Strugglas

Back in the late ninties, my buddy Rob took a weekend job at Bill's, the same Dallas music store he used to work at when he was in high school. I used to drop by and see him, just like I did when he worked in a music store in Austin during our college days. And just like in every record store Rob ever worked in, his favorite part of the job was making fun of the randomly bad albums the store had for sale.

Back then, Bill's stocked a lot of rap --- to make any money you had to, because the rap audience is always looking for the flavor of the month, so you'd never know what would sell. Lots of the albums were independantly produced gansta rap CDs. Gangsta rap was getting kind of stale, even then. But the CDs kept on coming even though nobody bought them. So Rob and his fellow employee Mark created a special section for the slow moving rap artists. They named the section "Strugglas."

One of the albums pictured a rapper, or Stuggla if you will, dressed up in a heavy winter parka standing in front of stack of orange tires in some sort of junk yard. "Look at this album," Rob would say. "I bet the hit single goes something like this: 'Orange tires. Stacks and stacks.' "

But my favorite Struggla, based purely on his album cover, was Tommy Wright III who released a CD intitled "On The Run." The amatuerish album cover was eye catching for several reasons. First of all, what gangsta rapper uses the name his mama gave him on the cover? Second, the album showed a montage of four different pictures of our boyish hero, Tommy, engaged in different criminal acts --- most of them misdemeanors offenses at best. In one, he appears to be shooting a B.B. gun while propping it up on a chain link fence. The another shows Tommy climbing over a chain link fence. The third and fourth photos show Tommy in various states of arrest by the police. While I'm sure Tommy has outstanding rap abilities, his on the run status seemed to be hindered by his petty choice of crimes, chain link fences and law enforcement. What else would you expect from a Struggla?