The ghetto donny hathaway

Born Todd Shaw, c. 1966, in Los Angeles, CA; raised in Oakland, CA; son of accountants. Addresses: Record company--Jive, 137-139 West 25th St., New York, NY 10001.

The "acknowledged West Coast master of the pimp rhyme," Jonathan Gold wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "Oakland rapper Too $hort built a hip-hop empire on the vulgar street-corner snap, clever though rudimentary litanies of profanity and mayhem." Todd Shaw created the rap persona Too $hort out of the tradition of the "pimp," which was popularized in the 1970s by a fad for "blaxploitation," exemplified in films like Shaft.

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The character is one that has a mixed reception among black audiences. Some listeners see him as an insult to black women and as a degrading caricature of black masculinity; others have flocked to the record stores, embracing what they believe to be an image of a powerful, defiant black man.

Both sides have made Too $hort an important phenomenon, as they argue about what he "means" in his rapped narrat