Hip-Hop 101
March 3, 2009As Hip-Hop has evolved over the past four decades from a localized phenomenon first seen in park jams in the South Bronx into the globalized big business and dominant art form it is today the genre has been fueled by certain albums, songs, events and shows of infinite importance towards change. These moments are unforgettable; Sugar Hill Gang breaking “Rapper’s Delight”, the first rap “hit” (albeit in a fraudulent manner, word to Grandmaster Caz) Flash bringing his “Message” of ghetto plight to the masses everywhere, Run-DMC’s style, NWA’s furious nihilism… and on and on and on. The culture is defined by so many important instances that helped shape what it is today that some moments get lost in the shuffle and stripped of impact. September 29, 1998 is one of these overlooked moments.
The 29th day of the ninth month in 1998 helped change hip-hop music for good, pushing it into a new era with the release of three albums, Jay-Z’s Volume 2: Hard Knock Life, Outkast’s Aquemini, and A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement.
You have to remember that in 1998 hip-hop was still struggling to stop the bleeding that was still oozing from the murders of it’s two brightest stars, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. The music needed a star to carry it into the new millennium and to continue to push the culture forward both commercially and artistically. In stepped Jay-Z.
Hov, fresh off less than stellar reactions to his In My Lifetime Volume 1 from the 
previous year (which was unfairly hated on bc of a few horrible Bad Boy influenced songs), managed to truly break through with Volume 2, an album that maintained the emcees gritty rhyme tales and combined them with his mainstream sensibility. This album made Jay-Z the new Biggie Smalls. Sure, hip-hop still missed and mourned the Bed-Stuy emcee, but Jay’s emergence as a full blown superstar softened the blow exponentially. We now had a new Brooklyn emcee who could match lyrics with anyone in the game and still manage to drop hit after hit without sacrificing his credibility. It was a perfect storm. The genre needed desperately for someone to step up and fill a black, hollow void left by the violent actions of September 7th, 1996 and March 9th, 1997 respectively, and Jay-Z had been ready to do so, the rest is history. Volume 2 sold four million copies, The Hard Knock Life Tour brought large scale touring back into hip-hop, and Jay-Z went on to become arguably the greatest emcee of all time, stabilizing a very uneasy hip-hop music scene that was searching for help to sustain itself.
If the ground swell that was Volume 2 was not enough, 9/29/98 also saw the south rise with OutKast’s Aquemini. Again, in 1998 the hip-hop climate was much different than it is today. Southern acts were still striving for the respect that east and west coast emcees received for their art. Aquemini achieved this. It was the tipping point for the south. An album that was full of deep lyrical content, ridiculous beats, and the inescapable charisma of Andre 3000.
Kast’s third album struck a major blow by becoming the first album by a southern act to receive the coveted 5-mic rating in The Source, joining such classics as Illmatic, The Low End Theory, De La Soul Is Dead, and All For One (this was when The Source still held a lot of weight in the hip-hop industry). Aquemini‘s critical acclaim and commercial acceptance led the way for all southern “artists” (term used loosely per my East Coast bias) from Master P to Ludacris to L’il Wayne. The Carter III would not be taking home any Grammy’s or other critical awards if it wasn’t for OutKast breaking down doors with their experimental Southern fried funk.
With Jay-Z commercially dominating, well everything, and OutKast becoming the new critical darlings of hip-hop, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Love Movement floundered when it was released and was not able to find an audience. This lack of success is exactly what makes Tribe’s final record land such an impact.
Tribe had been, arguably, the greatest act in hip-hop for a span of four albums, and 
their sudden failure signaled the end of an era. Even the well publicized fact that The Love Movement would be Tribe’s breakup album could not generate enough buzz, and the fickle hip-hop heads refused to send the Queens gods off with a hit. While The Love Movement is probably the most lacking of any Tribe release (even it’s stark white cover sets this mediocre work apart from the group’s previous color infused classics), it still should have sold due to the acts early 90′s fan base. The fact that it did not proved that hip-hop was experiencing an audience change over. Younger folks were the ones buying records and they were checking for DMX, Hov, JD, No Limit and of course Puff Daddy, acts who moved away from the early 90′s hip-hop sound and were intently focused on going quintuple platinum rather than releasing an album that thrived on creativity alone (that’s not to say these albums were void of artistic merit as well). Tribe bricking with their final LP closed the door on what is often called the Golden Age of Hip-Hop.
Luckily enough Tribe’s torch was carried into the new millennium thanks to an album released a month before 9/29; Mos Def and Talib Kweli…Are Black Star. Mos and Kweli’s album maintained the spirit of the Native Tongues movement and helped usher in a new underground scene that acted as a checks and balances system for the ever growing commercial hip-hop scene. Black Star, as well as their brethren in the Okayplayer collective and the Rawkus Records roster, among others, were the new Tribe, and they offered millions of hip-hop fans the mainstream alternative sounds that they craved. The type of music that Tribe could no longer successfully deliver because they were now in a grey zone, ignored by a younger generation and forgotten by an older one.
These three albums shaped hip-hop’s current landscape. On a single Tuesday in 1998 the seeds of contemporary hip-hop were sown.
Grandmaster Flash just released a new album .. the Message is a very personal favorite of mine.
Insights like the above are a wonderful addition to the website. good looks ..
Great post, man.
I vividly remember me and a few of my friends riding our bikes to the mall after school that day to cop some of these at Sam Goody.
I copped Outkast and Tribe. My 13 year old ass was too much of an anti-commercial (or whatever) chump at that point to pick up that Jay record (how times change). One of my friends picked up Black Star too and made me a tape of it, and actually until this very post I’ve always thought that Black Star came out the same day as Aquemini and Love Movement.
so did i man. originally it was going to be four albums until i looked into it. swore they all dropped at once
I read an awesome article the other day that compares roots reggae to hip hop .. it said that “Roots reggae is a commentary on post-Colonial 1960s Jamaica, while hip-hop is a commentary on post-civil rights New York City in a period of economic downturn.”
you can check out the whole article here: http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/talking-and-mixing-to-the-hip-hop-and-reggae-beat/?scp=1&sq=hip%20hop&st=cse