I was 13 in 1989, so the perfect age for De La Soul and Public Enemy – but, aside from a brief flirtation with Dr Dre in the early 00s, drifted away from hip hop, and convinced myself that it was often the classic soul being sampled that I really liked. (Case in point: give me ‘Footsteps’ by the Isleys over ‘It Was a Good Day’ any day.) Plus, a lot of what is seen as the best in the genre today leaves me cold. I tried with Kendrick Lamar, really, but Damn and To Pimp a Butterfly did nothing for me.
Then two things happened. First, my 12-year-old son has discovered a taste for classic hip hop, and keeps rushing into my room with his phone to play me tracks he’s discovered by the likes of Slick Rick and MF DOOM. I’m liking what I’m hearing, particularly by the latter.
Secondly, in the Q 90s review threads, I keep seeing the rap albums of those years mentioned, and it’s prompting me to check them out. I’m really enjoying Illmatic and 36 Chambers so far… and Knee Deep in the Beats by London Funk Allstars (posted by Bingo Little I think?) has just been added to my playlist. I’m going to share that one with my son the moment he gets from home from school as I think he’ll love it too.
I‘ve decided that my taste is tracks with crackly backing tracks and heavy beats. Definitely not ‘trap’; no auto tune; and if the guy has ‘Li’l’ in his name, give it a wide berth.
Feel free to suggest anything else I should check out, but am mainly posting as a testimony to the power of the Afterword to open up new musical vistas. Thanks, Massive.
Tribe Called Quest People’s Instinctive Travels… is one of the most musical rap albums ever made.
Other faves:
Guru – Jazzmatazz volume one, heavy on the jazz rhymes and rhythms as the title suggests.
Kanye West – the ‘college’ trilogy of Late Registration/College Dropout/Graduation is a mind-blowing achievement. Shame about what happened later…
NWA – Straight Outta Compton. The sheer energy is unstoppable. No need to listen to anything else by them either together or solo, but this needs a listen.
Outkast – Stankonia.
and of course any of the first 4 Public Enemy albums..
Leftfield: 3rd Bass, The Cactus Album. Complete one-off.
That’s a great album which also spawned a fab remix album.
I prefer their second album “Derelicts Of Dialect”
Great stuff – nothing better than finding your way into a genre that had eluded you previously.
If you like Illmatic I would suggest Illadelph Halflife by The Roots, The Infamous by Mobb Deep, and Ready to Die by Biggie. Maybe some Mos Def – Black Star, the album he made with Talib Kweli is a good place to start.
If you like 36 Chambers then just proceed directly to all the other first wave Wu Tang albums, starting with Liquid Swords, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and Tical.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYVnQeF_JgU
If you like MF Doom then I would definitely try the Madvillain album (Madvillainy), Run The Jewels, Mr Lif, Company Flow. Maybe Earl Sweatshirt, although the artists you seem to like are mainly old school.
It sounds like the stuff you’re enjoying is mainly early to mid 90s sounding Hip Hop, so I’d say that’s your zone. Definitely check out Tribe Called Quest – I’d go for Low End Theory myself, but they’re all pretty great.
If you want something more contemporary, then – per another thread – the Kaytranada and Amine album that came out his morning is awesome, and a nice mix of old school and forward looking.
You might also enjoy Black Thought.
And finally, something tells me you’ll enjoy this, by Masta Ace.
Oh, and if you like Slick Rick, I’d check out a few 80S Hip Hop playlists on Spotify. Some amazing acts from that same period (Eric B & Rakim, EPMD, Biz Markie, Boogie Down Productions, Schoolly D, Ultramagnetic MCs, etc) – definitely have a listen to Big Daddy Kane.
Hope that all helps!
I mean “crackly backing tracks and heavy beats” – it’s the Wu, isn’t it?
Wu Tang again?
Aw yeah, again and again
Jeru The Damaja, particularly “Wrath Of The Math”
Love this tune. Great shout.
Eric B and Rakim tend to be remembered for Paid In Full but all of their albums up to and including their last in 1992 are brilliant.
‘Rakim is the best MC of all time’ has become a bit of a cliché but might well be true
One of my productions
Knobhead At The Controls, indeed. Excellent stuff!
I have a feeling I did the sound (or lights) when they played at my student’s union. Or was that Dream Warriors? One was also a disasterous first date, I definitely remember that.
We did one tour. I remember Sheffield and Norwich in particular which were great gigs
Tell me you’re joking. I was OBSESSED with that record when it came out. Specifically the sound of it, specifically the sound of the little guitar break between verses. It induced a chemical reaction in my brain.
That guitar was one of the Hombres – we nicked it from their hit “Let it all hang out” which was on a Woolies cassette my mother had given me for xmas. When our song was a minor hit, Jonathan King threatened to sue us, which made the success all the more enjoyable.
That guitar was one of the Hombres – we nicked it from their hit “Let it all hang out” which was on a Woolies cassette my mother had given me for xmas. When our song was a minor hit, Jonathan King threatened to sue us, which made the success all the more enjoyable.
and another
Loved this song when it came out. Bought the – and this will age it – the cassingle as a Walkman was necessary for the daily walk/bus to university. And this still gets a regular playing as it’s such a great summer song. 31 years ago…
The others contributing to this thread are much more knowledgeable than me, but as a fellow lapsed old school hip hop fan of a similar vintage, I would recommend Bob Stanley’s The Daisy Age compilation, which has tracks by some of the acts mentioned above and is just very, very good.
Seconded.
Thirded. The daisy age was a really creative and musical time in hiphop. Lyrically more about of weed, african queens, and good times than what followed. Perhaps the East coast/West coast rivalry and the police beating of Rodney King changed things.
It did seem to change around then. That reminds me, this thing presented by Chuck D is on iPlayer and is excellent.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0dj6ysm/fight-the-power-how-hip-hop-changed-the-world
This thread put me in mind of this which I haven’t listened to for a long while.
Not exactly daisy age but still a banger.
I had a remembering back to the heady days of Lockdown 2021, when my then-15-y-o asked me for a playlist of olde-worlde hip-hop.
This contains lots of much-missed Moosey (where are you, baby?), @Hawkfall‘s ever-fresh Betty Boo window/handle anecdote, and hours of absolute bangers.
Great thread. Come back Moose!
I think “ever-fresh” is a very kind way of describing the fact that I shamelessly recycle my comments Fents, but I’ll take it.
#gogreen
A great springboard for me into some classic hip hop stuff was Liam Howlett’s 1998 DJ mix album Dirtchamber Sessions Vol One (which started life as a BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix I think). It was where I first heard stuff like:
– Ultramagnetic MCs – Give The Drummer Some
– Bomb the Bass – Bug Powder Dust
– King Kut – Word of Mouth
– Digital Underground – The Humpty Dance
– Uptown – Dope On Plastic
Wow. Thanks so much everyone! Hours of exploration there for both me and the young’un.
This is my most played rap song recently…
I love this too from an unlikely source…
I think you will like DAMN. by Kendrick Lamar. It’s old skool Rap brilliantly done, albeit a classic of the 21st century.
I have a sneaking feeling – call it intuition – that he won’t..
Heheh – as per the OP, I really didn’t 🙂 But maybe my little journey through 90s hiphop will soften me up to it!
DAMN.
Have a passing interest in hip-hop rather than any deep knowledge (I definitely prefer the classic soul that’s being sampled) but from the OP I reckon you’ll go for Jurassic 5.
Sounds like you already have a good idea about what you like, mentioning early nineties hip hop and scratchy samples.
As others have said, you can’t really go wrong with anything released then that has stood the test of time as, by their reputation, they were recognised as great at the time and still are. So NWA, early Cypress Hill, PE and anything coming of the Wu-Tang are well worth a listen. Same as Ice Cube and Ice T. And because there really was no template – no, “this is how you do hip hop” – everything that was coming out was vastly different. Cube, PE Run DMC were are peers of one another but sound vastly different. Cypress Hill and NWA were both LA bands but sounds nothing alike. And the Wu-Tang Clan were really like nobody else.
But, I would say, first three Cypress Hill albums, first four PE, anything from those first few years of Wu Tang, first three Cube albums and Straight Outta Compton. There’s a huge amount to listen to there. And, to be fair, there isn’t much of a drop in the quality of later PE albums. How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul is still a really good album.
And there’s a lot of singles out there that didn’t get much traction anywhere but have been collected on some Mixcloud old skool mixtapes. Grab yourself a Downloader/Converter – even a free one like Any Video Converter – do a search for old skool hip hop on mixcloud and then convert the downloads to .mp3. There’s a ton of mixtapes of old hip hop tracks that got nowhere in the UK or Europe that you’ll only find on these mixes.
And, inspired by a conversation at work that was started in the wake of that 90s album thread, I’ll also put in a word for Onyx but you may not want to listen to them around your children. Even if they’re grown up.
I went looking for mixtapes after posting this and, on Mixcloud, Jazzamatazz, has, at a recent count, 32 hour-long mixes of late eighties/early nineties hip hop. Even with a decent knowledge of this music, a lot of this is deep cuts, great sampling and, as you say, crackly backing tracks. Been listening to a lot of this for the last few days and they are great mixes.