A few individual songs are seen as precursors to gangsta rap, but its official beginning is usually cited as the late 1980s when Ice-T (Tracy Marrow) and groups such as N.W.A. exploded onto the music scene. This new form of rap came from the West Coast and specifically Los Angeles (previously rap music had been an East Coast phenomenon). It sounded completely different musically than anything that had preceded it and it also had very different lyrics that celebrated violence, crack cocaine, and male sexual prowess, among other things. These gritty and violent lyrics set off a debate that continues today. While there were many slight and subtle variations, for the most part there were two sides to this controversy. Essentially, debate boiled down to a question of which came first, violent lyrics or increased violence in the...