official hip-hop litmus test: hip-hop's greatest year

yeah but 2 or 3 to a track, not 20 or 30. also why Dre getting session guys to recreate the originals isn't a purely "artistic" decision

also there are only like 5 or 6 true sound collage albums? hardly anything from 87-89 sounds like nation of millions/3ft high/pauls boutique.

always look for the material cause of cultural change imo

dude a lot of circa 88 marley marl and paul c productions were bulging with samples.

dude a lot of circa 88 marley marl and paul c productions were bulging with samples.

dude a lot of circa 88 marley marl and paul c productions were bulging with samples.

was gonna say Prince Paul too

p much a producer (or actually, the label) had to think long and hard about whether these little 3-5 second cut/paste insert samples were worth the money they would cost, so a lot of those brief quickee filler samples that permeated 80s rap got dropped.

[still waiting for a proper hiphop craze (i.e. none of that girl talk bullshit) based around bringing back the sample game now no-one makes money on records/everything is super easy to make on a laptop compared to in 89.]

xpost which ultimately was tantamount to telling every great drummer in the 60s not to play fills anymore

yeah, which means texturally producers had to try something different.

nobody's saying it's the sole cause, but it feels to me like an important break between production styles.

i love Eazy Duz It but 187um Killa is just better, soz

I also think lyrically, there's no comparison between 1988 and 1993. not saying, of course, that 1988 was 'bad', but there was a bit of a template for rapping where flows/cadences tended to fall into one or two styles, and lyrics were catchy but still largely straightforward. I think the wordplay of MCs improved beyond leaps and bounds by 1993, where even the gangsta rappers were being less blunt and more atmospheric.

Are there any years considered as particularly *bad* for hip-hop?

in 2011-12 rick ross and drake are revered as "greats" and two old dudes at least half a decade removed from their creative peaks get plaudits every time they breathe, put it that way

xp

i think flow qua flow undeniably improved into the 90s, yeah

not that i think 2011-12 are bad for hip-hop, they're just bad for the hip-hop that rises to the top critically and commercially speaking

assessing music in terms of years is the dumbest thing though

thread needs spotify playlists
― thomp

in 2011-12 rick ross and drake are revered as "greats" and two old dudes at least half a decade removed from their creative peaks get plaudits every time they breathe, put it that way

http://assets0.ordienetworks.com/images/GifGuide/clapping/riker.gif

i SAID don't address me and don't look at me

http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/275593_o.gif

oh come on lex that post was pretty troll-y. also give it a year and ppl will just look at 2011 for danny brown and main attrakionz etc. and forget drake existed, like they did w/ mbgwf

kind of thought ilx had exited the era of people trolling people with gifs instead of bothering to engage. i don't even understand what neanderthal is trying to say there

oh come on lex that post was pretty troll-y. also give it a year and ppl will just look at 2011 for danny brown and main attrakionz etc. and forget drake existed, like they did w/ mbgwf

― unattractive on the g side (a hoy hoy), Monday, January 9, 2012 9:09 AM Bookmark

and Curren$y!

lex itt

http://forgifs.com/gallery/d/140900-4/Punching-fail.gif

I don't have a 'worst year', but to me there was a lot of rap I tended to ignore from the turn of the 21st century (also a lot of rap I loved obv but a lot of that clinky-clinky East coast rap that outside of Fabolous I had no interest in hearing)

why did you pick 93 over 94 whiney? sure it had doggystyle and enter the wu-tang, but 94 then had 4000 classic records after them.

Enter the Wu-Tang is a compelling argument on its own iirc

'93 also had Midnight Marauders and Enta Da Stage, but yeah, I prefer '94.

Stress: Extinction Agenda is a good argument for 1994

can I just say the competing pics in the original is maybe the most perfect encapsulation of hip-hop eras ever

co-sign

coming out hard is 93 but super tight is 94...

Straight Outta Compton vs The Chronic - which might as well be 1993
Nation of Millions (or Making Trouble?) vs Enter the Wu

it's about a shift in the techtonic plates, not how many great records in the year, i thought?

Yeah, I mean, I didn't invent this argument or the idea of "1993."

I mean you;ve got Doggystyle and all the Dre singles symbolizing the rise of the West and all the production/lyrical changes that occur over ALL OF HIP HOP (ie, rap's biggest techtonic shift since "I Know You Got Soul"/"Rebel Without A Pause"). You've got Wu-Tang, Tribe, Black Moon and the Duck Down crew, + all the Nas and Biggie singles repping the creative rebirth of the East. Not to mention what Eightball and MJG and UGK were up to. It's not really up for discussion

1993:

who caught the harm
you bought the farm
if you're a friend
there's no need for alarm

i picked 88
though the albums that came in 93 is ridiculous, emotionally it's always the late 80s for me.
i realize now that it's amazing to get to see something *really* happen in music, like an artform coming to maturity and really being born and i'll probably never ever see something like that happen for the rest of my life.

if only I'd been born ten years earlier. sigh.

i realize now that it's amazing to get to see something *really* happen in music, like an artform coming to maturity and really being born and i'll probably never ever see something like that happen for the rest of my life.

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, January 9, 2012 11:53 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You see it all the time, but the internet makes sure the period from conception to death is about 9 months.

See I was 12 and 17, respectively. I know I listened to more hip-hop in '93 and there was probably more stuff from that era that I still listen to today, but man, getting dubbed cassettes of shit like N.W.A., Slick Rick, EPMD, Eric B & Rakim, and Too $hort was life-changing.

i realize now that it's amazing to get to see something *really* happen in music, like an artform coming to maturity and really being born and i'll probably never ever see something like that happen for the rest of my life.

― the 500 gats of bartholomew thuggins (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Monday, January 9, 2012 11:53 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

You see it all the time, but the internet makes sure the period from conception to death is about 9 months.

― pug waffle (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, January 9, 2012 11:00 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah maybe. also i'm a little bit at the point in my life w/parenthood, etc that i don't care as much about it...like i said, my vote is not really based on logic or anything.

also yeah what jon said, i'm around his age, same experience with cassettes

Well, to be perfectly fair ut was 1989 by the time I was getting all those dubbed copies, but it was all '88 albums that I first heard.

whiney otm, really sorry to see dubstep go

*witch house

Hip-hop was probably the last great new American art form, right?

Got me thinking, but probably.

video games

video games run concurrently with hip hop though, maybe even a little before

and not as strictly "american" by a long shot

i meant the lana del rey single

i feel like the quest to define particular 'artforms' is an awkward one, because you're never going to be able to set a rigid definition of what an art form is or what a particular notion of an artform is? not that it matters, really, though if whiney's 'the last' means 'the last' rather than the most recent i'd probably disagree

you gotta credit the japanese for vid games to SOME degree now