Let's get back to the first gangstah game of history! I'm talkin' bout video games here... the first time you could (in a video game) : rob, steal and kill without wondering why. Of course, I'm talking of GTA !
How did I hear of this game first?... Back in 1997, the game was released, and the only information I could have at the time were from politicians sayin': "a game in which you can kill cops is not a game, we have to ban it". Bim : I bought it! That was the best publicity ever for a young teen already fan of gangstah rap, you couldn't have done better dear politician! After convincing my parents with the universal "c'mon mom, it's not because I'd kill cops in a game, that I will do in real life...". Add to this unbeatable argument, a day-to-day harassment, and months later I had it. And the first thing I loved, was the fact I could play a video game, in which you had some proper gangstah rap songs! here is the rap radio:
I never heard of Joyride or Slumpussy before, and I never heard of them after the game either... And it's not surprising when you now that Slumpussy is a fictitious bands! As the track "Black Friday" (first track displayed on this page) has been written by Craig Conner, a musician payed by Rockstar (the rumour says that Craig played all the instruments you can hear in the song). It's a very stereotypical track, when you look back, you can even think he does caricature the gangstah rap of the area... It was very well done tho! Craig did other songs for other GTA, I let you do the research! In the first GTA, one of the best thing was... The Gouranga of course!!! Pure free violence: just kill a team of peacefull monks walking down the streets, if you could hit all of them in one strike, then you had a bonus! How cool? Another very cool thing was, you were actually playing in NYC! I never been out there, so bbeing the "king of NY" from my bedroom was really dope... It really didn't help me to love the cops and to stop to listen to rap tho...
As well, this game was just "the american dream", thug version. You start being a taxi driver... Then you kill the boss of the rival crew. Then you kill other mafia bosses. Then you kill the chief of the police (once again, replace yourself in the context... How cool was that?), and then you're the king of NY (how fukin cool?!). You were just the Tony Montana new generation boy!
Also , you had quite a good range of weapons: fist, pistol, machine gun (that was my favorite one), rocket launcher and flame-thrower (ah nah, this one was my favorite one! my bad!). Oh, and you could bomb your car! which was VERY funny! This game was just a revolution, and mad props to Rockstar, cos' all the other GTA games (except the one in London, I'm not a fan of that one and I never met anyone who was) became classic ones, mashing up the competition every time. And you know, they kept having great soundtracks in every style of music, and just for that: Big up! Awww... I really miss the 90's, everything was dope, even a 2D/3D game which made my teenage lifetime when I was just discovering Hip-Hop... Peace!
- BECRI
