New School Hip Hop - Mid 80s to 2000s
This is the era where rap greats such as Run DMC, LL Cool J, the
Beastie Boys, and Public Enemy all held the ranges and are the
most recognizable associations of Hip Hop. As MTV emerged, Hip
Hop began to have a larger and larger audience, and with a larger
audience came a shift in variety of cultural topics from the romantic
rhymes of LL Cool J to the political ideologies of groups like Public
Enemy. Hip Hop began to have a voice that spoke loud and demanded
to be heard.
This is also the time where females also began to shape hip hop culture
as we saw a surge in female power rappers from the first MC
Lyte to the first female rap group Salt N Pepa. We also can’t speak
about this era without calling references to East Coast vs West
Coast Rap. It was Ice T who pioneered West Coast Rap which lead
to the 1989, N.W.A’s Straight Outta Compton album that became
the most prominent hip hop album to emerge from somewhere besides
New York City. This created a massive rivalry that allegedly
led to the deaths of Hip Hop greats Tupac Shakur and Notorious
B.I.G.
So much of the Hip Hop Culture developed in this short amount of
time that it is nearly impossible to talk about each and every aspect.
However, every artist had a vital role to play in shaping the Hip
Hop culture as we know it today.
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