Why "Gangsta Rap", the only true Rap, is not in the Golden Age of Music"
Any time "White Folks" write about "Black Folks", take it with a grain of salt; how many white people can vaguely comprehend what it's like to be a slave; how many "White Folks" can vaguely comprehend what it's like to live in a "hard core ghetto".
In the past, a place where predominately Black People lived was called a "Ghetto", but none of those places even remotely compare to "present day ghettos". In the past, many middle class Black People lived where they felt most comfortable, there were also a number of "upper economic Black People" living there as well".
Not until economic factors that affected everyone; such as the high price of all commodities, gasoline being the most notable, did those so called "ghettos" become real "hard core ghettos". Lower middle class neighborhoods all over the USA, became "hard core ghettos" when lower income Blacks could not maintain their property; they were faced with the hard choice of buying food and gasoline, or painting the house; naturally food and gasoline won out. The neighborhood went down, causing middle income "Blacks" and upper income "Blacks" to flee, leaving that entire geographic area to the poorest Blacks.
So you see the last phase in the "Ghetto" was not "White Flight" as everyone is led to believe (that occurred 40 or 50 years ago) it was "Economic Black Flight", that produced current hard core Ghettos, and "Hard Core Ghettos" produced "Gangster Rap", which is an expression of life in an area where the living conditions are socially and physically unacceptable, not because the inhabitants have Black skins, but because they are the worst aspects of the end product of slavery (history is never in the past) and discrimination; "What you see, is what you get" New York, Chicago, St. Louis and L. A., places that generate "Gangster Rap"; the only true Rap, which is an expression of the reality of life in a "Hard Core Ghetto".