Introduction Hip-hop, particularly gangsta rap, also attracts listeners for whom the “ghetto” is a place of adventure … an imaginary alternative to suburban boredom. Chicago Newcity If you’re looking for a book that is not just about music but the cultural factors that surrounded an album's origins, this is the perfect choice. intriguing journey into an album and an area of Houston that feel relevant and essential, even though they lie well off the beaten path of American pop-culture. Houston Press Potts doesn't come right out and say he's approaching gangsta rap as a travel writer, but his analysis is firmly rooted in attention to place, and the histories that inform it. Philadelphia Inquirer The Geto Boys is a welcome addition to the 33 1/3 canon, as it brings some much-needed diversity on several levels.Potts delivers a strong history lesson that is well-researched and gives the Geto Boys their due as hip-hop pioneers. Potts' psycho-geographical exploration of the Geto Boys' widely censored 1990 album goes beyond music criticism and wrestles with something deeper.As each short chapter adds another layer to the narrative, the story of Houston's pioneering gangsta rappers begins to sound like a secret history of late-twentieth-century America. To paraphrase a sentiment from Don DeLillo, this group of young men from Houston's Fifth Ward ghetto had figured out the "language of being noticed" - which is, in the end, the only language America understands. In creating an album that was both sonically innovative and unprecedentedly vulgar, the Geto Boys were accomplishing something that went beyond music.
One quarter of a century later the album is considered a hardcore classic, having left an immutable influence on gangsta rap, horrorcore, and the rise of Southern hip-hop.Ĭharting the rise of the Geto Boys from the earliest days of Houston's rap scene, Rolf Potts documents a moment in music history when hip-hop was beginning to replace rock as the transgressive sound of American youth. When The Geto Boys was finally released, chain stores refused to stock it, concert promoters canceled the group's performances, and veteran rock critic Robert Christgau declared the group "sick motherfuckers."
What might have been a low-profile remix release from a little-known corner of the rap universe began to make headlines when the album's distributor refused to work with the group, citing its violent and depraved lyrics. At the outset of summer in 1990, a Houston gangsta rap group called the Geto Boys was poised to debut its self-titled third album under the guidance of hip-hop guru Rick Rubin.
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