Hip-hop at 50: How West Coast rap sparked a seismic shift within mainstream music

Hip-hop may have been born in New York City, but many regions across the U.S. and around the globe have since put their own stamp on it. Perhaps the first to do it successfully was the West Coast, where rappers brought their own unique sound, along with their real-life struggles to the genre.

As hip-hop marks its 50th anniversary, ABC News is taking a look back at the history of the genre, including the emergence of West Coast rap in interviews with rappers Too Short, E-40, Jay Rock and experts Justin Credible, Touré and Danyel Smith.

"I remember hearing Ice-T '6 'n the Mornin'" and [being] like, 'Whoa, what is that? That is different. That is wild. That's a crazy story.' It was deeper and badder than what we were talking about on the East Coast," music journalist Touré told ABC News.

The emergence of hip-hop out of the West Coast provoked a seismic shift within mainstream music as artists spoke about life in the streets of South Central Los Angeles – from gang life to the everyday struggle of being Black in America.

In 1988, N.W.A came onto the scene, igniting one of the first major disruptions within the music industry and creating a firestorm with hits like 'F--- Tha Police.'

"Man listen, people think that gangsta rap is all like, 'gang banging, shoot 'em up.' N.W.A began talking about police brutality," journalist Danyel Smith said. "That was the thing that blew them up, which is something that we're still talking about now. And I do believe that a group like N.W.A bringing those kind of facts to the forefront started a lot of conversations that no one wanted to have. That's conscious rap."

These chronicles of life provided a glimpse into a way of life experienced by few.

"They were painting this vivid picture that was almost like watching a movie," said Credible, host of LIFTOFF on Los Angeles radio station Power 106. "I was fascinated, you know, and then to think like these things were happening right up the way in this city. I was learning a lot from hip-hop, still am. But those weren't necessarily things we were hearing in school and that was the brutal honest truth."

Education through lyrics were broken down and rolled into melodic and funky beats with the birth of the G-Funk era, which had a sound of its own.

"In some ways, I think the G-funk era is as much about esthetic as it is about sound. It's about the bass in the car stereo speakers. It's about the haircuts. It's about the clothes. It's about the neighborhoods. It's about putting the top down and blasting those funky sounds," Smith said.

More people driving cars on the West Coast compared to New York City also influenced this sound, Touré said.

"The West Coast, it's totally a driving culture, right? And so you're listening to songs in your car. So the West Coast was always like, take the tempo down, right? Tell a story, right? Make it funky, so I can lay back and listen as I'm grooving," Touré said.

In Northern California, the Bay Area brought its own style into the landscape, demonstrating the spirit of hustle with artists like Oakland's Too Short.

Just north of Oakland in Vallejo, California, rapper E-40 was a natural successor to Too Short's glorification of the hustler lifestyle. Quickly gaining popularity with hop-hop group The Click and not long after, enjoying solo success in the early 1990s, E-40's heavy use of regional slang and double entendres separated him from the rest. Classic singles like "Tell Me When to Go" are just one of the many that display E-40's gift of gab.

From the Bay to South Central, the West Coast's themes center around speaking truth to power, and rapper Tupac Shakur embodied this. "Changes" was just one of his hit tracks addressing the socio-economic struggles of the time. While he rapped and repped the West Coast, Shakur spent much of his childhood on the East Coast.

"In order for you to get the ingredients to make Tupac, you have to birth him in New York, drop him off in Baltimore, send him out to the Bay and then push him on down to L.A. You don't get him if you don't take him to those four places," rapper Too Short told ABC News.

From the emergence of gangsta rap and G-Funk to the unfolding of socially conscious lyrics, the origins and success of West Coast rap continue to evolve, leaving a lasting impact on pop culture.

"Whether you agree with it, whether you like it, whether you believe it, they're speaking their stories [into] a huge megaphone. We had to make it even realer and deeper than it already was," Smith said.