A Gang of Snaps

A Santa-endowed twenty-five dollars scorching the insides of his pocket, the boy walks hurriedly ahead of his mother, his brow half furrowed in the effort to resist skipping down the mall concourse. Agreeing to meet up in the parking lot, he sprints off, beelining for the Music World. He quickly scans past rows of black-and-white parental advisory stickers, settling his greedy eyes on the prize he covets. The portrait of a smoked-out, cocksure gaze stares back at him. He grabs the disc before heading to the For Sale bin to pick up some seven-dollar mom insurance. The store clerk eyes the parental advisory sticker lazily, but mercifully runs the eleven-year-old’s purchase through the scanner, bagging the tape and CD. Just outside the store, the boy examines the contents of the bag with a sense of criminal awe. He stuffs the plastic square into his waistband like it was a shiny nine-milli, and heads out to the car and his waiting mother.

“What did you buy, dear?”

He proffers the distractor, the ploy, the seven-dollar, family- friendly copy of Hammer’s 2 Legit 2 Quit.

“A rap tape.”

No parental advisory sticker here. Well-repeated lyrics practically echoing in his head:

It's just that gangster glare, with gangster raps
that gangster shit, that makes the gang of snaps

It’s Dre Day, Motherfuckers.

Way back when kids on main Street used to rock red and black lumberjacks (no hats to match), sell Black Cats for quarters, rack the local family-run corner store (Sorry Stadium Market!), and taunt the beat cops who frequented the local Duffins Doughnuts, we took “the projects” on Main and 34^th avenue for the ghetto. As such, when The Chronic dropped that fateful December in ’92, it felt as though our soundtrack had arrived. We, the thronging mass of elementary-aged hooliganry, had been given the gift of G-Funk – music that, as the intro to "Lyrical Gangbang " informed us, “should be played at a high volume, preferably in a residential area.” Music that would piss off our parents.

In short order, winding and grinding replaced wining and dining as the romantic activity du jour (though wining and dining consisted of Doritos and a sucked-back slurpee by the basketball court). John Singleton replaced George Lucas as everyone’s favourite director. School dances were shut down when Dre informed Eazy-E, Luke, and Tim Dog that they could “eat a big fat dick” over the loud speaker. Squirt guns were cocked at rakish angles.

Album appreciation was a different beast. No google-shortened attention spans here. With the hyper-focus of a sonar operator, I listened to “Let Me Ride” dozens of times in succession, rapping along to the lyrics and feeling a little tug inside when Dre told off Aerosmith (and by association Run DMC). To this day, I’m awed by the power of Chomsky’s language acquisition device every time my brain proves capable of recalling the cadence and flow of a random Daz Dillinger verse.

Filled with thick, grungy bass lines culled from Parliament's funkadelic discography, catchy flute solos, sparse tinkling piano, deceptively simple keyboard loops, and smoky Donny Hathaway chestnuts, the Chronic's production was sugar sweet enough to help Tipper Gore's children`s medicine go down. Combined with Snoop's laid-back slang and Dre’s penchant for pithy aphorism, it was an irresistibly seductive formula. Not to mention that, for a 5"0 elementary school kid used to being fucked with on a regular basis, violent, cocksure revenge raps have an undeniable appeal.

It was a simpler time. Beats, blunts, and bitches had almost as universal an appeal as sex, drugs, and rock and roll. No hipster bullshit about listening to the album ironically or appreciating the ongoing creation of the gangsta mythos. Despite the painful, pinpoint accuracy of this analysis, I’d be lying through grill-less teeth if I tried to pretend for a moment that there was anything self-aware about a pre-adolescent (half-)whiteboy asserting that the Man with the Master Plan was indeed “a nigga with a mutha’fuckin’ gun.”

Listening to The Chronic was an unreconstructed joy. And, frankly, it still is.

After the jump, peep the Snoop flat top fade...