The Wu-Tang clan were one of the few East Coast acts that stood up to the past
standards of the city's hip-hop. A number of New Jersey acts, in particular,
cast a doubt on the future of hip-hop:
the duo P.M. Dawn, with
Of the Heart of the Soul of the Cross (1991),
Naughty By Nature, with Naughty By Nature (1991),
Kris Kross (the
pre-puberal duo of Chris "Daddy Mack" Smith and Chris "Mack Daddy"
Kelly), produced by teenager Jermaine Dupri, with the disco energy of Totally Krossed Out (1992),
and the trio of the Lords of the Underground, with Here Come the Lords (1993), produced by Marley Marl.
Washington multi-instrumentalist Basehead (Michael Ivey), with Plays With Toys (1992), was also crossing over into pop and soul territory.
Trevor "Busta Rhymes" Smith's The Coming
(1996) was as bizarre as it was accessible (basically an extension of
the absurdist style of Public Enemy's William "Flavor Flav" Drayton).
The nonsensical dialectic of Das Efx (Andre "Dre" Weston and Willie "Skoob" Hines) on Dead Serious (1992) was only functional in creating novelty acts.
Main Source's Breaking Atoms (1991),
Poor Righteous Teachers' second album Pure Poverty (1991), permeated by Islamic philosophy,
Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992) by producer
Pete Rock (Phillips) & rapper C.L. Smooth (Corey Penn),
Reggie "Redman" Noble's Whut? Thee Album (1992),
Enta Da Stage (1993) by short-lived trio Black Moon,
and New Kingdom's tribal-psychedelic Heavy Load (1993)
were among the few albums that dared to experiment.
East Coast hip-hop was losing to the West Coast.
If nothing else,
Kendrick "Jeru the Damaja" Davis's The Sun Rises in the East (1994)
briefly brought back party-rap's original sound.
New York's duo
Organized Konfusion
(Larry "Prince Poetry" Bakersfield and Troy "Pharoahe Monch" Jamerson)
refined the dramatic/poetic skills of rap music, from the ghetto
vignettes of Organized Konfusion (1991) to the psychologial hip-hopera The Equinox (1997)
Philadelphia's The Goats (1), led by Oatie Kato (Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams), orchestrated the "hip-hopera" Tricks of the Shade
(1992), a concept album built around the evils of the USA way of life,
with both samples and a live band, deep grooves and a canvas of jazz,
funk and rock.
"Prince Paul" Huston (1), the producer of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the equally psychedelic My Field Trip To Planet 9 (1993) by
Justin Warfield, penned
Gravediggaz's gothic 6 Feet Deep (1994) with Wu-Tang Clan's Robert "RZA" Diggs, and the solo albums Psychoanalysis: What Is It? (1997) and especially the concept album A Prince Among Thieves (1999).
Philadelphia-born Roots' collaborator Ursula Rucker was a black spoken-word artist who coined a new form of art with her single Supernatural
(1994), a dance hit created by a-capella vocals. After being a mere
novelty on other people's songs, she emancipated her voice and her
stories of black women on Supa Sista (2001).
Alien to the street culture of much hip-hop, New York's J-Live (Justice Allah) was one of the MCs who turned rhymed storytelling into a veritable art, both on The Best Part (1996), released five years after being recorded, and All Of The Above (2002).
Gangsta-rap
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On the West Coast, "gangsta-rap" was the dominant theme.
Schoolly D had invented it in 1984, but, starting with Ice-T in 1986, it
was in Los Angeles that the form found its natural milieu.
In 1992, when racial riots erupted (following the police beating of a
black gangster), Los Angeles was said to have 66 gangs of teenagers,
mostly black, with daily shootings among them. They reached a temporary
truce in april. It is not a coincidence that gangsta-rap became a
national phenomenon in the following twelve months.
Gangsta-rap was not so much about gangster lives as about a
metaphorical, solemn, doom-laden recreation of the noir/thriller
atmosphere of the urban drug culture. It was more than a mere depiction
of their lives, just like psychedelic music had been more than a mere
reproduction of the hallucinogenic experience. Gangsta rap was about the
mythology and the metaphysics of the gang life, with sexual and
criminal overtones. As Greg Kot wrote, "The gangster rappers depict a
world in which gangbangers and crack-heads fester in a cesspool of
misogyny, homophobia and racism". Invariably dismissing women as teasers
or sluts, these rappers indirectly revealed the sordid and desperate
conditions of the women of the ghettos. Their justification was that
they were not promoting that kind of violence, but merely documenting
it: gangsta-rap was a documentary of daily life in the ghetto.
Furthermore, the arrogance of these self-appointed super-heroes was
often accompanied by a fatalistic mood: gangsta-rap was not about
immortality, albeit about survival.
N.W.A. (1), or "Niggaz With Attitude", formalized "gangsta-rap" on Straight Outta Compton (1988), and two of its
former members,
O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson with AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990), a total immersion in a nightmarish atmosphere,
and Andre "Dr Dre" Young (1)
with The Chronic (1992), featuring rapper Calvin "Snoop Doggy Dogg" Broadus, and later with 2001 (2000),
gave it its masterpieces.
The latter, heavily influenced by George Clinton's psychedelic funk, also
coined a subgenre called "G Funk".
Houston's Geto Boys,
featuring young rapper Brad "Scarface" Jordan, were one of the first
crews from the South to become known nation-wide, thanks to the the
terrifying gangsta-rap of their second album Geto Boys (1990).
Robert-Earl "DJ Screw" Davis, who died at 30 of an overdose, became a
Houston legend by slowing down ("screwing") rap hits into psychedelic,
dilated melodies.
Gangsta-rap became mainstream via albums such as
Doggystyle (1993) by Los Angeles native Calvin Broadus, better known as Snoop Doggy Dogg (1), produced by Dr Dre,
and
Me Against The World (1995),
the third album from Oakland's 2Pac (aka Tupac Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks,
shot to death in 1996), produced by Sam Bostic, which was followed by All Eyez on Me (1996), the first double album of hip-hop music.
As gangsta-rap generated sales, rappers found it almost obligatory to spin
the usual litany of hard-boiled tales of drugs, sex and murder.
One of the main sources of creativity for the Los Angeles scene was the
the Freestyle Fellowship crew, responsible
for the elaborate collages of To Whom It May Concern (1991) and especially Inner City Griots (1993).
The second album, A Book Of Human Language (1998), by Aceyalone,
a founding member of the "Freestyle Fellowship" crew, was lavishly
arranged by Matthew "Mumbles" Fowler, and retained a literate
approach that contrasted with the old "gansta" style. Magnificent (2006) featured beats by Jon "RJD2" Krohn.
Los Angeles was also the birthplace of Latino hip-hop, which debuted with
Escape From Havana (1990) by Cuban-born
Mellow Man Ace (Sergio Reyes)
and Hispanic Causing Panic (1991) by
Kid Frost (Arturo Molina).
Kid Frost's La Raza (1990) and Mellow Man Ace's Mentirosa (1990)
became the reference standards for all subsequent Latin rappers.
The artistic peak of West-Coast rap was probably reached by a semi-Latino group, Cypress Hill (1), the project of producer Lawrence "Muggs" Muggerud and rapper Louis "B Real" Freeze, with their hyper-depressed trilogy of Cypress Hill (1992), Black Sunday (1993) and Temples of Boom (1995).
The large Latino collective
Ozomatli offered ebullient salsa-funk-rap on Ozomatli (1998), featuring wizard turntablist Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden).
Oakland was the headquarters of most black rappers from the San Francisco Bay Area.
The main acts were the
crew Digital Underground
(1), the brainchild of Greg "Shock G" Jacobs and the main hip-hop
purveyors of George Clinton's eccentric "funkadelia", notably on Sex Packets (1990);
and rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien (Teren Delvon Jones), also inspired by the P-funk aesthetics on I Wish My Brother George Was Here (1991).
The Mystic Journeymen,
formed by rappers Pushin' Suckas' Consciousness (PSC) and Vision The
Brotha From Anotha Planet (BFAP), were important not so much for their 4001: The Stolen Legacy (1995), but as founders of the Oakland collective "Living Legends".
San Francisco produced some of the most virulent agit-prop rap of all times:
the Beatnigs, with Beatnigs (1988),
Consolidated (1), with
The Myth Of Rock (1990),
and the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy (1),
with Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury (1992).
Gangsta-rap reached the East Coast with
Onix's Bacdafucup (1992),
Nasir "Nas" Jones' powerful Illmatic (1994),
the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace)'s Ready to Die (1994), produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs and others (Wallace was
shot to death in 1997),
and Mobb Deep's second album The Infamous (1995), featuring Albert "Prodigy" Johnson.
Fat Joe (Joseph
Cartagena), the first major Latino rapper from the Bronx, also embraced
the gansta-rap aesthetic, notably on his second album Jealous One's Envy
(1995).
Fat Joe was the most notorious member of New York's rap collective
D.I.T.C. (Diggin' In The Crates), formed by Joe "DJ Diamond D" Kirkland
and first tested on Diamond D's Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop (1992).
The other notable member, Lamont "Big L" Coleman (shot to death in 1999), released perhaps the best of their albums, Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous (1995), produced by Anthony "Buckwild" Best.
Progressive-rap
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Progressive-rap of the kind pioneered by Public Enemy thrived with works such as Arrested Development (1)'s 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life (1992), the product of Atlanta-based rapper Todd "Speech" Thomas and disc-jockey Timothy "Headliner" Barnwell;
Movement Ex's Movement Ex (1990), a concentrate of stereotyped conspiracy theories from Los Angeles;
Oscar "Paris" Jackson's second album Sleeping With the Enemy (1992), from the Bay Area;
Public Enemy associate
"Sister Souljah" (Lisa Williamson)'s 360 Degrees of Power (1992);
Brand Nubian's One For All (1990);
X-Clan's To the East Blackwards (1990) from New York,
KMD's Mr Hood (1991), featuring rapper Daniel "Zen Love" Dumile (later known as MF Doom),
and Return Of The Boom Bap (1993) by former Boogie Down Productions mastermind KRS-One
(Lawrence Krisna Parker).
These groups harked back to the radical, militant, Afro-nationalist
ideology of the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam.
They basically represented the "positive" alternative to gangsta-rap:
instead of advocating rape and murder, they confronted issues of both
local and global politics.
Even feminism found its hip-hop voice: Yolanda "Yo-Yo" Whittaker, who debuted with Make Way for the Motherlode (1991) and founded the "Intelligent Black Woman's Coalition" to promote self-esteem among women.
This subgenre reached a fanatical peak with Steal This Album (1998) by Oakland's duo The Coup, that reads like Mao's "Red Book" or a Noam Chomsky pamphlet.
Jazz-hop
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This was also the decade of "jazz-hop" fusion.
Jazz-hop fusion had distinguished predecessors.
Some consider Miles Davis' On The Corner (1972)
the precursor of hip-hop.
For sure, in the 1990s the Last Poets,
a Harlem-based trio of former jail convicts who had converted to Islam
(led by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin), were using "spiel" (as rap was called in
those days) over a jazz background: their political sermons inspired by
Malcom X relied on the arrangements of jazz producer Alan Douglas on The Last Poets (1970), which became a hit, and developed into "jazzoetry" on Chastisement (1972).
Within the rap nation, jazz-hop was pioneered by:
Grandmaster Flash's remixes of jazz master Roy Ayers;
scratcher Derek "D.ST" Howells's collaboration with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Rockit (1983);
the Jungle Brothers' Straight Out the Jungle (1988), possibly the first example of full-fledged jazz-hop fusion;
And Now The Legacy Begins (1991), the eclectic multi-stylistic manifesto of Toronto-based duo Dream Warriors (with the prophetic My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style);
A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory (1991), which featured
guest musician Ron Carter;
Carlton Douglas "Chuck D" Ridenhour's big-band tribute to Charlie Mingus (1992).
Jazz returned the favor with
post-bop saxophonist Greg Osby's 3D Lifestyles (1993),
with Miles Davis' very last recording, Doo-Bop (1992),
and with the "acid-jazz" scene of San Francisco
(such as Broun Fellinis and Alphabet Soup).
Besides being one of the first groups to follow in the footsteps of Public Enemy's militant hip-hop, Gang Starr (1), rapper Keith "Guru" Elam and producer Christopher "DJ Premier" Martin, pioneered the mature exploitation of jazz on Step In The Arena (1990) and Daily Operation (1992), and then ventured beyond jazz-hop on Moment of Truth (1998). Martin's extensive use of jazz sampling and percussion loops revolutionized the way "raps" ought to be orchestrated.
Jazz-hop became the sensation of 1993 with
Guru (1)'s own Jazzmatazz Volume 1 (1993),
US3's Hand on the Torch (1993), for which British producer Geoff Wilkinson mined the Blue Note catalog,
the Digable Planets' Reachin' (1993), from Boston,
Pharcyde's dadaistic, carnivalesque Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1993), from Los Angeles,
and Plantation Lullabies (1993) by Washington's Me'Shell Ndege' Ocello (Mary Johnson).
The trend was amplified in the following years by albums such as
One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994), the third album by Dallas' white rapper Mark Griffin, better known as MC900 Ft Jesus (1),
the Fun Lovin' Criminals' Come Find Yourself (1996).
Philadelphia's Roots
(1) approached jazz not via samples but through live instrumentation,
led by the rhythm section of drummer Ahmir-Khalib "?uestlove" Thompson
and bassist Leon "Hub" Hubbard and by keyboardist Scott Storch, on Do You Want More
(1994), the album that introduced spoken-word artist Ursula Rucker. A
quantum jump in arrangements (notably James "Kamal" Gray's electronic
keyboards) made Phrenology (2002) a case in point for the
marriage of technology, composition and performance, transforming
hip-hop music into avantgarde architecture; and its successors Game Theory (2006) and Rising Down
(2008) refined their invention (catchy, agitprop, beat-based and
cross-stylistic music) by wedding those lush production values with dark
and high-energy vibrations.
The horizon further expanded with
Chicago's Common Sense (Lonnie Rashied Lynn), who evolved from the mellow jazz-hop of Resurrection (1994) to Electric Circus (2003), an experiment reminiscent of psychedelic and progressive-rock,
and with New York's Dante "Mos Def"
Smith (1), who reacted to gangsta-rap by bring back the serious-minded
philosophy of the "Native Tongues" posse while at the same time
accomodating rock, soul and funk on the phantasmagoric Black on Both Sides (1999).
Basically, hip-hop music had fragmented along three seismic faults of
rebellion: one could vent negro anger as a gangsta, as
an Afronationalist militant or... by playing jazz music.
Hip-hop domination
TM, ®, Copyright © 2005 Piero Scaruffi All rights reserved.
By the mid 1990s, hip-hop had dramatically evolved from an art of "messages"
that were spoken in a conversational tone over an elementary rhythmic
base to an art of cadenced speech in an emphatic and melodramatic tone over
an intricate rhythmic collage. Regardless of the "message" that was now being
broadcasted, the sense of black self-affirmation had moved to the forefront.
The main continuity with the original form of Grandmaster Flash was in the
"urban" setting of the music: except for free-jazz, no other form of black
music had been so viscerally tied to the urban environment.
During the 1990s, hip-hop spread outside of its traditional bases (New York
and Los Angeles), reaching the far corners of the globe.
Acid-rap, a morbid style related to Gravediggaz's horrocore, was coined by Detroit's rapper and producer Esham (Rashaam Smith), both on his solo album Boomin' Words From Hell (1990), recorded when he was 15, and on the harsh and disturbing Life After Death (1992), credited to his group NATAS ("Satan" spelled backwards).
Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) by Atlanta's Outkast
(1), the duo of Andre "Dre" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, was
representative of the rise of southern hip-hop, with its emphasis on
soul melodies and pop arrangements. Outkast turned hip-hop into a new
form of space funkadelia on their sumptuous kaleidoscopes of aural
ecstasy,
Aquemini (1998) and Stankonia (2000)
Another product of the Atlanta school was Goodie Mob's Soul Food
(1995), fronted by vocalist Thomas "Cee-Lo Green" Callaway and credited
with starting the "Dirty South" movement; while Master P assembled the
No Limit posse in New Orleans.
The limitations of Southern gangsta rap were well represented in Texas by UGK (Underground Kingz), the rapping duo of Bun B (Bernard Freeman) and Pimp C (Chad Butler), who debuted with The Southern Way
(1992). The "hard" sound of that album rapidly disappeared in favor of a
smooth radio-friendly sound, leading to the bestsellers Ridin' Dirty (1996) and Underground Kingz (2007). While Pimp C died in 2007 from a drug overdose, the effervescent Bun B launched a successful solo career with the eclectic and star-studded Trill (2005) and II Trill (2008).
In Britain, Fundamental,
the brainchild of Aki "Propa-Gandhi" Nawaz, attempted an original and
brutal fusion of hip-hop, industrial music and world-music on Seize The Time (1994), propelling his agit-prop raps with a style reminiscent of Tackhead, Consolidated and Public Enemy.
And Asian Dub Foundation,
a London-based sound system of ethnic Indian musicians halfway between
Tackhead and Clash, concocted the militant ethnic-punk-folk-dance music
of Rafi's Revenge (1998).
Irish communist rappers Marxman sounded like the British version of Public Enemy on 33 Revolutions Per Minute (1992), but without the musical talent.
The most influential idea was perhaps the one pioneered by the Ragga Twins (Trevor and David Destouche) on Reggae Owes Me Money (1991): the fusion of reggae and hip-hop breakbeats (that would lead to a whole new genre, "jungle").
MC Solaar (Senegal-born Claude M'Barali) catapulted French hip-hop to the forefront of the international scene with the brilliant Qui Seme le Vent Recolte le Tempo (1991) and Prose Combat (1994).
Assalti Frontali, the leading hip-hop posse of Italy, unleashed the
confrontational manifestos Terra di Nessuno (1992) and the
hardcore-tinged Conflitto (1996).
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