Gangsta Lite In Trying To Please Their Critics, Top Rappers Have Lost The Essence Of Gangsta Rap: Rage

Snoop Doggy Dogg starts his new album, “Tha Doggfather,” on a typically angry note: “This is dedicated to all the niggas who said gangsta rap was dead … (Expletive) y’all.”

But the Dogg’s bark quickly turns into a whimper. If gangsta rap is alive and thriving, you certainly can’t tell by listening to “The Doggfather” or “The Don Killuminati - The 7 Day Theory,” the new posthumous album by murdered rapper Tupac Shakur.

That’s not to suggest gangsta rap has gone soft at the cash register. “The Don Killuminati” debuted this week at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart, selling 667,000 copies in seven days. “Tha Doggfather” - the follow-up to Snoop’s multiplatinum 1993 disc, “Doggystyle” - is expected to hit the chart at No. 1 next week. And this week’s Top 10 list of best-selling albums features gangsta discs by Mo Thugs Family, an offshoot of Bone Thugs N Harmony, and Ghostface Killah, a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

But while the public’s ears are still perked, gangsta’s message is getting limp. “Tha Doggfather” and “Don Killuminati” - both recorded before the shooting of Tupac - depict the twin pillars of gangsta rap trying to “mature.” But instead of growing, they end up rapping out of both sides of their mouths - spewing the nastiest tales you ever heard, then offering up positive “messages” to appease critics who say gangsta is a bad influence.

Gangsta rappers used to turn a deaf ear to the naysayers. What made N.W.A.’s 1989 album, “Straight Outta Compton,” such a landmark work was its undiluted rage, not its ability to mix violent images with positive messages. The latest albums by Snoop and Shakur, by comparison, feel watered-down and compromised.

Both rappers ambitiously compare their new albums to gangster movies. “Tha Doggfather” is a play on “The Godfather,” Francis Ford Coppola’s classic 1972 Mafia flick, and its song “Downtown Assassins” features a rapper mimicking Tony Montana, the Miami mob kingpin played by Al Pacino in “Scarface.”

Although Shakur made his disc under the pseudonym Makaveli - in homage to the Italian writer Niccolo Machiavelli - he also titled a tune “To Live and Die in L.A.” in tribute to the violent 1985 drama starring Willem Dafoe.

But the movie/music analogies don’t float. Unlike directors of mob films - who build characters and plot over two hours to tell a cohesive story - Snoop and Shakur merely flash a series of snapshots at the audience. They’re never sure what story they’re telling, and neither are the listeners.

After reveling in the brutality of ghetto life for 60 minutes, Snoop turns 180 degrees and rhapsodizes about “a world where niggas don’t kill each other.” Earlier, during “When I Grow Up,” he warns a young admirer to become a doctor, a lawyer or a football player … anything but a gangsta rapper.

The effect is like watching “Faces of Death” with “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” spliced in the middle.

Shakur’s approach is more subtle at times. The prison inmate in “White Man’Z World,” for example, is a complex character who’s thinking hard about racism, misogyny and black-on-black crime. “I ain’t saying I’m innocent of all this,” he raps. “This song is for all the times I messed up.”

But the rest of the words on “The Don Killuminati” aren’t nearly as focused as those on “White Man’Z World.” In one song, he claims the lyrics on “Killuminati” are “the realest I ever wrote.” In another, he admits he’s merely “making money off of cuss words.” One minute, he vows to give up the gangsta life; the next he disses East Coast rappers as “roaches” and boasts - accurately, it turns out - “this thug life will be the death of me.”

Gangsta rap started having self-doubts long before Shakur died Sept. 13, six days after he was shot in a car ambush in Las Vegas.

Snoop toned down his gangsta rhetoric after being charged with the 1993 killing of an L.A. gang member (he was acquitted earlier this year). Dr. Dre, who produced Snoop’s multiplatinum debut disc, bolted from the gangsta label Death Row earlier this year and recently emerged with an anti-gangsta tune, “Been There, Done That.” And Shakur had publicly renounced his “thug life” several times, only to embrace it again.

Musically, Shakur was trying to mature with “Don Killuminati,” his fourth solo album. Edgy flamenco guitar work drives several songs. “White Man’Z World” is fueled by smart, Boyz II Men-style vocals, and the lust-for-guns tale “Me and My Girlfriend” gets its ominous feel from minor-key Middle Eastern riffs. Snoop, by comparison, sounds lost without Dr. Dre, who gave the bluesy swing and jazzy swagger to “Doggystyle.”

Despite Shakur’s musical growth (and Snoop’s lack of it), neither “The Don Killuminati” nor “Tha Doggfather” are able to raise gangsta’s point-blank message to more “mature” levels. That’s because gangsta rap was never meant to grow up.

Like free-form jazz in the ‘60s or three-chord punk rock in the ‘70s, gangsta wasn’t supposed to stick around for decades and age like fine wine. It was designed to create a ruckus, to change the way people thought about music and then to fade into obscurity.

So far, that hasn’t happened. Seven years after N.W.A. scored the first million-selling gangsta disc, the genre remains a commercial gold mine. As a creative force, however, gangsta has reached its expiration date: Snoop and Shakur’s new albums prove you can’t lengthen gangsta rap’s lifespan by rationing its bullets.