I'm a B-girl till I die, when they bury me they're gonna bury me with some shelltoes on my feet and some gold around my neck because that is how I feel.
Suggah B

In the last ten years rap music has emerged as the lifeblood of American pop culture, with LA figuring as the point of origin of the genre's most incendiary works. Ardently embraced and intemperately decried, the works of LA's rappers are endlessly talked about, but rarely in terms of context.

Produced by an insider with the encouragement of the subjects, It's Not About a Salary... is an essential source on contemporary music, the African-American experience, and multi-ethnic Los Angeles.

It's Not About a Salary... documents, in interviews, photographs and essays, the historical roots of LA rap and its varied cultural connections. The artists themselves describe the heritage of the Central Avenue jazz world that flourished on the margins of Golden Age Hollywood and the African-American traditions of poetic performance that fused with jazz in the sixties. The participants in the East Coast/West Coast dialog of the seventies speak on the graffiti, breakdance and hiphop scenes. Gangster rap is presented as a uniquely LA development, and rising stars explain rap's expanding importance for the whole range of LA's cultural mix.