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STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND; THERE'S NOTHING IN LA SOUTH CENTRAL, EXCEPT GANGS, DRUGS AND RAP MUSIC. SO HOW DID A WHITE ENGLISHMAN BECOME ITS CHRONICLER? January 17, 2000 By Steve Jelbert for The Independent (London) There's Tibu. He doesn't actually live in Compton, but wishes he did. Herman hustles on a street corner to get money to press up a CD - he pushes T-shirts, incense sticks, El Nino permitting, umbrellas. Babyboy is full of plans for an entertainment empire to match Puffy or Master P, but so far it consists of a half-full briefcase. Rah, more realistic, is getting on in the world of street promotions, stickering here and putting posters up there. Big Al is well respected, but struggling to escape the talent show circuit. Blue Diamond's sporting ambitions were halted when this Crip-since-the- crib had to move to a Blood neighbourhood. Staying in and practising his rhymes is safer. Only Short Khop (say "chop") is on his way. Family connections have hooked him up with Ice Cube. Then there's West Side, as Babyboy renames him after discovering his initials. William Shaw is a middle-aged, middle-class English journalist. He followed these Los Angeles music business hopefuls and has recorded their travails in Westsiders - Stories of the Boys in the Hood. But finding subjects was not the simple task you might expect. "Making contact was a lot harder than I thought. I assumed I could just go to the A&R people and ask them: 'Where do you find talent in South Central?' But they don't go and find talent in South Central. They don't need to. So it was talent shows mainly, where you were put in touch with wannabes. It took a long time and it was completely dispiriting at first," Shaw, a youthful-looking 40, was hardly overwhelmed by the charms of the place. "It's easy to go to Los Angeles and hate it - I really tried not to. I wanted to like it, but it's such an unsociable place. It's a very dull city. There's very little to go and see, and all the gigs are showcases. It's a very hard city to find out what's happening in." Rap is currently America's favourite music. Artists virtually unknown over here, such as DBX and Master P, sell records in quantities Oasis can only dream of. But surely the brutal lives they describe are not those of their audience? "I think there's a positive reason on one hand - a liberal spirit that wants to know what it's like on the other side. But Americans are obsessed with 'reality' too. The Nineties' first big music boom was grunge which was real because people were taking lots of heroin and having a miserable time. Poverty and death are as 'real' as you can get," Shaw says. But gangsta rap's internecine warfare that led directly to the murders of its biggest stars, Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG, has led big record firms to turn their backs on the form. Wry filth, such as Eminem (who makes a pre-fame appearance in Westsiders) is in. As a journalist - though he lives in London he's a contributing editor of Conde Nast's US title Details - Shaw found rap's literalism, emphasising specific places and events, told him more than any press release. "It's all in the lyrics. It's not hard to put together." Yet the territorialism which thrills millions of suburban listeners makes the lives of his subjects hellish. His outsider status greatly simplified his task. "It was so easy for me to travel around South Central, yet the people I'd go with would be far more scared than me," he recalls. "I had to meet these South Side Crips, and Babyboy said, 'I'll go with you, but you're making a big mistake.' But I don't come from a territory. It's safer for a white guy than a local black guy." LA's social divisions are more complex than the gap between the wealth in the hills and poverty in the hotter flatlands: 30 years of gang warfare, between Crips and Bloods, have led to a mini-Balkanisation of African- American LA. It's an unreported war: deaths rarely warranting a mention in the Los Angeles Times, recorded instead by people such as the city's dystopian chronicler, Mike Davis and University of Southern California gang researcher , Alejandro Alonso. Mere blocks separate duelling factions, and gangs, and the wrong colour clothes in the wrong place can signal serious trouble. Gangs often become a matter of expediency for youths seeking safety in numbers."This is Alejandro's big point - that you have to have places where people can meet without feeling threatened," says Shaw, alluding to the privatisation of land in part of the city with few public areas, save mini -malls and restaurants. Yet, ironically, a major factor in hiphop's belated explosion in a city hardly famed for black music, was an increasing interest in gangs. "One thing that helped it explode was film - Colors, South Central, Boyz N the Hood," Shaw says. "Also the record industry was moving westward. Maybe they were looking for people on their doorstep," he adds doubtfully. Recording success can also be a fast track to Hollywood, something to dream about while doing small drug deals: on the same street corner day after day. Shaw never romanticises his subjects' lives, and there are no sudden rags-to-riches stories. Yet their intensity with which these young men dream their dreams is telling. "These are people who've had their dignity trampled so many times they're very close to reacting very badly. What also beats me is that they don't know how bad their life is half the time. The number of times someone says, 'There's no place like this place,' and you ask 'Where else have you been?'" Though Shaw says he didn't set out to make friends "as you don't want to censor what you write", you suspect his year's study marked him. He admits: "I'm really worried about how Babyboy takes it all because his own image of himself isn't what I present," but more pertinent is just how the wider hiphop community will receive the book. "When I get to America I'm going to have the shit ripped out of me by people who have an idea what hiphop ought to be and what outsiders are supposed to say about it." Shaw makes no claim to being a rap expert, but recognises just how its finest exponents have been deeply underrated. "I had a very nice review in Q, but opposite was one on a book of Bob Dylan's lyrics. Now he's written some good stuff, but some of these people are brilliant," he grumbles. " They've defined a moment in time, told stories no one was going to tell, got them to people and communicated a great deal." Much the same can be said of Westsiders. 'Westsiders - Stories of the Boys in the Hood', by William Shaw, is published by Bloomsbury at pounds 11.99 GRAPHIC: Rap represents the triumph of pop culture: a wildly profitable mix of music, celebrity, movies and violent crime. Above left to right, the gang film 'Boyz N the Hood'; murdered rap star Notorious BIG; Ice Cube, a rapper who's made it in movies, and rap's most famous victim, Tupac Shakur, celebrated (top) by graffiti All Action News Topics | Home | Research | History | Blood Gangs | Crip Gangs | People| Life in a Gang | Gallery | Iraqi Cards | Memorial | Migration | Graffiti | Resume| Injunctions Homicides | Maps | California Prisons | Contact

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