Alex Henderson

Boogie Down Productions
Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop  [Expanded Edition] 

1989 was an important year for Boogie Down Productions and their outspoken leader Lawrence Kris Parker, a.k.a. Blastmaster KRS-One. That year, KRS’ Stop the Violence Movement had a major hit with the single “Self-Destruction.” And 1989 also saw the release of BDP’s third album, Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip-Hop, which went gold in the United States for sales of more than 500,000 copies and enhanced KRS’ reputation as one of hip-hop’s most outspoken political commentators. With Ghetto Music, KRS didn’t retreat from the heavily sociopolitical direction of BDP’s second album, By All Means Necessary; instead, he became even more sociopolitical and wasn’t the least bit shy about it.

 KRS (b. August 20, 1965) was rapping about politics as early as 1984, when he first met the late Scott Sterling, a.k.a. DJ Scott La Rock (b. March 2, 1962), in the South Bronx and joined forces with him in a short-lived group called Scott La Rock & the Celebrity Three (the other members were Levi 167 and MC Quality). That group recorded one single, “Advance” (which talked about preventing nuclear war), before breaking up. But KRS and La Rock continued working together when BDP (whose original lineup also included rapper/deejay Derrick Jones, a.k.a. D-Nice) was formed in 1985, and the two of them collaborated on BDP’s debut single of 1986, “Say No, Brother (Crack Attack, Don’t Do It),” which came out on Rock Candy Records. Describing

the horrors of crack cocaine, “Say No, Brother” indicated that KRS and La Rock planned to continue in the sociopolitical direction of Scott La Rock & the Celebrity Three. And sure enough, BDP had a lot to say about urban crime and violence on their first album, Criminal Minded, released by the independent B-Boy Records in early 1987. La Rock, sadly, became a victim of urban violence himself when he was shot and killed in the South Bronx on August 27, 1987 at the age of 25.

Some BDP fans assumed that La Rock’s death would mean the breakup of BDP; instead, KRS kept the group going, and BDP became even more popular. BDP’s second album, By All Means Necessary (released by Jive Records in 1988), outsold Criminal Minded and went gold in the United States, which was impressive in light of the fact that By All Means Necessary received very little commercial radio airplay. Back in 1988, most urban contemporary and Top 40 radio stations were still reluctant to play hip-hop other than crossover pop-rap hits such as MC Hammer’s “Turn this Mutha Out,” J.J. Fad’s “Supersonic,” Tone Lōc’s “Wild Thing” and L’Trimm’s “Cars That Go Boom.” Hardcore rap wasn’t exactly a priority for commercial radio (either urban or Top 40/pop) in the late 1980s, especially when it was something as unapologetically sociopolitical as By All Means Necessary (whose title was a play on Malcolm X’s words “by any means necessary”). And with Ghetto Music, KRS (who produced this album and wrote all of the material himself) didn’t back down from his sociopolitical message at all.

KRS covers a lot of ground on this album, discussing black history on “Ghetto Music” and the singles “Why Is That?” and “You Must Learn” and decrying police brutality on “Who Protects Us From You?,” “World Peace” and the reggae-influenced “Bo! Bo! Bo!” This album is vehemently critical of both the cops (the ones who exceed their authority, anyway) and the robbers, and KRS revisits the subject of urban crime on the single “Jack of Spades” (one of 1989’s top rap singles). This expanded edition of Ghetto Music contains four bonus tracks, including three different versions of “Jack of Spades” (one of them instrumental) and a remix of “You Must Learn.”

Urban crime was a subject that hit home with KRS—not only because of Scott La Rock’s senseless murder, but also, because of violent incidents that were taking place at hip-hop concerts in the 1980s. So in 1988, he founded the Stop the Violence Movement, a coalition of East Coast rappers speaking out against inner-city violence. The Movement’s “Self-Destruction” (which KRS produced with BDP’s D-Dice) was among the definitive hip-hop singles of 1989 and boasted an all-star cast that united BDP with Kool Moe Dee, Public Enemy, Heavy D, Doug E. Fresh, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, Just Ice, MC Lyte and members of Stetsasonic—in other words, a who’s-who of New York City rappers who were popular in the late 1980s. Kool, who was one of hip-hop’s founding founders and was an ex-member of the Treacherous Three (one of New York City’s earliest hip-hop groups), delivered the song’s classic lyrics: “I never had to run from the Ku Klux Klan, and I shouldn’t have to run from a black man.”

BDP did a lot to popularize the fusion of reggae and hip-hop, and reggae is a strong influence on Ghetto Music.  KRS incorporates reggae on “Bo! Bo! Bo!” and “Jah Rulez” as well as on “Hip-Hop Rules” and “The Style You Haven’t Done Yet.” On “Jah Rulez,” KRS features singer/rapper Pamela “Harmony” Scott, the younger sister of the late rapper and BDP member Ramona Scott Parker, a.k.a. Ms. Melodie (who married KRS in 1987, although they were divorced in 1992). Melodie was only 43 when she died on July 17, 2012. 

The reggae influence on Ghetto Music asserts itself not only with the use of reggae beats on some of the songs, but also, with KRS’ ability to combine New York City-style rapping with Jamaica-style toasting. In reggae, the term toasting refers to a type of chanting that started in Jamaica with dubwise artists like King Tubby, I-Roy and U-Roy and continued with the more forceful dancehall style that came after dubwise. And on the reggae-influenced parts of Ghetto Music, KRS has no problem bringing toasting into a hip-hop environment.

“Reggae and rap are the same music,” KRS told this journalist in a 1989 interview for Black Sounds Magazine. “They just speak to different cultures. The rap audience understands reggae, and the reggae audience understands rap. But they don’t understand each other’s cultures. I want to be the fusion between that. Reggae is ghetto music.”

During that 1989 interview, KRS also explained why he called this album Ghetto Music. KRS, who was 24 a.t the time, noted: “This album is called Ghetto Music because it’s directed toward the ghetto consciousness. Rap is the language of the ghetto, the language of the oppressed. When I say oppressed, it doesn’t have to be black people oppressed. If you have some sort of problem, you’re gonna speak in a rap language—an I-don’t-give-a-fuck language. That’s what Ghetto Music is written for. Only the ghetto consciousness will understand it; only the ghetto consciousness will enjoy it.”

Another thing KRS addressed during that interview was the fact that an album with so much hard-hitting subject matter had gone gold even faster than By All Means Necessary. As KRS saw it, Ghetto Music (which made it to #7 on Billboard’s R&B albums chart) wasn’t a commercial success despite its heavy political content, but because of it. “Intelligence sells, but it takes longer to sell than sex and violence,” KRS asserted. “When intelligence starts selling, it booms. I think that’s why Ghetto Music is selling more quickly than Criminal Minded and By All Means Necessary.”

To fully appreciate the role that KRS came to play in political hip-hop, one needs to take a look at hip-hop’s history. Hip-hop, which started in Harlem and the South Bronx in the late 1970s, wasn’t known for sociopolitical lyrics in the beginning. Many of the early hip-hop singles—Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rapping” and the Sugarhill Gang’s “Rappers’ Delight” in 1979, the Sequence and Spoonie Gee’s “Monster Jam” in 1980, the Treacherous Three’s “Feel the Heartbeat” in 1981—were fun, escapist party songs. But in 1982, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five took hip-hop in a much more sociopolitical direction with their seminal “The Message.” A no-nonsense commentary on violent crime, poverty, unemployment, homelessness, incarceration and social decay, “The Message” was a major departure from the good-natured fun and frivolity of Flash’s previous singles (which included “Superrappin’” in 1979 and “Freedom” in 1980). “The Message” demonstrated that hip-hop could be every bit as socially and politically relevant as the protest songs of Gil Scott-Heron, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye and Bob Dylan, and its impact was huge. After “The Message,” sociopolitical hip-hop became plentiful; 1983 saw the release of Run-D.M.C.’s “It’s Like That,” Captain Rapp’s “Bad Times (I Can’t Stand It)” and Flash’s “New York, New York,” and 1984 gave us Dr. Jeckyll & Mr. Hyde’s “Fast Life” and Run-D.M.C.’s “Hard Times.” In 1985 came the Fat Boys’ “Don’t Be Stoopid,” Toddy Tee’s “Batterram” and Ice-T’s “Killers.” If fact, it was Ice-T himself who turned this journalist on to BDP (during a 1986 interview in the Hollywood apartment where he was living at the time, Ice—who was one of BDP’s earliest supporters—gave yours truly an extra copy of the

“Say No, Brother (Crack Attack, Don’t Do It)” single that he had on hand. At the time, both Criminal Minded and Ice-T’s first album, Rhyme Pays, had yet to be released.

Certainly, “The Message” and other sociopolitical singles that Flash and Grandmaster Melle Mel (a member of the Furious Five) recorded in the early 1980s had a major impact on KRS and Scott La Rock. The anti-cocaine message of Mel’s 1983 hit “White Lines” was echoed in “Say No, Brother,” which made it clear that BDP were determined to be a group of substance. And there was plenty of substance on Criminal Minded. The first BDP album described, in no uncertain terms, how hard the streets of the South Bronx could be in the 1980s. From “Super Hoe” to the gritty “9mm Goes Bang” to the single “South Bronx,” Criminal Minded was a consistently blunt and hard-hitting album. Criminal Minded was blunt whether KRS was rapping about life in the Boogie Down Bronx or turning his wrath on the Juice Crew, the Queens hip-hoppers he lambasted on the single “The Bridge Is Over” (one of the classic diss records of its time).

 In 1986 and 1987, KRS and La Rock had a well-publicized feud with rappers MC Shan and Roxanne Shante, producer Marley Marl and other members of the Juice Crew. BDP attacked the Juice Crew on “The Bridge Is Over” and “South Bronx”; the Juice Crew dissed BDP via Shan’s “Kill That Noise” and Shante’s “Have a Nice Day.” But “South Bronx” was more than an attack on the Juice Crew; it really dug into hip-hop’s rich history and brought out how important the Bronx was to early hip-hop. Indeed, the Bronx was the home of hip-hop pioneers like Flash, Melle Mel, Afrika Bambaataa, the Cold Crush Brothers, Grandmaster Caz, Kool DJ Herc, the Jazzy Five, the Funky Four Plus One and Kool DJ Red Alert—and KRS was well aware of that.

But at the same time, KRS realized that in the late 1980s, hip-hop’s impact was being felt way beyond the Bronx and, for that matter, way beyond New York City. KRS realized that he had an international audience, and he brought that audience a wealth of sociopolitical information on By All Means Necessary and Ghetto Music. Those two albums sent out a message that KRS, along with Public Enemy and Ice-T, was one of the MCs to pay close attention to when it came to political and social issues. KRS maintained a heavily sociopolitical focus with 1990’s Edutainment and 1992’s Sex and Violence (which was BDP’s fifth studio album) and with the solo albums he recorded after that. KRS’ solo career began with 1993’s Return of the Boom Bap, and he has since recorded more than 10 albums under his own name.

KRS, now 47, continues to perform, record and speak his mind on social and political topics. But his biggest sellers are still the albums from BDP’s commercial heyday, and 24 years after its initial release, Ghetto Music hasn’t lost any of its incisive power.

—Alex Henderson, June 2013

Alex Henderson’s work has appeared in Billboard, Spin, Creem, The L.A. Weekly, JazzTimes, Jazziz, AlterNet, Cash Box, HITS, CD Review, Skin Two, Black Beat, The Pasadena Weekly, Black Radio Exclusive (BRE), Music Connection, Latin Style, The New York City Jazz Record and many other well-known publications. Henderson (alexvhenderson.com) has also contributed several thousand CD reviews to The All Music Guide’s popular website and series of music reference books.