Back in the day, as they say, Lil Rob was the homeboy that repped all of "the 619" in the hip-hop subgrene of Chicano rap. My older brothers and cousins would bump him along with Cypress Hill, Mellow Man Ace, Aztec Tribe, and Kid Frost. I've lost track of the movement, but it sounds like these rappers are still doing their thing. There are newer acts like Akwid and Jae-P updating the style. In December, Ben Quinones profiled rising Mexican American rap star Omar Cruz. And then there's the much smaller but hugely fascinating sub-subgroup of gay rappers who wear a hard-core cholo aesthetic (see Deadlee and his whole crew). Some of the groups, like Cypress Hill and Darkroom Familia, are effective Chicano/ African-American/Afro-Cuban hybrids. Lil Rob still does it best, though. With videos like this, it's clear why cholos or cholo-look-alikes are so romanticized and fetishized (or hated). The cholo is California's indigenous gentleman-warrior:
Notice how in the video California's barrio geography is radically compressed. In one frame Lil Rob is cruising on Whittier Blvd in East L.A. and in the next he's on Highland Ave, the old-school cruising drag in National City. At the end, he's sitting under the brilliantly muralized overpasses of Chicano Park in San Diego, with the Art Deco tower of the L.A. County-USC Medical Center rising in the background.