San Andreas Chic: Annivyrsary 1992
ISSUE #207
I must’ve gotten my hands on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004, when I was 10 or 11 years old. Grand Theft Auto maintains a dual reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time as well as one of those Matrix-level Y2K-era youth corruptors. To Reagan–lovers, it’s “that game where you kill hookers,” I’m sure. What they never realized is that “they’re not hookers, Dad—they’re sex workers. And I’m not trying to run them over.”
I used to stay awake—God, I’m so happy I had this game—until the sun rose playing it, just driving in virtually stolen cars and listening to the radio, looking for ramps. The eleven radio stations of San Andreas were the best part of the game: this programming was an essential part of my education in hip hop (Radio Los Santos), dub/reggae (K-Jah West), new jack swing (CSR), grunge/metal (Radio X), house (SF-UR), funk (Bounce FM), classic rock (K-DST), and even country (K-Rose). Bundled with VH1’s I Love the 90s series that same year, you could easily sell 2004 as my cultural awakening and a big reason I am who I am today.
San Andreas takes place in a facsimile of south Los Angeles during the events of the early 1990s. The radio plays the songs of the time, many of them big radio players of ‘92. Sitting on my couch at midnight with a two-liter of Mt. Dew Code Red is where I first heard songs from The Chronic, Rage Against the Machine, Alice in Chains, and Ice Cube. They were some of the most robust musical discoveries of my life.
The lasting influence of the San Andreas soundtrack proves 1992 as a case study in American popular delusion vs. our material reality. On April 29, L.A. erupted in riots after the acquittal of the four policemen who brutalized Rodney King. 63 people died in the riots; thousands were arrested. In the Billboard charts, four days earlier, the first hip hop song by Black artists finally hit number one—”Jump,” by the 12 year old duo Kris Kross. In the year of reality-rap’s breakthrough, including titanic releases like “It Was a Good Day” and The Chronic, Top 40 was still being ruled by children.
With all the unrest, people wanted escape—the top movie of the year was Aladdin, and the voice of Jasmine is of my all-time favorite singers: Lea Salonga, a Filipina stage actress, who played Eponine in Les Miz’s 10th anniversary and delivers the best-ever “On My Own.” But even Lea and Brad Kane’s “A Whole New World” wasn’t the biggest and best balled of 1992—this was the year Whitney broke Billboard records with a cover of Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” the longest single at the time to stay at #1. That debuted November 28, 1992, and her perfect dominance lasted all the way to March, a full winter.
America, as always, was being torn in two, and the charts were reflecting it. Hip hop and grunge were at each others throats. Everybody with a guitar was aping Nevermind’s success—the Nirvana record went to No. 1 on January 11, and the rest of the year was chaos. Bands without a lick of talent to them were signed just because they could do a Cobain impression. Meanwhile, bands with real integrity where pressured into grunge anthems by bigwigs. The funniest part? The biggest hit to come out of grunge-centric Seattle was Sir Mix A Lot’s “Baby Got Back”—the Era of Grunge only laid groundwork the ever-lasting Era of Ass.
These days, a lot ‘92 artists have withered. At first, when I was building this issue, I was worried I wouldn’t find more than a dozen good songs. Sitting with them for weeks, I see now that this was a year of longevity—songs from ‘92 were incredibly prescient, and the best look better than ever. The Pharcyde sounds incredible today, even if they were out of step at the time, a bunch of West Coast goofballs playing silly characters and taking notes from Da La Soul instead of keeping it Compton real. The Cure’s Wish was seen as a left turn; “Friday I’m in Love” is now their evergreen classic. Automatic for the People is now R.E.M.’s beloved. Kyuss’s Josh Homme is one of rock’s finest maestros. Rage Against the Machine is ahead of even our own times. Then, of course, there’s Pavement.
If games aren’t art, then why did this one introduce me to Rodney King and the L.A. riots of 1992 when schools never did? Storylines in San Andreas revolve around the Rampart scandal, and I’ve never heard it spoken of since—a period where L.A. law enforcement was finally pinned with evidence of their unprovoked shootings and beatings; their planting of false evidence; their stealing and dealing of narcotics; their perjury and bank robbery. This, in the game, was dealt with explicitly from the P.O.V. of P.O.C.s. By highlighting 1992, it was a lesson in the dialectic, a fracturing that exposed the rot beneath, pointing towards a final synthesis.
There’s nothing woke today without ‘92. GTA and the songs of ‘92 gave me a reason to radicalize.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.