Music: Hip-Hop Trends

Music: Hip-hop Trends

During the 1990s massive changes took place in hiphop culture. Hip-hop started out in the South Bronx as a street-born cultural movement grounded by what have become known as the four pillars of hip-hop: DJ-ing, MC-ing (later known as rapping), breakdancing, and graffiti art. By the 1990s many of the original elements of hip-hop music had been stripped away, and rap music had emerged. Rap was a force in the 1980s, with Run-DMC and LL Cool J spreading the Bronx-born sound from Brooklyn to Beverly Hills, but few would have expected performers such as MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice to make rap music a central force in pop radio. By the 1990s the authentic voice of ghetto youth had become mindless jingles with polished beats that suburban teenagers nationwide could dance to at school dances. Rap made its way into movies and television commercials. Rapping had left the ghetto, and lost touch with its roots.

West Coast Gangsta Rap

At the beginning of the 1990s some performers decided to take rap back to the impoverished streets from which it emerged. Street credibility became an essential part of rap music. Taking their cues from early hard-core artists such as Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, West Coast artists such as former N.W.A. members Dr. Dre and Ice Cube tried to convey the violence of living in the ghetto through a new style called gangsta rap, which—unlike earlier hard-core rap—had massive cross-over appeal. Tracks such as Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day' (1992) and Snoop Doggy Dogg's "Who I Am (What's My Name)" (1993) were MTV and pop-radio mainstays. Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle (1993) became the first debut album ever to make its entry on the pop-albums chart at number one. Gangsta rap became the predominant sound of the early 1990s, and the more menacing it sounded, the more references it made to guns and illegal substances, the better it was received by a naive, largely white, suburban teenage audience. The lyrics sparked heated controversy with interest groups lobbying for tighter restrictions on explicit content.

The East Coast Sound

At the same time gangsta rap arose in the West, another hip-hop sound was emerging on the East Coast. New, positive-minded, Afroeentric groups started to bring a jazzier, more intellectual style to rap music. Groups such as the Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Leaders of the New School formed a new alliance called the Native Tongues, which focused on black thought and black history. Alongside other influential groups, such as EPMD and Gang Starr, their soulful sounds and creative rhymes brought the hip-hop culture back to the music. Despite crossover tracks such as De La Soul's "Me, Myself, and I," East Coast rap remained mostly underground while West Coast gangsta rap was commercialized.

Return of the East Coast Sound

Many rap fans disliked the misogynistic, gun-waving attitude of the West Coast movement. In 1993-1994 two critical releases that completely changed hip-hop shifted rap fans' attention back to the East. The first was the group Wu Tang Clan's debut album, Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) (1993). Led by rapper-producer RZA, the Wu Tang Clan had a hard, but comical edge, and with the RZA's production and creative lyrics, the Wu Tang far surpassed everyone in terms of originality. A year later Nas's debut album, Illmatic, displayed a more realistic picture of life on the streets. Both albums were huge commercial successes.

Divisions

During the last half of the decade people who were concerned with holding to the roots of hip-hop culture began to call themselves hip-hop artists to distinguish themselves from commercially exploitive "rappers." Hip-hop performers concerned with artistic skill were harshly critical of new rap superstars such as Master P and his No Limit Records cohorts and Sean "Puffy" Combs and his Bad Boy Entertainment group. New hip-hop artists such as Black Star, the Jurassic 5, and the Black Eyed Peas, gained audiences because of their talent and innovations, giving back to hip-hop the original soul that made it such a powerful movement in the late 1970s. A stronger divide also developed between East and West Coast artists. Conflicts between the two groups were even suggested as motives for the murders of two superstars, Tupac Shakur in 1996 and Notorious B.I.G. "Biggie Smalls" in 1997. By the end of the 1990s hip-hop had splintered further into southern rap led by No Limit Records, a new romantic pseudo gangsta rap led by DMX and the Ruff Ryders, underground hip-hop on labels such as Rawkus and Stones Throw, and a myriad of other crews. "Turntablism," an new evolution in DJ-ing, in which DJs use turntables like musical instruments, gained a huge following thanks to albums by the Invisbl Skratch Picklz and the X-cutioners.

Source:

Sacha Jenkins, Elliott Wilson, Chairman Mao, Gariel Alvarez, and Brent Rollins, Ego Trifs Book of Rap Lists (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999).