Compton’s Most Wanted Drop ‘Music to Driveby’ Album: Today in Hip-Hop

On this day, Sept 29, in hip-hop history...

1992: Gangsta rap has a long lineage that can be traced for decades. The heart and soul of the sub-genre was birthed in Philadelphia by Schooly D, according to some, but most fans agree that it blossomed in Los Angeles.

Once N.W.A took off, their success inspired other artists in their home base of Compton, Calif. Those rappers? MC Eiht and Tha Chill, the founders of the group Compton's Most Wanted, with fellow members DJ Mike T, DJ Slip and the Unknown DJ. They once had DJ Ant Capone, but they split ways. Regardless, their first album, It's a Compton Thang, came out in 1990, and it was followed by Straight Checkn 'Em the next year. Today, Sept. 29, in 1992, they released their third album, Music to Driveby.

The crew's topics of choice were everything that came with being an L.A. hustler and gangbanger in the early 1990s: crime, strife and other aspects of the underworld. Music To Driveby was true to form, producing one of Compton's Most Wanted's biggest songs. The track was "Hood Took Me Under," which shares the realities of growing up as an underprivileged black youth in a gang-filled neighborhood.

MC Eiht told a a very vivid story of what can happen to kids who come up in the rough part of town. "'Cause when you grow up in the hood, you gots to claim a set/It's not that you want to but you have to," he spits. "Don't be a mark 'cause niggas might laugh you/
Straight off the muthafuckin'' block."

MC Eiht of course, went on to have a successful solo career of his own, and Compton's Most Wanted went on to go on a eight-year hiatus after this album. They haven't dropped a release as a unit since 2006's Compton's O.G.

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