gangsta rap

noun

: hip-hop music with lyrics explicitly portraying the violence and drug use of American inner-city gang life

gangsta rapper noun

Examples of gangsta rap in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Gail Bean and Isaiah John return to their roles as Wanda Bell and Leon Simmons, who are guiding the drug trade into the 1990s as gangsta rap goes mainstream and street thugs become music millionaires. — K. Thor Jensen, PC Magazine, 4 Sep. 2026

This was no gangsta rap Nuremberg, but rather something closer to the trial of Adolf Eichmann — a case tried decades later in which the aging defendant wasn’t the actual killer but a banal middleman, a functionary and a lethal node of transport. — Jeff Weiss, HollywoodReporter, 1 Sep. 2026

The decision to invite Ice-T, who established gangsta rap on the West Coast, and Fat Joe, who hails from the East Coast, was by design. — Kyle Eustice, VIBE.com, 17 July 2026

Thomson ought to spend some time listening to death metal and gangsta rap, or reading the gory novels of Stephen King and Cormac McCarthy. — Michael O’Donnell, The Atlantic, 2 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1989, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for gangsta rap

• handicap
• overlap
• thunderclap
• wiretap
• app
• cap
• chap
• clap
• crap
• flap
• frap
• gap