TOO $HORT

Born: Todd Anthony Shaw; Los Angeles, California, 28 April 1966

Genre: Rap

Best-selling album since 1990: Cocktails (1995)

Hit songs since 1990: "Get in Where You Fit In"

Too $hort emerged as an early West Coast rap icon in a hip-hop environment dominated by East Coast music. With his thick western drawl, Too $hort spins vivid tales of lawlessness that impart an authenticity that made him a founder of gangsta rap and an essential figure in rap music.

Born middle class to two accountants in the South Central neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, Todd Shaw moved with his family to the northern California city of Oakland at age fourteen. Influenced by books about pimping by authors Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, Shaw began rapping about these topics. His five-foot-two-inch frame earned him the stage name Too $hort. He began producing and selling his own songs, and he attracted the attention of an independent record label, 75 Girls, which signed him to a contract. The deal resulted in three albums that increased his local Oakland profile. Ever the entrepreneur, Too $hort formed his own label, Dangerous Music, and in 1986 released the full-length album Born to Mack, which became a San Francisco Bay–area smash. Shortly thereafter, a major label, Jive Records, which had rap acts D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince and Boogie Down Productions on its roster, signed Too $hort and re-released Born to Mack with national distribution in 1988.

Too $hort's style of rapping is an unabashed early version of gangsta rap. His subject matter centers around pimping, prostitution, and other street hustles. America perceived Born to Mack as a window into a shrouded lifestyle and purchased more than 500,000 copies of the album. His second Jive effort, Life Is . . . Too $hort (1988), doubled those sales figures.

After 1990, Too $hort's career changed direction. At age twenty-four, he was involved in a head-on car collision that resulted in the death of the other driver. He began to include at least one cautionary tale in his subsequent albums, punctuating the outlaw reveries. Though he enjoyed a string of strong-selling albums after Mack, Too $hort's West Coast voice was no longer unique on the national scene in the mid-1990s. In 1992, the Los Angeles–based Dr. Dre released the classic album The Chronic and his Long Beach, California, protegé Snoop (Doggy) Dogg entered the market with the multiplatinum Doggystyle in 1993. Furthermore, the media branded the often-violent, misogynist releases by Dr. Dre, Snoop (Doggy) Dogg, and their immediate hip-hop associates as "gangsta rap" and omitted Too $hort from this negative, albeit highly marketable category. In seeming response, Too $hort decided to retire in 1996, but managed to record a song with Notorious B.I.G., "The World Is Filled . . .," for B.I.G.'s album Life after Death (1997).

In the mid- to late 1990s, the rap landscape became increasingly materialistic, largely driven by Sean "Puffy" Combs's Bad Boy Records, and gangsta rap faded into the background. Into this environment Too $hort briefly came out of retirement to record the song "A Week Ago" with Jay-Z for Jay-Z's Billboard number one album Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life (1998). In 1999, Too $hort made a comeback with the album Can't Stay Away. Rarely one to collaborate with other artists in the 1980s and early 1990s, here Too $hort builds upon his recordings with Notorious B.I.G. and Jay-Z and includes songs with Combs, Atlanta rapper/producer Jermaine Dupri, and Jay-Z. The album entered the Billboard charts in the Top 10.

After 2000, Too $hort began some markedly different projects, perhaps to counteract the disappointing sales of Chase the Cat (2001) and What's My Favorite Word? (2002), his first efforts to sell under 500,000 copies since he signed to Jive Records. In 2001, Too $hort and another Bay area rap superstar E-40 announced plans to record a joint album. In 2002, Too $hort produced "Get in Where You Fit In," the first in a series of pornographic films bearing the titles of his songs. Also that year, he recorded an X-rated response record to the feminine anthem "My Neck, My Back" by Khia called "My D*ck, My Sack." Too $hort expressed a desire to create a "one hundred percent positive album," announcing to MTV News in 2002 that while he would still rhyme about pimps and prostitutes, "I'm not going to speak on it in any other way than a positive way."

No matter the direction Too $hort chooses to take, his importance in hip-hop remains secure. He was one of the first artists bold enough to record graphic songs about the underworld and to maintain a vision throughout his career.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Don't Stop Rappin' (75 Girls, 1983); Players (75 Girls, 1984); Born to Mack (Dangerous Music, 1986); Life Is . . . Too $hort (Jive, 1988); Short Dog's in the House (Jive, 1990); Shorty the Pimp (Jive, 1992); Get in Where You Fit In (Jive, 1993); Cocktails (Jive, 1995); Gettin' It (Album Number Ten) (Jive, 1996); Can't Stay Away (Jive, 1999); You Nasty (Jive, 2000); Chase the Cat (Jive, 2001); What's My Favorite Word? (Jive, 2002); It's About Time (75 Girls, 2003).

dara cook