ONE NEW YEAR'S EVE ON SUNSET BOULEVARD
Watching two women dance back in the '90s suggested the triumph of hip-hop
Cultural shifts are, at least initially, invisible. People start using new slang, buy clothes they would have sneered at a few months before, or danced to music that once would have turned them off. A series of individual decisions becomes a collective movement and something goes from underground to cool to mainstream. It took a lot longer in the past for shifts to make that journey. The growth of a cultural shift is exhilarated in the social media age. The aesthetic triumph of hip-hop, and its overturning of older standards of lyricism and musical production, has its roots in the ‘90s. Over the next few posts I’ll look back on various turning points in that journey.
December 31st, 1992 and I was in Los Angeles working on re-shoots for a hip hop comedy called ‘CB4.’ I was staying at the Mondrian Hotel in West Hollywood so my choices for celebrating the new year’s arrival were very clear. Within walking distance on Sunset Boulevard were two very popular, very different night spots. On the south side of Sunset was Carlos & Charlie’s, which had a ground floor bistro and second floor a club that was a popular destination for the era’s black pop royalty. Prince, Mike Tyson and Eddie Murphy were among the bold-faced names who hung there. Across the street was Roxbury’s, a new night spot with a ground floor bar, second floor restaurant and top floor dance club. This was very much a young white Hollywood crowd with a healthy sprinkling of black celebrities. I remember seeing Rick James sitting on top of a banquet one night with a blond and brunet under either arm. Despite their proximity the two clubs had a different feel because Carlos & Charlie’s was blacker and played more hip-hop at a time the music was still considered confrontation and controversial.
On occasion the music of LL Cool, Whodini and Heavy D and other less abrasive rap acts could be heard at Carlos & Charlie’s along with Prince and Michael Jackson. But the times were changing. Recorded in June 1992 and released as a single that fall, Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg’s “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” was a record that broke down walls with its deep funky groove, keyboard ear candy and Snoop’s silky delivery. Unlike Dre’s hard core NWA tracks of a couple of years prior, this record had a smoothness black adult listeners couldn’t deny. Tucked in amid the Al B. Sure! and Mary J. Blige, “G Thang” felt right at home.
Across Sunset at Roxbury’s the playlist tended towards straight ahead pop (Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”) with the hip hop tending towards lighthearted fun (TLC’s “What About Your Friends,” Kriss Kross’ “Jump,” House of Pain’s “Jump Around.”) These tracks lived happily in a space full of guys in tinted shades, rampant nose candy and Raiders cheer leaders who’d happily discuss their plastic surgery. Sometime after midnight on January 1, 1993, I heard and saw the oddest thing: two very white, very Valley girl looking white women bopping to “G Thang” alone in the middle of the dance floor.
Of course, ‘The Chronic’ was big album and “G Thang” was a big hit. But in hip hop’s journey from the Bronx to LA and points beyond, suburban white women had not been part of rap’s constituency. There had always been a group of white female early adaptors, people who tended to have a taste for black music and dance already. But these were women who looked to have been more comfortable listening to Bon Jovi concert than grooving to gangsta rap. I felt confident they didn’t own the ‘Straight Out of Compton’ CD. However, that record was released in 1988 and this was now 1993, an eternity in pop culture. In those intervening four years Dr. Dre’s production had evolved and so had rap’s vocal style.
Broadcast radio, which was still the ultimate gate keeper for disseminating hit music, was changing its programming philosophy. In the mid-80s many stations proudly promoted themselves by proclaiming a “we don’t play rap” policy. In the ‘90s that programming prohibition was crumbling and these two women, bringing in the new year singing along to an ingratiating gangsta track, struck me as representative of profound cultural shift.
Hip Hop was becoming pop. Michael Jackson had. Prince, Whitney Houston and Lionel Richie had too. This night suggested that Snoop Doggy Dogg would travel that same road. While Dre’s music was smoother than say, Public Enemy or Cypress Hills, the lyrics contained threats of gun violence, the words “nigga” and “bitch,” and edgy street slang. None of these elements were in anyway part of the massive pop hits of the previous wave of black performers. The shift that was happening was about what mainstream people (usually but not exclusively white suburban folks) found acceptable to play in their cars and shake their butt too. Those two women on the Roxbury dance floor were a harbinger of a crossover that would calibrate what was “pop” and what wasn’t.