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Similar Hadean scenarios existed in Philadelphia, where, in 1985, Schooly D released his “PSK” (short for Park Side Killaz) single, universally recognized as the first gangsta rap record.
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Shortly before the release of the Geto Boys LP, a convicted killer interviewed by the Houston Chronicle said the Fifth Ward had become “a war zone of nightly shootings, fistfights and police harassment” where “seven-year-old children know how to handle pistols” and “the right amount of money can buy any weapon, even hand grenades.”
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Hell embroiled poor, mostly black neighborhoods throughout the ‘80s as crack invaded. These were resort conditions compared to what was on the way. In 1979, during the Geto Boys’ childhoods, Texas Monthly reported Fifth Ward to have “far more pawn shops, loose dogs, abandoned buildings, bars and broken windows” than “sidewalks, streetlights, fire hydrants, parks or garbage trucks.” One in four streets had no drainage system, and of those that did, half simply drained to open, rotting ditches. The original (and, let’s face it, long forgotten) Boys, when they had the extra “T” in their name (Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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Well, that’s offensive! Why, yes it is, and with this lyrical form of “shock and awe” Geto Boys intended to deeply offend, as a last ditch attempt to draw the attention of a nation ignoring all homefront wars, towards an abandoned community left derelict and broken from societal disregard, that had become its own terrible universe. Lyrics about pistol-whipping women, robbing elderly blind men, dismembering prostitutes with machetes and chainsaws and executing crackhead priests (all in one song) - taken from true stories and police cases that never made it beyond Houston’s Fifth Ward, the cracked-out battlefront of a neighborhood group members Willie D and Scarface grew up in. To be clear though, Geto Boys shit was real. When heavy m etal bands spoke of the ineffably foul act - for instance, Slayer sang about banging corpses in ’89 - concerned parents predictably appeared on Geraldo, but when Geto Boy Bushwick Bill, a black dwarf, rapped about it, the response was abject horror, from community chapels to the White House. The subjects for the songs on the record were (and still are) just plain horrible: extreme murder, rape, and perhaps most heinously, necrophilia. No, the only truly offensive culture, the real seismic threat to America’s skewed and mostly delusional sense of its own morality, was “gangsta rap.” American political and spiritual leaders offered no objections, as protecting Muslim feelings was not a campaign promise. By Desert Storm’s end, in what was gleefully referred to as “shock and awe,” the US and allies had run 115 assault missions per hour, a round the clock, for six weeks straight, each delivering 90 tons of explosives.įM radio drive-time personalities across the nation made merciless Desert Storm skits and parodies built of cultural ridicule.
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The arcade-quality visuals lessened the soul-sucking reality that people were dying and America was loving it from the living room. And the overhead video from actual B-52s (not the “Love Shack” kind) raining savage oblivion on bridges and convoys - dead-ringer Atari, with a touch of Frogger viewpoint. The Apache view screens with 8-bit graphic crosshairs pounding Lockheed Hellfire missiles into buildings and dots that scattered like ants were spot-on Nintendo. The night vision footage of green rockets and tracers racing back-and-forth across the black skies of Baghdad looked an awful lot like the last level of Asteroids. This was next-level nationalism, unprecedented patriotism, televised mass murder with the feel of a dark sporting event and the lo-fi broadcast resolution of a video game. This was groundbreaking stuff, honest-to-goodness live war, featuring play-by-play from on-site reporters and color commentary from retired senior military in the studios. In the early evenings of late January 1991, a fter local news and Wheel of Fortune, the majority of American families tuned in to CNN’s coverage of Operation Desert Storm, the first ever real-time, front line broadcasts in the history of combat.