Queensbridge is well known for its contributions to hip hop and rap music, and has been home to some of the most influential musicians in the genre. Marley Marl Williams was the first in a long succession of acclaimed artists from "The Bridge", which came to be one of the most famous hip hop neighborhoods in the country. Its rappers and producers helped to put it on the map. The Juice Crew collective, hugely influential in the 1980s, featured among its members Queensbridge rappers MC Shan, Roxanne Shanté, and Craig G. While the Boogie Down Productions-MC Shan dispute had already put "The Bridge" on the rap map in the 1980s, the new crop of Queensbridge rappers like Nas and Mobb Deep made frequent references to the Queensbridge Houses that cemented its reputation as a dystopian vision of poverty, drugs, and violence just as New York City's problems with crack cocaine and the unprecedented carnage it had brought to places like Queensbridge reached a peak. Nas' 1994 album Illmatic, often regarded as the greatest hip-hop album of all time, concerns his experiences in Queensbridge. Other notable artists associated with the Queensbridge hip hop scene include Blaq Poet, Cormega, Tragedy Khadafi, Nature, Screwball, Capone, and Big Noyd. Regarding the Queensbridge music scene, XXL columnist Brendan Frederick wrote: By the 1970s, Queensbridge experienced a rise in crime with the rest of the city. During the height of the crack epidemic in 1986, Queensbridge experienced more murders than any NYCHA complex in New York City. However, in the 2000s, crime went down. For many years Queensbridge has had a problem with drug dealers and drug users. An 11-month police investigation led to the arrest of 37 people during a drug bust in February 2005. Another raid in February 2009, following a seven-month investigation, resulted in 59 arrests. Population As of 2013, Queensbridge had a total population of 6,105. The racial breakdown was 61.4% black, 2.3% white, 1.9% Asian, 1.0% American Indian and 2.4% multiracial. Hispanics and Latinos of any race were 30.1%. In the 2020 news media reports, the Asian population in Queensbridge rose to being 11% of the development's total population and now there are increasing calls for the growing Asian residents in the development to have better local social service access that cater to their linguistic needs including available translators in their languages when contacting NYCHA for apartment related issues. Notable people