What Is Your Hip-Hop?

Every generation has their view on what real hip-hop is and even how it relates to their era of music. Hip-hop has always carried the weight of reaching out to those who stand on the line of spoken word poetry and music when no other genre could relate.

In 1979, both The Fatback and The Sugarhill Gang came with the first recorded hip-hop music to enter the field- The Fatback releasing "King Tim III" a few weeks before The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight". These recorded tracks may not have been the very first rappers to invent this genre, but they did encourage a lot of later musicians to be accepted by the music industry as that's what was in and making money.

Artists such as Run DMC, De La Soul, Salt-N-Pepa, Tupac, MC Lyte and Whodini flooded the 80's and through the 90's we were introduced to artists such as Nas, Mos Def, OutKast, Naughty by Nature, Missy Elliot and Queen Latifah (going by their best/greatest years).

[The Sugarhill Gang, "Rapper's Delight"]

Being born into the 90's, I grew up listening to a lot of 90's hip-hop artists and being in the household I lived, I grew up on artists from every genre, every generation. Listening to so many different artists, I've learned to listen to music before discarding it as "unreal" hip-hop and this has allowed me to stay with the times and still enjoy the "oldies."

[The Fatback, "King Tim III (Personality Jock)"]

The 90's, for me, was indeed thee most sensible generation of the hip-hop era. However, there is a rise in hip-hop once again with artists like OSHUN, Akua Naru, Chance The Rapper, Joey Bada$$, Oddisee, Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and a hell of a lot more. Hip-hop has its moments of artists who just want to have fun or just want to make money and throw a nice beat under horrible lyrics. These artists have been making sure to pass on a message to the future. Keeping their eyes closed and their mind opened.

So from this you can gather my hip-hop is hip-hop that speaks to the generations to come and the generations that are. Keeping the world together using words like glue. Hip-hop that makes you feel something and makes you get up and do something. Now the question remains...