Part Two of "Is Hip-Hop Dead?": The Golden Era

Before we can even pose the question of "is hip-hop dead?", we have to look first hip-hop's golden years.

I'm talking about the late 1980's and early 1990's. This was when the hip-hop genre not only became mainstream, but it became a culture. It went from being played by DJs at bloc parties to every kid's boom box in their room or on the street corner.

Sure, Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight", released in 1979, was the song that actually pumped hip-hop into the mainstream, but hip-hop didn't develop into its mature form until the middle to late 1980's. For instance, look at Run DMC. The tremendous trio released its second album, "King of Rock", in 1985. That album, paired with LL Cool J's "Radio" (released in the same year) brought hip-hop into the mainstream. And so began an over ten year period that produced more hip-hop legends, albums, and tracks that may never be even close to being surpassed, ever.

Think about it. Look at your iPod and see if any of these artists can be found:

-KRS-One (Return of the Boom Bap, KRS-One)

-Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, Life After Death)

-2Pac (Me Against the World, All Eyez on Me, The Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory)

-Outkast (ATLiens, Aquemini)

-Nas (Illmatic, It Was Written)

-Jay-Z (Reasonable Doubt, Vol. 1 in My Lifetime)

-A Tribe Called Quest (People's Instinctive Travels and Paths of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, Midnight Marauders)

-N.W.A. (Straight Outta Compton)

-Public Enemy (Yo! Bum Rush the Show, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Fear of a Black Planet)

-De La Soul (Three Feet High and Rising, De La Soul is Dead)

-Run DMC (Run DMC, Raising Hell)

-The Roots (Do You Want More?!?!?, Illadelph Halflife)

-Pete Rock & CL Smooth (Mecca and the Soul Brother)

-Beastie Boys (License to Ill, Paul's Boutique)

-Dr. Dre (The Chronic)

-Common (Resurrection)

-Pharcyde (Bizarre Ride...II Pharcyde)

-Gang Starr (Step Into the Arena, Daily Operation)

-Wu Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang)

That's maybe just over half, as there were plenty of other MCs and groups that made their mark on the genre. It's incredible enough that there were this many artists that emerged in that short of a period, but what's even amazing is the replay value of these artists. There is only one true test to see how good an artist and album is, which is replay value. We're in 2010, over 25 years since the beginning of the golden era of hip-hop, yet you can still hear "It's Tricky" by Run DMC being played around at parties.

Don't believe me? Go to allmusic.com and search any one of those artists, then click their discography page. For example, let's say you selected Jay-Z because he's still very prevalent today. Look down the albums he's released. You'll see that he only has two albums with the impressive 5 star label, "The Blueprint" and his debut album, "Reasonable Doubt". That's better than "The Blueprint 3" or the ever popular "Black Album".

Hip-hop in the 1990's was not only successful commercially, but CRITICALLY. Usually, it wasn't just one album that artists released that was both critically and commercially successful either.

Look back up at the list that I mentioned earlier. After each artist is the albums that were given 4 or 5 stars by The Source, the premier hip-hop magazine on the market today.

There's a lot of albums up there, and I failed to even mention EPMD, Snoop Dogg, Slick Rick, and many other artists that made this era a golden one for hip-hop/rap. Not only were these albums considered very good when released, many of them have become classics and legends of hip-hop. Take notice that Illmatic (1994), Ready to Die (1994), The Low End Theory (1991), and Enter the Wu-Tang (1995) were all released within a FOUR YEAR PERIOD.

Think about that. Can you imagine today having an all-time great album release each year? Don't get me wrong, there is still some very high quality albums that come out each year. But have any of the top ten hip-hop albums to ever be released come out in the past decade? They may be much more successful commercially, but there hasn't been one album that is worthy of comparison with any of the albums listed above.

Want proof? Here's the only albums to achieve a 5 mic rating, the highest honor an album can receive from The Source, in the past decade:

Nas - Stillmatic (2001)
Jay-Z - The Blueprint (2001)
Scarface - The Fix (2002)
Lil' Kim - The Naked Truth (2005)

That's it, and three of these albums came from artists, (Nas, Jay-Z, and Scarface), who were already legends from the 90's. Lil' Kim was also well known from her days with Junior M.A.F.I.A. and Notorious B.I.G. Now, from 1989-1999, there were a total of 39 albums that received that honor. 39 albums to 4. It's pretty clear that hip-hop's heyday was the late 80's and 90's.

So what made hip-hop in the 80's and 90's so much more critically acclaimed than much of today's material? Kevin Powell, a former senior writer for Vibe Magazine and editor of "Who Shot Ya? Three Decades of Hip-Hop Photography," says this:

"In the late '80s, there was such a diversity (in hip-hop). "If you were a young black male growing up then, you could aspire to be Chuck D, or Big Daddy Kane, or Too Short, or Doug E. Fresh. You had choices. That doesn't exist anymore."

Much of hip-hop/rap in the early 90's was socially conscious and artists, like Public Enemy, weren't afraid to talk about the world's issues. Sure, there are issues with guns, prostitutes, and drugs, and artists rapped about it. But there were other things that artists rapped about. Think about this quote from one of Public Enemy's co-creators, Bill Stephney.

"There is an over-representation of the criminal aspects of black youth culture (in music) from the videos and the records," he says. "Not all black kids out here are slinging cocaine, crack and heroin, and shooting at one another. What about the black kid who works at Haagen-Dazs in Brooklyn? He or she is not represented. What about the black kid who just goes to church with his grandmother on Sunday? I don't hear their story in any of these records! All I hear is bang, bang, shoot 'em up."

All good times eventually come to an end. Hip-hop's came to a sad, and ugly finish at the end of the 90's.