Rap Music

The police were polite but firm as they arrested Shahin Felakat, a lanky teen whose mussed-up strands of dirty brown hair reach in all directions, and charged him with singing lyrics that threatened Iran's Islamic order. After a few days in jail, the 18-year-old rapper ran back to the studio to rejoin his homeboys. "The authorities have a very negative view of rap," Felakat says. "They say rap has a corrupting influence.

In the beige linoleum hallway, a fluorescent light flickers on and off as a woman saunters over to visit her neighbor. The elevator creaks and whines, then frees a gaggle of giggling girls. Downstairs in the laundry room, a young mother sorts her children's clothes, enjoying the room's warmth on a blustery day. But for this west Bronx apartment building's residents, the comfort of home may not last.

An article and related materials published on the Los Angeles Times website on March 17 have been removed from the site because they relied heavily on information that The Times no longer believes to be credible. The article, titled "An Attack on Tupac Shakur Launched a Hip-Hop War" and written by Times staff writer Chuck Philips, purported to relate "new" information about a 1994 assault on rap star Tupac Shakur, including a description of events contained in FBI reports.

I DIDN'T know what to make of N.W.A the first time I heard the revolutionary rap group on KDAY, the radio home of rap in L.A. in the late 1980s. The music was a sonic marvel and the lyrics were more visceral than anything I had come across in rap or just about anywhere else short of pulp fiction. N.W.A arrived at a time when rap was still very much on trial in Los Angeles -- just two years after 41 people were injured in a flare-up of gang violence at a Run-DMC concert at the Long Beach Arena.

Their very names strike fear in the hearts of white rappers everywhere: Vanilla Ice. Snow. Kevin Federline. Though there are notable success stories -- Eminem and the Beastie Boys, most obviously -- pale emcees often travel a hard road to respect. "The White Rapper Show," a new reality program debuting at 10:30 tonight, is both a parody and commentary on race in hip-hop.

School administrators in Riverbank, Calif., have banned clothing featuring the name of Mac Dre, a slain rapper who glorified drug use in his music, education officials said. Riverbank Unified School District board members voted unanimously Tuesday to add the Sacramento-based rapper to a list of names and labels banned at the district's only high school. Dre was gunned down in Kansas City, Mo., in 2004 and popularized the slang term "to thizz," to describe being high on ecstasy.

White students at Tarleton State University in Texas hold a party in which they dress in gang gear and drink malt liquor from paper bags. A white Clemson University student attends a bash in blackface over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. A fraternity at Johns Hopkins University invites partygoers to wear "bling bling" grills, or shiny metal caps on their teeth.

African American churches need to speak out against gangsta rap and its negative influence on young people, black pastors from around the country were told this week in Los Angeles. "The church ought to say, 'If you can't do more positive rap, shut up and get the hell out,' " the Rev. Michael A.

A rapper under house arrest can promote his new CD and novel but cannot talk about the second-degree murder charge against him, a Louisiana judge has ruled. Corey Miller, 35, has been ordered to stay at his grandmother's Kenner, La., home until his new trial in the Jan. 12, 2002, death of a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the chest during a brawl at a now-closed club in Harvey. No trial date has been set.