gucci mane
freddie gibbs

Favorite hip hop release last year:



Throws it back to the days of old schoolers like A tribe Called Quest and De La Soul.

When it comes to hip hop today, that's what does it for me. Groups that brings it back to the "alternative" rap scene of yesteryear while still sounding fresh with what's outthere today.

Dalek, MF Doom, Madlib, The Knux, Shad to name a few.

I'm still discovering acts from the early 90's. Just in the last few weeks I got into Apache, Diamond Shell, Intelligent Hoodlum, K-Solo, The UMCs ... it's great.

Donnie Dumphy is the only hip hop artist I dig these days

I think my opinions on "eras" of rap had a lot to do with it I was DJing in public or not, and the demands of my audience. When I had to be on my toes and have the latest hit that came out that week I tended to really love a lot of songs. I was able to weed out the crap and get the good stuff, Sometimes at first I would only like because it made the audience happy, but I would grow to enjoy it on its own merit.

But liking something for the club and the home are two different things, and to stay on top of things is a lot of work if you don't have to. So now now I'm definitely not on top of things at all. I'll grab a mix tape here and there to see if any new names are doing anything exciting, or grab new albums by old familiar names.

Sometimes I miss the interaction of it, and I miss knowing what makes people go nuts, but I don't miss weeding through the Hot 97 top 50 to pick the 5 or so songs that are awesome.

I wonder if I wrote a post exactly like this earlier in the thread.

I'm with Dalen - I turned on whatever the old school channel is on XM on the way home last night and caught BDP's South Bronx. Ain't NOTHING FUCKIN CORNY ABOUT THAT!

I dig that Wale jernt from 2009.

Yeah, that motherfucker kinda hot. I didn't hear the whole album, though.

"The Message" was written 30 years ago and is still some of the best delivered rhymes EVAH. Lyrics, flow, everything

That's a pretty general question that is impossible to define IMO.

I mean what do you consider "old school"? Which artists are you talking about?

In general I think, like any genre, there are good/bad things and you're also looking through a prism of what, 30 years?

I agree that some of the technique back then was pretty rudimentary (See: Kurtis Blow") but they were only working with the tools they had. Like Bloor said, "The Message" still stands up IMO and I still like a lot of those early LL Cool J records ("I gotta gold name plate that says I WISH YOU WOULD").

I mean is Public Enemy "old school"?

A genre has to grow. Rock for example didn't go from Elvis to Jesus and Mary Chain overnight.

As far as modern hip hop, I think everything changed with Dre's "The Chronic" which predates "Illmatic" by 2 years I think.

Yeah, nothing really changed with Illmatic, it was just a damn good album. It's not like he made all of those producers legitimate, he was using all the legitimate producers. 90-94 were so fertile, that's it's hard to pick one album that changed things. Though if I were to The Chronic would be on the list, as would Wu which also predates Illmatic.

That's not to imply that Nas wasn't an incredibly influential rapper.

I was just thinking about stuff like Run DMC, Sugarhill Gang, Fab Freddie and the Furious 5, the whole giant gold chain adidas track suit era. I mean for what it is some of it's great, I love Rakim, just don't listen to him that often. I use Illmatic because I think that it set a new bar. The Chronic is classic stuff, especially beat wise, but I don't think it brought the game to a new level lyrically. I appreciate the old stuff as a solid foundation, it just gets me when people say that they love old school so much more. I get that it's what a lot of people grew up with, but what does that have to do with quality.

Although I guess a lot of people would qualify my favorite rap cds as old school, stuff like illmatic, 36 chambers, reasonable doubt.