Zuri Day's Thug Love: The Other Side of Rap in the 1990s

Zuri Day’s Thug Love: The Other Side of Rap in the 1990s

Thug Love by Zuri Day is the 10^th book in the Decades: A Journey of African American Romance series. This series consists of 12 books, each set in one of 12 decades between 1900 and 2010. Each story focuses on the romance between African American protagonists, but also embraces the African American experience within that decade. Join the journey on our Facebook page, http://bit.ly/2z9sMrd.

Where were you when the ’90s rolled through? For me, it was a highly transformational decade. As it began, I was a popular morning DJ and radio host who had conquered Kansas City’s theater community as a leading actress. But I wanted more. As the years began to unfold, three pivotal events changed the trajectory of my life—reading inspirational books by the late Myles Munroe titled Understanding Your Potential and Releasing Your Potential, having a brief conversation with the amazing Ruby Dee and interviewing Kristoff St. John from the Young & The Restless. After the radio interview, he and I (and a then little-known Vivica Fox) hung out and took pics in the radio station’s outer office. I asked him what advice he had for me as an actor.

“Get out of Kansas City.” He was totally serious.

In Dr. Munroe’s books, I’d read to rob the graveyard of my dreams. In other words, don’t die without having done everything possible to make them come true. When telling Ms. Dee how I was shooting for Broadway, she’d admonished that I not wait for Broadway but to “do your own.” Now here was a leading daytime television actor telling me to get moving, literally! Spirit was speaking. I listened. In ’94, I relocated to Los Angeles to further my career and grow as a creative artist. It was just after the Northridge earthquake. I remember being asked if I weren’t afraid of moving there after such a major catastrophe.

“No, that’s just God shaking my money loose.” I was totally serious.

So for me, the ’90s were all about taking chances, about living life out loud and on my own terms—bold, authentic, unafraid and unapologetic—an energy reflected in the artistic culture and the world around me. Movies like Waiting to Exhale, Poetic Justice, Boyz in the Hood and Forrest Gump. Literary landscape-changing books like Beverly Jenkins’s Nightsong and Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale. TV shows that raised a generation and raised our cultural conscience—Martin, Family Matters, The Fresh Prince, Sister Sister, In Living Color and Moesha.

There was the music, specifically hip-hop, that climbed on the shoulders of its ’70s and ’80s innovators and announced to the world in no uncertain terms that it was here to stay. It is within this arena of artistic expression and creative genius that my story takes place. In the ’90s, hip-hop experienced some of its highest highs, and lowest lows, and often with the same players. Two artists who dominated the music scene then were Christopher “Biggie Smalls” Wallace and Tupac Shakur. Without getting into the whole East Coast/West Coast beef and the all-day everyday debates that could ensue about it, I’ll just say that the end result was tragic. The world lost two bright lights. When I learned that my novel would be set in this decade, I immediately knew that it would somehow involve one of my favorite creative artists of the decade, the hip-hop prophet, Tupac Shakur.

I love Tupac. Not the misogynist that some of his lyrics sometimes suggested or the monster image that law enforcement and the media underscored. I love who I believe Tupac was at his core, in his soul. The guy who loved Don McLean and read Shakespeare. Who embraced his culture, came from revolutionary pillars and understood the mantel placed on him. Who took care of his siblings, and later his mother, wrote poetry, influenced the 1992 Watts Gang truce, and played little Travis in A Raisin In The Sun. The guy who penned Dear Mama and told women to keep their head up. The Tupac who I believe had he lived, would have been an influential voice for positive change.

Thug Love’s hero, Marcus Moore, is an undercover agent for the LAPD. He is also a friend of Shakur’s and sometimes works in an unofficial capacity as his bodyguard. Through Marcus’s eyes the reader will go inside the world of hip-hop, of the simmering climate and antagonistic relationship between hip-hop, politics and law enforcement, all while seeing a “hard” guy have a soft spot for a woman in media, an industry he feels misrepresents the culture he loves.

Turns out the heroine Traci Johnson’s instant attraction to Marcus is complicated, too. She believes it’s those “gangster” music-playing, sagging jeans-wearing, dope-smoking loudmouths that give the larger African American community a bad name. Solidly upper middle class, Traci is not an elitist. She’s a woman proud of the rich history and legacy she feels represents most of Black America, and she doesn’t want that legacy sullied for a buck and a beat.

In Thug Love, as in real life, situations are rarely black and white. Assumptions can often be incorrect and love can sometimes surprise us. The ’90s paradigm shift in my life certainly surprised me! I came into the decade a creative artist focused on acting and writing screen and stage plays and went out of it carrying the seeds of what would shape the next decade—a story that would become my first novel, and lead me here to you.

Zuri Day is the national bestselling author of more than two dozen novels and the winner of several awards including multiple EMMAs (RSJ Convention) and an AALAS (African-American Literary Award Show) Award for Best Romance. She is also a multiple Romantic Times Contemporary Romance finalist. Her work has been featured in several national publications including RT Booklovers, Publishers Weekly, Sheen, Juicy and USA Today. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @ HaveAZuriDay and keep up with her latest releases, tour schedules and more at  ZuriDay.com.