Happy Friday, Hip Hop History community: HP here to keep the time travel going today-it’s 80s day!

While the 1970s were a foundational era in which many of the foundations of hip hop culture and music were being formed using the sounds and aesthetics of soul, funk, spoken word performances, among other things, the 80s were the time when that artistry became an undeniable force. This was the golden era, a decade where the established conventions of hip hop were being perfected alongside unparalleled innovations in everything from rhyme patterns in rap to fashion (‘My Adidas’!) to music production.

Songs got shorter as the genre moved away from its 12″ house party origins towards burgeoning popularity on MTV and radio stations across the US. Samples opened up incredible possibilities for feats of creativity and callbacks to earlier traditions. Plenty of MCs turned away from the bragging of battle rap to focus on issues effecting Black people right in their communities, from crime to drugs to positivity and alternative ways of understanding Blackness, moving it away from the negative depictions in other media at the time.

In my mind, the 80s is the most fascinating era of hip hop history primarily because of its diversity! It would be nearly impossible to represent it in a song or two- so many artists were exploring so many things that would expand the boundaries of the genre while reinforcing its essential elements. A lot of incredible songs and productions and artists to choose from- so much happened in a decade.

Imagine trying to tie De La Soul, The Beastie Boys, Eric B and Rakim, Run DMC, MC Lyte, and Public Enemy (among others) together somehow! Whew! But we’re up to the task- find a song you think will help us get a sense of 80s hip hop and bring it out! 🙂

I’ll start us off with:

Now, many of us are not hip hop ‘heads’- even though this era is when the genre really started to reach mainstream culture, it is a dense decade. Even if you’re unfamiliar with 80s hip hop, if you’d still like to post a song and talk about it, don’t feel as though you necessarily have to speak from a place of expertise. I’ve found Okayplayer’s guide to Hip Hop history to be really interesting even though I’m familiar with a lot of what it’s laying out- https://www.okayplayer.com/hiphop50 .

Please, please feel free to check out the Spotify playlists on the Okayplayer site and post something that stands out to you if you’d like to/if you’re not sure what you’d like to post! We’re here to enjoy music and hear new stuff and talk about it, that’s it!

In order to keep the thread from borking, please limit yourself to one YouTube/media link (putting the challenge in the ’30 day challenge’ ). If someone ‘beats you to it’ and posts a song you would’ve posted, reply under their post saying why you like this song/why it was your pick as well, etc. Let’s not give Disqus a reason to make the thread hard to navigate for those of us listening to the songs! If you want to mention some others, of course that’s fine!