On Tuesday, September 13, a burger joint in Fresno, California, called Take 3 transformed itself into a pop-up restaurant called the Powamekka Cafe, named after a business Tupac Shakur once dreamed of opening. Tupac’s restaurant would’ve used other rappers’ recipes, but they weren’t on the menu at Take 3’s pop-up. According to Billboard, the options at Powamekka included “Tupac-inspired dishes such as ‘Thug Passion’ cake pops, ‘Mac-and-Cheeseburgers’ or even a ‘California Love’ chicken sandwich.” The whole thing was a tribute to Tupac’s legacy on the 20th anniversary of his death—he was shot in a drive-by in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, and succumbed to his wounds six days later. In death he became a rap martyr. To the disenfranchised—people rarely if ever given a voice in the processes that shape their lives—he became an international symbol of speaking truth to power.
Original Gangstas, by contrast, shines a light into every nook and cranny of the N.W.A story. Westhoff interviewed more than 100 people for this project, capturing the universe of LA’s nascent gangsta-rap scene, but N.W.A and their early associates dominate the book. That includes their infamous manager, the late Jerry Heller, whose alleged malfeasance helped break the group apart, and early member Arabian Prince, who as Westhoff notes is largely left out of the group’s story. Among the other characters are the D.O.C., a Texas rapper who moved to LA and became one of Dre’s greatest songwriting collaborators as well as the most promising solo act on Ruthless, but whose rap career was ended by a car accident that irreparably damaged his vocal cords; female rap group J.J. Fad, whose breakout success established Ruthless as a hot label before N.W.A got their legs; Don McMillan, the owner of Macola Records, a one-stop record manufacturer and label that served as a vital resource to LA’s 80s hip-hop scene; and Steve Yano, the swap-meet vendor who connected Eazy-E with Dr. Dre.
