What’s good, Hip Hop History Month community! One fascinating thing has become very clear very quickly as we work our way through the chronological decades of hip hop history: the development of the genre is far, far from linear. And we know that this isn’t a radical thing to say, because we know that this is true for most art forms, moving in fits and starts, from an -ism to a ‘neo-ism’ and then to an assigning of a ‘proto-ism’, etc. So we’ll start our challenge today, the 90s, with an acknowledgment that the simple chronology of the decade can’t possibly contain the development of hip hop with too much precision. It’s more of a limiting factor than an argument about aesthetics, culture, or the music.

And so but the 90s-where to even start? I can think of three somewhat convenient jumping off points:

1. The rise of regional rap, from Houston to New Orleans to the East Coast/West Coast rivalry that was and is the stuff of legend.
2. Hip-hop’s cross-over into the mainstream continued full force, with everything from successful combinations of rap and R&B music to the rise of hip hop culture’s influence on fashion.
3. The continued political awareness of rap music and its confrontational, unapologetic Blackness. Whether a lightening rod for controversy, making white folks uncomfortable, or interrogating alternative legacies of hip hop via jazz and Afrocentrism, 90s hip hop wasn’t all gangster rap!

I’m going with this one because I think if I’d really been receptive to more hip hop back in ’95, and someone had played this for me, I would’ve really been into it. It has so much of what I personally love about rap music in the 90s- a chill vibe, a cool-ass video, ingenious sampling, a kind of playfulness to the rhymes.

But this one, this was the sound I heard in school, in my neighborhood, on the bus..everywhere:

Thinking back, it’s amazing that little Clash-worshipping grunge enthusiast indie skate punk teenaged HP still managed to soak up cuts from Wu Tang, Snoop Dog, and Notorious BIG without having a single friend who listened to any of that stuff, but that’s how pervasive hip hop was in that decade. Incredible stuff.

I think this is maybe one of our toughest challenge days because the 90s was such a landmark in the history of the genre, but we’re gonna do our best here! Let’s get a good mixtape together today. 🙂

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!