Birth: 1990 Bloom: 1994 Death: 1998

West Coast had been dominating in hip hop in the mid-90s, making gangsta rap popular and supporting Dr.Dre as one of the most influential persons in the history of rap.



In Los-Angeles Ice-T recorded albums in his own proto-gangsta style alongside influential musicians of Latina rhythms — Cypress Hill and parodic Pharcyde. The Bay Area district presented supporters of «blue» rhythms Too $hort, good-natured Digital Underground inspired by P-Funk, and MC Hammer.



N.W.A`s album «Straight Outta Compton» (1989) in the gangsta rap style fixed a specific format of the West Coast style — a minimalistic hard sound. After some time Ice Cube left N.W.A and began his solo career. He recorded a number of albums with the same lyrical tone, but with noisy sound in the Public Enemy style. Meanwhile, his band mate Dr.Dre started the Snoop Doggy Dogg project and signed a contract with Death Row Records, where the album «The Chronics» was released, which identified G-funk and gave a birth to a number of imitators.



The famous rap artist Coolio has chosen a more pop-oriented version of West Coast and topped charts in the early 1995 with his song «Gangsta`s Paradise». But dominant sound of West Coast soon went down — 2Pac was killed in 1996, Dre left the music field, the president of the Death Row record label Suge Knight was arrested for a commercial fraud. By the late 90s hip-hop artists had focused on the East Coast sound alongside growing South.

Also read: East Coast Rap, Southern Rap

Umbrellate style: Hip-hop/Rap

I like West Coast Rap

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