Rap's Main Street: the music of
Rosecrans Avenue

The earliest known mention of Rosecrans in a rap song arrived in 1987 via the rapper King Tee’s “Ya Better Bring a Gun.” Featuring a bouncy but menacing old school beat, the track helped define the neighborhood in bloody 1980s Compton by warning would-be tourists to arrive well-armed: “From block to block everybody's bad / And if you don't know where you're at, then your life's been had.” Near the end of the track, almost as an afterthought, the rapper wonders aloud on an unsolved mystery: “Who blew up that McDonald's on Central and Rosecrans?”

The longtime South Los Angeles producer and rapper DJ Quik has been a neighborhood chronicler for over 25 years. On “Skanless,” from his 1991 album “Quik Is the Name,” he and his collaborators document lawless action up and down Rosecrans, but cite this intersection in particular. The rapper KK describes “bailin’ down ‘Crans with my khakis creased” and a woman in his lap. DJ Quik’s verse depicts a Rosecrans car-jacking in progress, “rollin with a [passenger] with doodoo in his pants.”

The 1993 song “Piru Love” — a reference to a Compton street and a Blood-affiliated gang — by the rap group Bloods & Crips offers a primer on the many gang chapters running Rosecrans, and their warning features one of the earliest shout-outs to Lueders Park.
“Every town has an Elm Street but not a Freddy Krueger,” raps Bloody Mary, of Compton’s most prominent public space. “Don't get caught in the Jungles or a park called Lueders.” Other artists who have memorialized the park include Compton icons Kendrick Lamar (“Keisha’s Song” and “Backseat Freestyle”) the Game (“Murda”) and Jay Rock (“Real Bloods”).

The Atlanta-based fried chicken chain is one of many fast food joints appearing in songs about Compton. Lamar references it in two tracks. In “Money Trees,” Lamar shouts-out Church’s with a line about screeching out of its parking lot.

In “Backstreet Freestyle” he suggests to an unnamed other to park their car “in front of Lueders next to that Church's Chicken. He also locates Louis Burger, also on Rosecrans.

From a historical perspective, the little spot at the corner of Rosecrans and Central avenues is the center. “I grew up off of Rosecrans and Central / Tam's Burger on the corner,” raps J3 in the Game’s track “Support Compton.” In “Compton State of Mind,” Kendrick Lamar recalls “the good old days / Eating Tam's Burgers while my Juvenile CD had played.” This was also where Suge Knight rammed his Ford F-150 Raptor pickup truck into two men outside Tam’s Burgers after a dispute on the set of “Straight Outta Compton.” Terry Carter, 55, died of his injuries.

Most recently, the Compton rap star YG celebrates the restaurant in his track “Bompton” by setting himself “on Rosecrans ... at Tam's Burgers/I'm buying AK's and handguns.”

For “Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,” Lamar inhabits the perspective of a prostitute working out of the Rosecrans-adjacent park. Lamar-as-hooker describes being in the Gonzales Park lot and being followed “by a married man, and father of three” who’s a favorite client because he tips her in MDMA pills.

This vanished landmark has served as setting for songs by Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle, the Game, Mack 10, Snoop and others. Often used in reference to the many bootlegs and mixtapes acquired within, the Compton Swap Meet was most famously immortalized in a skit on Dr. Dre’s classic album “The Chronic.” For his part, Lamar promises in “Wesley’s Theory” that someday soon he’s going to “put the Compton Swap Meet by the White House.”

During the musical interlude “Real,” from Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d city,” the artist’s mother is captured in a voice recording: “Look, the neighbors say they seen you and your little friends over there by Food for Less,” she says, then relays a message about his label Top Dawg. During “Compton State of Mind,” the rapper describes “chilling right inside best outlets / Five dollar Little Caesar — mama shopped at Food for less.”

On the 2017 album “Rosecrans,” the rapper Problem offers some sage advice for rivals: “Get out the way -- you ain't got no business this side of Santa Fe,” he raps, a reference to a crucial north-south avenue that separates gang factions. Like most major intersections in South Los Angeles, it’s occupied by either fast-food joints, gas stations or strip malls. In this case, the intersection is home to the mid-sized chain Tacos Mexico.