Word: hip-hop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Where 2 Live Crew's potty-mouth lyrics may have sparked hip-hop's first sustained confrontation with the law, the rise of gangsta rap opened the floodgates. N.W.A. (Niggas With Attitude) pioneered the new form with an in-your-face contempt for authority in tales of murder and mayhem set on the streets of Compton, Calif. "F--- tha Police" shocked mainstream America, but it resonated with the youth of the hip-hop nation. And it proved frighteningly prophetic when L.A. erupted in riots that shocked the world two years later. N.W.A. spawned a new breed of rapper, styled...
Gangsta rap, with its narrative tales and its cinematic funk-driven sound, offered a distinct alternative to the tricky bebop gymnastics of the freestyling East Coast. But hip-hop came close to destroying itself in the mid-'90s when that bicoastal rivalry almost turned into a shooting war, as Tupac Shakur - between surviving shootings and spells in prison - threatened the life of Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. and both men, former friends, were by the end of 1997 dead in as-yet-unsolved drive-by shootings...
...while most hip-hop fans today may be well versed in the tale of Tupac and Biggie, the show transports them back to an era they may find hard to imagine. After all, the almost pharaonic fantasy world of a Puffy Combs video is light-years away from the hand-stenciled mimeographs with crude sketches advertising an around-the-way appearance of Kurtis Blow or a block party featuring Grandmaster Flash. This was a do-it yourself movement in the outer boroughs, a culture being built by hand, brick by brick - one to which the suits running the music industry...
...kids grown accustomed to hip-hop as the bearer of grim tales of death and destruction, "Hip-Hop Nation" offers a glimpse of a reminder that the cultural roots were in joyous block parties and people having getting together to have a good time no matter how grim their circumstances. That much is summed up in the words of one pioneering DJ carried in a video installation: "If there was negativity and fights breaking out at your party, that means your DJ was whack...
...THOSE PARTIES in the "Boogie Down" South Bronx where hip-hop's founding fathers - Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash - first began delivering spoken rhymes over the break beats on funk and disco records sometime in the mid-'70s. Today the signature beats-and-rhymes combination of the musical art form they created is as ubiquitous in America's tony suburbs as in its forgotten housing projects, and has kids in distant parts of the world whose first language may be French or Japanese or Wolof chanting choruses inviting their friends to "get at me, dawg...