Goin’ real Afrocentric with that pull, Fresh…
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My lil brother loved them. The Red the Black and the Green… respekt that you know
Also my bad for not including Too $$hort much earlier. Tuttle wasnt ready for my Lasonic booming Freaky Tales
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“3 Feet High and Rising”!!! Love it!!! They were so good and they still have a modern sound like ATCQ. I was gifted a record player a few years back so I’m into vinyl. I love albums where the whole thing is a great vibe start to finish. That’s why I love ATCQ and De La Soul. That album is impossible to find on vinyl however.
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Just seeing this, for me, 2Pac is like Bruce Lee. Incredible and both were on pace to change the world.
Much more than a rapper.
But if you just take rapping alone, Biggie and 2Pac were close. Culturally…not close.
I have noticed this with Music.
When I was younger, music was all new and created a soundtrack for me. I had time to listen and to adapt to new music and it was a backdrop to the times. I didn’t understand why older people didn’t like my music…
Now at my age, my time is short. When I want to listen to something, I don’t have time to get adjust to new sounds…I go to what I like and what I know and most of the time…it’s 90s hip hop for me.
When I’m in a setting where I hear Travis Scott or Da Baby/lil Baby…I like it, but I’m not used to it, nor do I crave it. But I’m guessing that these kids, will go through the exact same thing when they get to my age. They will want to hear the music of their times and have trouble adapting to whatever is playing in the Meta…or not
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I was a rock DJ at WTJU from 89 to 92. OMG the walls of awesome vinyl in that basement at Peabody…even though I had a rock show, I played plenty of hip hop. My brother, who also had a show on TJU, opened his shows with PE’s “Don’t Believe the Hype”…man, some serious good times…
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Damn you just summed up a thought I’ve had for a while but couldn’t put into words or understand why I can’t dive deep into modern music the way I do into what was big when I was in HS or college. It’s all about the time.
On that note special shootout to Outkast they were putting it down way before Stankonia.
Also The Pharcyde Labcanincalifornia. If you like thay mid 90s left coast sound check it out.
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I read somewhere that a person’s musical tastes freeze at a certain age and whatever you listened to around that time is your go to for the rest of your life. I can’t remember the age but I’ll see if I can find the article.
I worked for Warner Music in the late 2000s. Music was always playing in the offices. There was a free jukebox in the lobby that people made requests to. My musical taste is probably stuck in 2007-2012 pop.
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YG sneaked into my rap for some time. Mustad on that beat… yo?
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I listen to new stuff but it’s true it’s not as exciting or captivating as hip-hop was in my formative years. I think part of it is just the natural process of maturing, but also hip-hop became industrialized in the 2000s to the point that now it’s just another form of pop. I will admit (to my shame) that I was on the drill wave because I have Chicago ties and for as awful and depressing as the content is, shit was catchy and “real” in a way that rap hadn’t been since the 90’s.
That said, nothing will ever give me the feeling that songs like “Chief Rocka” and “T.R.O.Y.” did back in the day. Man, songs like “The Choice Is Yours” and “Top Billin’” are just part of the cultural fabric now but when they first came out it was mind blowing. No other music had that edge and raw creativity.
@DFresh11 You’re from Tennessee right? Were you into the Memphis scene in the day? Crazy how influential that stuff is to this day.
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In my time there was no Memphis rap game. It was all of us trying to find the NY stuff like KRS1 and Run DMC and Rakim. man it took us like 3 years just to get Cherry Coke back then
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So where did everyone get their hip hop? In 1992 you couldn’t just go to Apple Music, or Spotify or YouTube.
Being a NOVA/DC area kid it was 95.5 WPGC & 93.9 WKYS for us. I remember it blowing my mind that no one outside of the DC metro area really knew what Go-Go even was. I figured it was everywhere.
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There was no cville stations with hiphop. Found it on Bet or Ed Lover on YOMTV.
I remember a kid brought NWA on the bus and i heard curse words for the first time…my mind was blown!
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Ted Jeffries brought it to all of us. No clue how.
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WTJU would have some random shows, usually late at night, that would play hip-hop. I feel like there was a Friday or Saturday night show in '92-'93 from like midnight to 2:00 or something like that. I want to say the DJ’s name was the Butcher and there was another guy who hosted? I was like 12 so I could be conflating memories.
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Cville had the Boombox for a while on 91.9. Late night weekends
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91.9 the Boombox was the first time I heard real hip hop on the radio in Charlottesville. I remember my friends amd I would actually tape it every night so we could listen to it all day.
Z95 would play some R&B Boys 2 Men that sorta stuff and at some point an AM Station emergered that had the Tom Joyner morning show and played older R&B during the day.
By first real taste of hip hop was the typical pop stuff that showed up in the early 90a kriss kross and somehow i had a tape that had Parents Just Don’t understand by Will Smith along with a couple othet tracks. I played the hell outta that. Hammer was everywhere so I knew that from TV as well. But you couldn’t go deep back then. And being 8 9 10 I wasn’t browsing record stores yet.
But in those days there was 15 copies of Under the Table and Dreaming for every 1 hip hop album by anyone.
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Stumbling across The Boombox while at UVA was a treat.
Growing up in the 804, Magic 99 and Power 93 were the radio stations to follow. Every now and then at night, you could pick up 103 Jamz out of Norfolk.
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A 90s classic no one has mentioned yet that still holds up incredibly well…
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And a 90s gem from the west coast to even things out.
90s hip hop is probably my favorite era of music. I could listen to it all day from all regions and not get bored. I used to hit up Plan 9 on The Corner weekly to see what was new. And in high school we had a place called Willie’s where I’d do the same. It was a rare week that I didn’t buy something.
I’m supremely jealous that @DFresh11 lived in the same building as someone from the Wu. They’re still my ultimate favorite group of MCs. My first year dorm room door at UVA was covered with Wu ads from magazine ads.
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