West Coast Hip Hop

I'm from Los Angeles, California baby!! I represent it to the fullest and love it with all my heart! In accordance with this, I will be inducting a series on the subgenre of West Cost hip hop. This first post will be a general one, about West Coast hip hop and furthermore I will start to highlight specific artists that have made an long lasting and positive impact on West Coast and its music. West Coast hip hop is generally characterized was popularized by artists such as Ice Cube and Dr. Dre. Los Angeles and Bay Area, California are main hot spots of the origin and practice of West Coast hip hop. The West Coast was the fisrt area involved in hip hop to add a voice to the ghetto and the happenings there. West Coast hip hop is political too and it was also infused with guitar ridden beats, making it infused with rock musical elements. NWA's Straight Outta Compton soldifies the West Coast place in hip hop music. With such artists belonging to the area, such as Too Short, Cypress Hill, and Ice T, West Coast hip hop is a historical powerhouse. G angsta Funk or G-Funk was also originated in the West Coast. It was a dominant sound that helped put West Coast hip hop on the map. G-funk incorporates multi-layered and melodic synthesizers, slow hypnotic grooves, a deep bass, background female vocals, the extensive sampling of p-funk tunes, and a high portamento sine wave keyboard lead. There was also a slurred “lazy” way of rapping in order to clarify words and stay in rhythmic cadence. Unlike other earlier rap acts that also utilized funk samples, G-funk often utilized fewer, unaltered samples per song. G-funk often sampled Parliament of Funkadelic songs, popularized by artists like George Clinton. G-funk became the most popular subgenre of hip hop.