It’s hard to overstate the significance of hip hop in this shift. The culture was blasted by the mainstream for its vulgarity, “gangsta rap” in particular. Just a cursory look at some of the most prominent popular albums and songs reveals, however, an anti-crack theme that emerged in the late eighties and continued on through the end of the epidemic in the mid-nineties. New Jack City, Boyz n the Hood, and Jungle Fever, all released in 1991, depict the horrors of the crack epidemic.
