West Coast O.G.'s

The West Coast's role in developing and popularizing hip-hop music and culture is immeasurable. Masters such as Dr. Dre, Too Short, Tupac Shakur and Ice Cube are among the most artistically and commercially viable artists in the genre and have played an integral part in making it the most popular youth cultural movement of this generation. But original West Coast hip-hop was fairly nondescript. Early acts such as Ice-T and Too $hort merely put and West Coast spin on East Coast ideas, and it would take the infusion of the electro funk acts such as the L.A. Dream Team, the Egyptian Lovers and the World Class Wrecking Cru for the region to truly find its own voice.

Dr. Dre would emerge from the World Class Wrecking Cru to help form N.W.A., the first supergroup from the West and perhaps the single most influential figure in the movement. The good Doctor has played a key role in nearly all of the important stylistic developments coming from the fertile SoCal scene. But more than just individual figures, West Coast hip-hop is also defined by cultural events. If the N.Y.C.'s 1977 blackout was the pivotal moment for East Coast hip-hop, then the West Coast gazes through the lens of the '92 Rodney King riots. While a handful of classic albums had been released prior to that point, for the layman there was little context for the rage of groups such as N.W.A. But after the riots, the work of artists such as Ice Cube and Tupac Shakur gained a palpable cultural and political currency.

The period between the riots and the '96 murder of Shakur represented the golden years of West Coast hip-hop. And after the death of Tupac and the demise of Death Row records, the movement went into a decline that has only recently been reversed in the new millennium.