Title: Terrorist Threats
Release date: 12 September, 2004
Record label: Capitol Records
Single: Gangsta Nation
Official website: Westside Connection
Wikipedia: Westside Connection
1. A Threat To The World
2. Call 9-1-1
3. Potential Victims
4. Gangsta Nation
5. Get Ignit
6. Pimp The System
7. Don't Get Outta Pocket
8. Izm
9. So Many Rappers In Love
10. Lights Out
11. Bangin' At The Party
12. You Gotta Have Heart
13. Terrorist Threats
14. Superstar (Double Murder = Double Platinum)
Home » w » Westside Connection » Album» Terrorist Threats
Some groups make hit records. Others create movements. Westside Connection does both. The super group of Ice Cube, Mack 10 and WC has finally returned after a seven-year hiatus with "Terrorist Threats," one of the most explosive hip-hop albums of the century. That's right, the follow-up to 1996?s double platinum, incendiary "Bow Down" brings the edge, angst and attitude that was missing back to hard-core hip-hop.
"So many people are going soft, so many love songs on the radio that I felt like I probably wouldn't be able to buy nothing I liked unless I bought my own stuff," Ice Cube explains. "It was just time to be hard-core and not be so damn soft all the Goddamn time. The mixture of R&B is killing the music."
Indeed, there's nothing soft on "Terrorist Threats." The album's title refers to rap's counter-culture potential. More so than any other music, rap has the ability to strike fear in the hearts of the establishment -- and no group has done that more than Westside Connection.
"We understand that we're still being perceived as environmental terrorists by mainstream America," WC says. "We're not going be assholes and come out and say that we're terrorists. Only an idiot would be in a frame of mind to do that. But in this rap music, we bring cannons to the gunfight. We're going to bring it and a lot of people fear that. It's terror that we see in their eyes."
That fear should turn to adulation thanks to lead single "Gangsta Nations," a thumping, Fred Wreck-produced song that pays tribute to the West Coast's standing as the premier gangster rap region. In between Nate Dogg's poignant chorus, Ice Cube, Mack 10 and WC call out fake gangsters and explain that being "gangster" is more than it appears.
"It's a salute to what I call the 'Gangsta Nation,' which is people who like it hard-core who do it in their own way," Ice Cube says. "Everybody knows what gangster represents out here. It ain't always a criminal thang. It's just somebody that won't conform, somebody that doesn't want to do it the way the plan is laid out. They want to do it their own way, so we're saluting them."
The group also salutes its loyal, die-hard following in the Dave Myers-directed clip for "Gangsta Nations." Cube, Mack and Dub sport a variety of outfits in the video, tracing their musical evolution from the 1980s until now.
But it's Westside Connection's grasp on the present that makes "Terrorist Threats" so formidable. On the sizzling "So Many Rappers In Love," the group calls out rappers who are watering down the art form into a cheesy R&B-rap hybrid. "If it ain't rough it ain't me and I refuse to turn r-a-p into R&B," Mack 10 raps on the confrontational cut. "You went from hard-core to pop, just to be on top/I give Cool J his props and that's where it stops."

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