Gangsta rap music was born on the East Coast – Philadelphia to be specific, with Schooly D’s song “P.S.K. ‘What Does It Mean’?” released in 1986.  On the West Coast, Ice-T quickly followed in the same year with his own song “6 in the Mornin.’”  Though inspired by “PSK”, Ice-T’s song laid the blueprint for the Los Angeles gangsta lifestyle that became immortalized in gangsta rap music, and his 1987 debut release Rhyme Pays can be considered as the initial West Coast gangsta rap album.

Furthering the gangsta aesthetic on the East Coast was the group Boogie Down Productions, and their 1987 debut release Criminal Minded.  This album featured group members KRS-One and DJ Scott LaRock depicted on the cover surrounded by an arsenal of weapons – the first major hip-hop release to feature such imagery.  Their song “9mm Goes Bang” symbolized their hardcore, violent approach to hip-hop music, and also marked them as one of the forefathers of gangsta rap.[1]

The explosion of this form came in 1988 with N.W.A.’s album Straight Outta Compton, which sold over 2.5 million copies.  N.W.A. was the ultimate group of rap all-stars, featuring Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, and DJ Yella.  They put Compton, California on the hip-hop map, and it is still considered as the true home of West Coast gangsta rap music.  After that, throughout the 90s, gangsta rap became the most popular and commercial form of hip-hop music, and through it the dominant West Coast musical style “g-funk” was introduced in Dr. Dre’s classic 1992 solo album[2] The Chronic.  This is a musical style that appeared in a manner not unlike the introduction of West Coast jazz in the 50s, for similar aesthetic and hegemonic reasons[3] – in opposition to the dominance of East Coast style musical production.  G-funk (gangsta funk) music features minimal samples, live instrumentation, synthesizers and heavy bass, a mellow tone with relatively slower beats, and a marked emulation of the 70s funk music of Parliament-Funkadelic.

This heyday of the gangsta rap era produced the most influential and best-selling rapper of all-time: Tupac Shakur.  Born in Harlem to a Black Panther family, but raised in Marin City, California, Shakur was a poet and a classically-trained actor; he was arguably the most complete and influential artist hip-hop has ever seen.  While many label him a gangsta rapper, Shakur actually balanced a hardcore approach with a political edge, and sometimes even an idealistic softer side.  Shakur was associated with Death Row Records at the end of his career, which is the label that became the largest symbol and proprietor of West Coast gangsta music.  He released his masterpiece album The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory under the alias “Makaveli” in 1996.  This was also the year that he was shot and killed, closing the curtain on the dominance of Death Row Records, and also the supremacy of West Coast gangsta rap.

[2] Though labeled a solo release, The Chronic featured a large number of guest appearances, to the extent that it can be considered a group album.  This is the album that introduced, and made stars out of, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Daz, Kurupt, and Warren G, all members of the Dogg Pound, and most hailing from Long Beach, California.

[3] West Coast jazz developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco as a sub-genre of New York City cool jazz.  It is characterized by a heavily-arranged, compositionally-based, and calm sound, in opposition to the aggressive, abstract, and dissonant style of be-bop.

The most popular of the early-to-mid 80s hip-hop groups was Run-D.M.C., who helped to build the legendary music label Def Jam Records, run by hip-hopper Russell Simmons.  They were pioneers, and one of the most important and legendary groups in the history of hip-hop.  Run-D.M.C. was the first hip-hop group to have a number one album on the R&B chart; to have a top-ten album on the pop chart; to have certified gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums; to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone; to receive a Grammy Award nomination; to have a video on MTV; and to receive an athletic product endorsement deal (Adidas).  Therefore, Run-D.M.C. did more than anyone in history to take hip-hop into the mainstream.  During this era, hip-hop was still centered in New York City, with all of its artists originating from one of the five boroughs (The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island).  But that began to change by the mid-to-late 80s as hip-hop groups began cropping up in various cities across America like Philadelphia, Miami, Houston, and Los Angeles.

The 80s constitutes the first half of the “golden age”[1] of hip-hop music, as the aesthetics of the sound solidified and subsequently transformed into many diverse forms and sub-genres.  Hip-hop music was alternately celebratory party music, like Doug E. Fresh and The Get Fresh Crew, socio-political tracts, like Public Enemy, crossover pop music, like DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, and gangsta music, like N.W.A.

Rock Steady Crew (RSC) was a b-boy crew established in the Bronx in 1977.  They became the largest and one of the most influential crews in the world, with chapters all over America and other parts of the globe.  The peak of their success and notoriety was in the 80s, spearheaded by Rock Steady Crew president Crazy Legs, who started a chapter in Manhattan in 1981.  Thanks to his promotional efforts, this was also the year in which RSC performed at the Lincoln Center Outdoors Program, which gave them worldwide exposure.  In 1983 they participated in the Roxy Tour, the first international hip-hop music tour, which took them to London and Paris.  RSC can be credited with helping to spread the popularity of b-boy-ing across the globe.

The 80s also saw the climax of graffiti’s commercial popularity.  Graffiti moved from the streets into art galleries as critics and collectors began to take notice of the emerging form.  This shift can be symbolized by the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who initially was a graffiti writer tagging the name SAMO, and then entered the world of high art in New York City by 1982, showing regularly as part of what would be labeled the “Neo-Expressionist” movement.  With growing international success, Basquiat soon abandoned his street art.  In less than 10 years, hip-hop culture as a commodity had already reached the saturation point.

Hip-hop music is a combination of two original elements of hip-hop culture: DJ-ing and MC-ing, the former being the musical expression of hip-hop culture, the latter being its poetic expression.  DJ-ing is the art of creating music out of pre-existing forms, such as the break beats of records that were re-combined into the pastiche that is hip-hop music.  MC-ing is the art of delivering spoken word poetry rhythmically over the beat of the music, or, rapping.

The time has come to canonize hip-hop albums; to offer a starting point with regards to studying the great artistic achievements in hip-hop music.  Canons are living things; they expand and constrict with time.  Due to hip-hop’s relatively young age, the assumption must stand that the canon will grow, and that this is just the beginning.

What follows is a cataloguing of 8 essential albums that any hip-hop canon can’t do without.  8 is an arbitrary number, chosen to avoid the hackneyed “top-ten” list, and also to avoid ranking the works against themselves.  The albums will be presented in chronological order.

Raising Hell (1986) by Run-D.M.C.

This is the album that marked the beginning of the “golden age” of hip-hop music, and also the album that sent hip-hop into the mainstream, or rather, brought the mainstream to hip-hop; best symbolized by the song “Walk This Way”, which was a collaboration with Aerosmith as a remake of their song of the same name – the first rap/rock fusion to be a success as a pop hit.  The album was produced by Rick Rubin, who can be credited as one of the architects of hip-hop’s early studio sound.  This was a pivotal work for a number of reasons: it’s one of the last of the “classic” albums in hip-hop music, featuring a minimalist production style that Rubin came to be known for and an equally minimalist tag-team approach to rhyming that almost became extinct later in the decade; and also due to its stunning commercial success (three million records sold), hip-hop lost its innocence.  Gone were the days of an idealistic stripped-down subculture – hip-hop matured as a global cultural commodity.

It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) by Public Enemy

Public Enemy’s second album displays the apex of their style: hard-hitting socio-political lyrics by Chuck D, satiric counterpoint by Flavor Flav, and an experimental collage-style musical production sound by the Bomb Squad.  The song “Don’t Believe the Hype” exemplifies Public Enemy’s polemical approach, and “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos” showcases Chuck D’s storytelling abilities in the politically-tinged plot about a prison break.  This album made stars out of Public Enemy.  While their next album Fear of a Black Planet (1990) would be selected for preservation on the U.S. National Recording Registry as a work that is “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant,” this album is the more polished of the two.  It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the Rosetta Stone for revolutionary rap, in form and content.

Straight Outta Compton (1988) by N.W.A.

Straight Outta Compton (1988) by N.W.A.

If It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the Rosetta Stone for socio-political revolutionary rap, Straight Outta Compton, released in the same year, has a similar status in relation to gangsta rap.  This is the album that put Compton on the hip-hop map as the home of West Coast gangsta rap, and also marked the shift in popularity towards gangsta rap music, which is still the dominant form today.  N.W.A. is the original super group of hip-hop all-stars: Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella.  Their song “Fuck the Police” features the same revolutionary spirit that characterized Public Enemy, with a touch of urban anarchy and blatant violence.  This song also earned the group a letter of reproach from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, making them the most notorious musical group working at that time.  What N.W.A. offered was an unflinching and explicit look at ghetto life in South Central Los Angeles, and rap music would literally never be the same afterwards.  Hip-hop’s loss of innocence was completed with the release and success of this album.

The Low End Theory (1991) by A Tribe Called Quest

If such things as perfect albums exist, this is one of them.  The construction and execution borders on the flawless: fourteen songs, no skits, and no filler.  Q-Tip and Phife Dawg make for a great one-two rhyming combo, one of the greatest in the history of hip-hop.  Evidence lies in the song “Check the Rhime”, which is an example of hip-hop music at its purest, as well as a classic recording.  The jazzy production with live instrumentation that dominates this album marked a schism with West Coast G-funk, which was primed to explode at the time; and it also prefigured the series of Jazzmatazz fusion albums by Guru which began appearing only a few years later.

The Chronic (1992) by Dr. Dre

This is the musical masterpiece of hip-hop.  Kanye West said it best when he noted that this is the album every producer must measure himself against, if he’s serious about his work.  The Chronic introduced the hip-hop world to G-funk, or gangsta funk, which is a musical style that combines a cool, West Coast feel with Parliament-Funkadelic styled funk music and the raw gangsta rap lyrics that Dr. Dre helped pioneer as part of N.W.A.  The album also introduced Snoop Doggy Dogg, launching his career as one of the biggest stars in hip-hop, putting Long Beach on the hip-hop map as the second home for West Coast gangsta rap, and introducing the Dogg Pound as well (Daz, Kurupt, Warren G).  Credit must also be given to Daz (Snoop’s cousin) and Warren G (Dre’s half-brother), brilliant producers in their own right, for contributing to the creation of the G-funk sound.  Though labeled a solo release, this album was really a huge collaborative effort featuring a multitude of guest appearances.  Much like the work of Shakespeare for the Western Canon, The Chronic is utterly indispensible for any conceivable notion of a hip-hop canon.

Ready to Die (1994) by The Notorious B.I.G.

After the early 90s takeover of hip-hop by West Coast G-funk, Ready to Die was the album that helped revitalize the New York scene.  This was The Notorious B.I.G.’s debut album, though he was only able to follow up with a double album before he was killed.  The work has a strong narrative current on life and death that unifies the album, and it features a gamut of emotions from introspection, anger, lust, pride, and spite, to remorse; the tonal shifts in the songs’ content are grand, along with the shifts in musical styles.  Biggie is considered by many to be the greatest rapper who ever lived.  While that’s debatable, the fact that this album is a supreme work in hip-hop is not.  “Big Poppa” is one of the great club anthems, “One More Chance” the greatest raunchy sexual boast song in hip-hop, and “Unbelievable” a peerless match between lyricist and producer at the top of their respective games: Biggie and DJ Premier.  The definition of a masterpiece is something endlessly repeatable and endlessly enjoyable, and that’s Ready to Die.

Reasonable Doubt (1996) by Jay-Z

The debut album by Jay-Z helped to initiate a sub sub-genre of gangsta rap: Mafioso rap.  Crime and hip-hop became linked as big businesses as depicted in Reasonable Doubt, evidenced by the impeccable suit, hat, and expensive cigar that Jay-Z sports on the album cover (and also portending his future as one of the most successful of all hip-hop entrepreneurs).  If Biggie isn’t the greatest lyricist in the annals of hip-hop history, Jay-Z is, and the highlight of this album is being able to judge for yourself through the track “Brooklyn’s Finest,” which features the two heavyweights trading verses in a brilliant fusillade of battle rapping.  Never has a more powerful lyrical struggle for supremacy been captured in a single recording, and the result sounds very much like a stalemate.

The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory (1996) by Makaveli

If Jay-Z and Biggie are the greatest hip-hop lyricists, Tupac Shakur is the greatest hip-hop artist, and this is his supreme testament.  This album is soaked in legendary status: it is reputed to have been recorded in a mere seven days, and it was released posthumously, (Tupac having been shot and killed only two months before), ominously featuring a drawing of a crucified Tupac as cover art.  Shakur dons the pseudonym “Makaveli” in reference to Niccolò Machiavelli, and creates what remains as a truly profound work of art in hip-hop.  All of the proof lies in a song called “Blasphemy,” which is a piercing analytical critique of the state of modern society in America.  Nothing Tupac wrote before has been as powerful or as pertinent; it’s the sum total of all his work as a rapper, actor, poet, and outlaw, while this album is the sum total of the single greatest and most influential career hip-hop has seen.  So the arc of the hip-hop canon begins with the rise of the golden age, and ends here, at its sunset, with the fall of Tupac Shakur, amid the dusk of the 20^th century.

*Translated and re-printed from the magazine Huper (#444, November 2008, Belgrade)

In abstract terms, hip-hop is an attitude; it is an active interference with the structure of society; the communication of the disadvantaged in lower class communities of America.  This communication is used both as a shout of defiance against the conditions forced on the lower class and also as a tool for self-definition.  Hip-hop is brash, confrontational, and critical – concerned with the structures of power in society and obtaining power by relieving others of it.  This makes hip-hop a revolutionary, and also predatory, form.

Hip-hop was created by minorities in America – particularly African-Americans and Latinos.  As such, it articulates the voices of those who traditionally have had no voice in American society.  Hip-hop is celebrated and practiced all over the world today as a way to counter societal ills and a way to define yourself in opposition to dominant ideologies.  It is incredibly adaptive, and has proven itself able to be situated in a wide variety of global contexts.  “Hip-hop is an inherently democratic organism.  While hip-hop finds expression in a variety of communities, anyone, regardless of skin color, gender, or locality is able to participate within it and to offer it new dimension.”[2] Beyond an art form, beyond a cultural movement, hip-hop is a way of life.

Hip-hop is a postmodern art form, which means, it thrives on pastiche and re-appropriation.  This reliance on re-appropriation has a social determination: hip-hop was born in economically-ravaged communities with no means to appropriate commodities; therefore existing commodities were taken, re-utilized and re-combined, and molded into the different elements of this outlaw art form.  Hip-hop was created in the late 1970s, at that shift in time when postmodernism in the arts was proliferating.  As literary critic Northrop Frye says, new forms are born when old criticism no longer gets the job done.  Thus the birth of hip-hop, as a novel challenge to the new social injustices of its time, when the protests and styles of the civil rights generation had run their course.  “Hip-hop is about our modern struggles for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and how this 200-year-old vision has been a process of unfolding and never static.”[3]

To the question “What is hip-hop?” we can quote the poetry of Tupac Shakur: “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.”

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.