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Reflections on a coastal war: East Coast Killer, West Coast Kill

© Steve Juon

It's amazing the amount of misperceptions the media and society have created about the battle between MC's who are chiefly from New York and Los Angeles. Sometimes the rivalry has not seemed so friendly, but always the rivalry has been conducted on record. It's really ludicrous to think that gangs of armed rappers would catch a flight from New York to Cali or vice versa to kill each other; but maybe that's the kind of racist imagery the media has managed to inspire -- a sad commentary on journalism today.

Let me explain for some of you the historical roots of this lyrical war of words, so that you can get an idea of how far from actual fact the mass media really is. Although New York can lay claim to having invented the hip-hop genre, Los Angeles and other major cities were not far behind; and without pioneering or being the first to record hip-hop records were still in the wake of this new splash. Los Angeles can easily claim to be only a year or two behind New York in having made successful records, although old school artists from the West aren't as well known. This is the primary source of dispute: many artists from the East paid little attention or respect to the fact that the West coast had developed it's own sound and style of hip-hop and had pioneering artist just as the East did.

Eventually some MC's began to address this directly on wax; especially at a time when only East coast records were selling in stores. Suddenly, with the introduction of N.W.A., there was a paradigm shift: West coast artists were controversial, exciting, and both white and black audiences flocked to the record stores. Now West coast artists began to outsell their brethern, and some in New York didn't take very well to this. Tim Dog, a member of the legendary UltraMagnetic M.C.'s, recorded a song called "Fuck Compton" which verbally dismissed all of N.W.A. and any artists from the West.

Needless to say, this generated response records, and the response records generated response records. Even people who had once been friends managed to get caught up in the increased hoopla -- Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac actually recorded records together several times, such as the well known "Runnin'" song from the compilation album One Million Strong. However, at a Source Awards Show, Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight made a veiled allusion to New York's own Bad Boy Entertainment when he said "if you don't want your producer in your video, come to Death Row." The former friends were now rivals as their respective labels got engaged in a battle of words; which some people have mistakenly interpreted as leading to the violent confrontations that eventually caused their demise.

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