Golden age hip-hop
Golden age hip-hop refers to hip-hop music created from roughly the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, coinciding with the genre's advances in the new-school era. The golden age is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on overall hip-hop, and is associated with the development and eventual mainstream success of hip-hop. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic.
The artists most often associated with the period are LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Ultramagnetic MCs, the Jungle Brothers, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Eric B. & Rakim, Kid 'n Play, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Biz Markie, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Gang Starr, and A Tribe Called Quest. Releases by these acts co-existed in this period with early gangsta rap artists such as Schoolly D, Ice-T, Geto Boys, N.W.A, the sex raps of 2 Live Crew and Too Short, and party-oriented music by acts such as the Fat Boys, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice. A majority of these artists and musicians originated from the New York metropolitan area.
Characteristics
The golden age is noted for its innovation – a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre", according to Rolling Stone. Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age", SpinThe term golden age hip-hop frames the late 1980s in mainstream hip-hop, said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence, and associated with Public Enemy, KRS-One and his Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers due to their themes of Afrocentricity and political militancy, their experimental music, and their eclectic sampling. This same period is sometimes referred to as "mid-school" or a "middle school" in hip-hop, the phrase covering acts such as Gang Starr, the UMC's, Main Source, Lord Finesse, EPMD, Just Ice, Stetsasonic, True Mathematics, and Mantronix.
The innovations of Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, and new-school producers such as Larry Smith, and Rick Rubin of Def Jam Recordings, were quickly advanced on by Marley Marl and his Juice Crew MCs, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Eric B. & Rakim. Hip-hop production became denser, rhymes and beats faster, as the drum machine was augmented with the sampler technology. Rakim took lyrics about the art of rapping to new heights, while KRS-One and Chuck D pushed "message rap" towards black activism. Native Tongues artists' inclusive, sample-crowded music accompanied their positivity, Afrocentricity and playful energy.
During the golden age of hip-hop, samples were heavily used. The ability to sample different beats, riffs and patterns from a wide variety of sources gave birth to a new breed of producers and DJs who did not necessarily need formal musical training or instruments, just a good ear for sound collages. These samples were derived from a number of genres, ranging from jazz, funk and soul to rock and roll. For example, Paul's Boutique, Beastie Boys' second studio album, drew from over 200 individual samples, 24 of which were featured on the last track of the album. Samples and sound bites were not limited to just music. RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, a hip-hop collective formed in the 1990s, sampled sound clips from his own collection of 1970s kung-fu films to bolster and frame the group's gritty lyrical content. Many of the sample-laden albums released during this time would not be able to receive legal clearance today.
File:LL Cool J with arms raised at 2007 MyCoke Fest in Atlanta.JPG|thumb|left|upright=1.0|LL Cool J pictured in 2007. His second album Bigger and Deffer spent 11 weeks at number one on the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart in the summer of 1987.
The era also provided some of the greatest advances in rapping technique. Kool G Rap, referring to the golden age in the book How to Rap said, "that era bred rappers like a Big Daddy Kane, a KRS-One, a Rakim, a Chuck D... their rapping capability and ability – these dudes were phenomenal". Many of hip-hop's biggest artists were also at their creative peak. AllMusic said the golden age "witnessed the best recordings from some of the biggest rappers in the genre's history... overwhelmingly based in New York City, golden age rap is characterized by skeletal beats, samples cribbed from hard rock or soul tracks, and tough dis raps... rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, Rakim, and LL Cool J basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".
In addition to lyrical self-glorification, hip-hop was also used as a form of social protest. Lyrical content from the era often drew attention to a variety of social issues including Afrocentric living, drug use, crime and violence, religion, culture, the state of the American economy, and the modern man's struggle. Conscious and political hip-hop tracks of the time were a response to the effects of American capitalism and former President Reagan's conservative political economy. According to Tricia Rose, "In rap, relationships between black cultural practice, social and economic conditions, technology, sexual and racial politics, and the institution policing of the popular terrain are complex and in constant motion. Even though hip-hop was used as a mechanism for different social issues it was still very complex with issues within the movement itself.
There was also often an emphasis on black nationalism. Hip-hop scholar Michael Eric Dyson stated, "during the golden age of hip hop, from 1987 to 1993, Afrocentric and black nationalist rap were prominent", and critic Scott Thill described the time as "the golden age of hip hop, the late '80s and early '90s when the form most capably fused the militancy of its Black Panther and Watts Prophets forebears with the wide-open cultural experimentalism of De La Soul and others". Stylistic variety was also prominent; MSNBC said that in the golden age, "rappers had an individual sound that was dictated by their region and their communities, not by a marketing strategist," the Village Voice referred to the golden age's "eclecticism", and Ben Duinker and Denis Martin of Empirical Musicology Review wrote that "The constant flow of new, boundary-pushing Golden Age album releases exemplifies this era's unprecedented stylistic fluidity."
Time period
The specific time period that the golden age covers varies among different sources and may overlap with other subcurrents in hip-hop. AllMusic writes, "Hip-hop's golden age is bookended by the commercial breakthrough of Run-D.M.C. in 1986 and the explosion of predominantly West Coast gangsta rap with N.W.A in the late 80s and Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg in 1993." The New York Times described hip-hop's golden age as the "late 1980s and early 90s". Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers said, "there was that golden age of hip-hop in the early 90s when the Jungle Brothers made Straight Out the Jungle and De La Soul made 3 Feet High and Rising". MSNBC called the 1980s the "Golden Age" of hip-hop music. The Guardian states, "The golden age of hip-hop, from 1986 to 1993, gave the world an amazing number of great records," and also describes the period in November 1993, when A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan released albums, as "The Next Golden age."The golden age is described by scholar Mickey Hess as "circa 1986-1994." Carl Stoffers of New York Daily News describes the golden age as "spanning from approximately 1986 to 1997." Brad Callas of Medium.com writes that "Hip-Hop's Golden Age is loosely bookended by the genre's commercial breakthrough in the late 1980s and the back-to-back deaths of 2Pac and Biggie in the late 1990s." In their article "In Search of the Golden Age Hip-Hop Sound", music theorists Ben Duinker and Denis Martin of Empirical Musicology Review use "the 11 years between and including 1986 and 1996 as chronological boundaries" to define the golden age, bookended by the releases of Raising Hell and License to Ill and the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. Will Lavin of uDiscover Music states "It's generally accepted that the Golden Age occurred from the mid '80s mid '90s; it was then that all the elements of the culture – breaking, graffiti art and DJing – broke cover to enter the mainstream."
Music critic Tony Green, in the book Classic Material, refers to the two-year period 1993–1994 as "a second Golden Age" that saw influential, high-quality albums using elements of past classicism – drum machines, drum samplers, turntable scratches, references to old-school hip-hop hits, and "tongue-twisting triplet verbalisms" – while making clear that new directions were being taken. Green lists as examples the Wu-Tang Clan's Enter the Wu-Tang , Nas's Illmatic, De La Soul's 1993 release Buhloone Mindstate, Snoop Doggy Dogg's Doggystyle, A Tribe Called Quest's third album Midnight Marauders and Outkast's Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik. Dart Adams of Festival Peak described this "2nd Golden Era" as spanning 1992 to 1996, and cites the release of Puff Daddy and Mase's "Can't Nobody Hold Me Down" in 1997 as being the start of mainstream rap's "Jiggy Era".
According to copyright, music and pop culture scholars Kembrew Mcleod and Peter DiCola, the golden age of hip-hop sampling spans from 1987 to 1992. Artists and record labels were not yet aware of the permanence of hip-hop culture in mainstream media, and did not yet accept it as a legitimate institution. They believe the ruling made in Grand Upright Music, Ltd. v. Warner Bros. Records Inc. marked the end of the golden age of hip-hop and its sampling practices.