died of pneumonia in 1995. NWA member Dr. Dre is now listed as a rapper and entrepreneur, he co-founded Death Row Records, his Beats headphones are everywhere, and he produced the 2022 Super Bowl LVI halftime show at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, a handful of miles from Compton. Oh yeah, and he sold his Beats headphones to Apple for $3 billion in 2014, becoming a subsidiary of Apple. His net worth is listed at $800 million now.
What's my point? There's something to be said for "street knowledge." The guys from NWA haven't spent their lives in prison, and much to the surprise of many "normal" people who first saw them in the late 80's, as a group they're quite successful now. In some cases, they became incredibly successful in music, TV, movies, and business. How did this happen? What is "street knowledge" anyway?
Hustling- When you live in a poor community, whatever the ethnic background, and you find something you want, you need either steal it, or come up with money to buy it. Poor kids learn early how to hustle. Find something you can sell, then buy low and sell high until you have money for the things you want. Yes, it could be drugs, but it could also be T-shirts outside the basketball arena, or soda, water bottles, and candy on the subway. It could be CD's or single cigarettes or selling electronics at the local swap meet. Poor kids learn a bunch of ways to come up with money, whether legal or illegal. When hustling is channeled into legal activities, it's called sales, and sales make money.
Self-motivation/self-starter- If you're poor, and you want something, and you know no one will buy it for you, the YOU need to get busy to get it. If you're in a really sketchy living situation where there's not enough food sometimes, YOU have to do something to to get food to eat. This is horrible, but it also gets kids used to making something happen, one way or the other. If you go hungry, or never have decent clothes. electronics or whatever unless you go after it, you learn young to go after things. Getting yourself motivated and going out and doing something, even if it's not the best thing, becomes a habit. Why are business entrepreneurs entrepreneurs? Because they motivated themselves, and started a business. Becoming self-motivated or a self starter, transfers to the work world and business world later in life.
Creativity- Not only is writing rhymes, rapping, a form of creativity, but so are many of the related activities of street culture. Breakdancing and later forms of dancing, creating beats and music, graffiti and other artwork, actual singing, costume/wardrobe design, making flyers and advertising for shows, and much more. It takes a whole group of creative activities to put on a local hip hop show, or to record a single or album back in the day. All these forms of creativity can lead to other types of creative work once some money starts rolling in.
Do-It-Yourself ethic- 1970's punk rockers showed young people the power of Doing It Yourself, whatever "it" is. No one would record or produce their albums, so the punkers figured it out, and recorded and produced albums themselves. By the late 80's, when hip hop exploded, the DIY idea was popular in hardcore punk and rappers seem to have followed that lead. If no one will do what you want done, Do It Yourself. Like the other skills above, doing stuff yourself becomes a habit. That's another habit that transfers to business world.
Facing fears- There are all kinds of things and situations people are afraid of. But the kids growing up in a really tough neighborhood are much more likely to be threatened physically on a regular basis, and have to learn to deal with it. In adult life, starting anything new, a business, an organization, creating a project of some sort, brings people face to face with some of their fears. For the kids who learned to deal with physical fear at a young age, something like starting a new business, or recording a record is much less scary. Having learned to act in the face of fear, even if it's not the smartest type of act, gets people more used to facing their fears in other areas of life, like art, music, or business.
I grew up pretty much the opposite of the guys in NWA, I was a dorky, pudgy, smart kid, bouncing around small towns in Ohio. I was afraid of everything as a kid. Later, while in high school in Boise, Idaho, I got into BMX bikes. That led to street riding, and when we moved to San Jose, California, running into the characters on the streets of the big cities of San Jose and San Francisco. Little by little, I spent more time riding in sketchy neighborhoods, particularly when I moved to Southern California later on.
Most of the best bike and skate street spots seemed to be in sketchy neighborhoods. My friends and I slowly learned to interact with the wide variety of people you see in the urban world, from homeless guys who wanted a beer or a cigarette, to local gangbangers who wanted to steal our bikes. Much later, in adult life, I drove a taxi for years, and then became homeless, first living in my cab, and later alone on the streets. I've met and see hundreds of different characters on the streets, and learned that these skills above are part of what we generally refer to as "street smarts," When it comes to starting new projects and small businesses, these skills, and other aspects of "street smarts" will usually get you much farther than book smarts.
I've been an avid reader my whole life, and there is a tremendous amount to be learned from reading, and these days, self-directed online learning. But when it comes to building a business, street smarts are a key part of what it takes. I think that's a big part of the reason for the continued success of people like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, the other members of NWA, and so many other rappers and people who rose out of street cultures and rough childhoods.
While I'm definitely not saying kids need to become thugs, sell drugs, and write gangsta raps, there are skills learned, and traits inherited from street culture that do really help in life later on. Yes, there is definitely strength to be found in "street knowledge."
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