Thursday, 13 August 2009

• The Last Great Year in Hip Hop - 1994

  It was a hard fight, but in 1994, hip hop finally gave up its long, hard-fought battle against a newcomer it never really had a chance against - gangster rap. It was new, it was fresh and most importantly, it scared the hell out of the happy-go-lucky rappers of the prior five years. And in a world where followers outnumber leaders a hundred to one, the fearful masses quickly aligned themselves with the emerging thugs, the rough and tumble bad boys, either because they wanted badly to be one of the tough guys, or because they didn't want the tough guys kicking their asses. Either way, young people began flocking to the new genre in droves.
  
    I found a list of the Billboard hip hop chart toppers for the year 1994, and it made me sad. In my eyes (and ears), the golden era of hip hop was from 1991-1994, a time when the hip hop you heard had a variety of style and substance that modern day hip hop rarely matches. Dance, nostalgic, trash talking, story-telling, neighborhood anthems (not to be confused with the hood anthems of later years, which were as likely to be filled with gun talk and drug references as talk of BBQs and family and friends), love stories...'94 had a little of everything. It was the end of the Golden Era and the beginning of the Gangsta Era, and hip hop would never be the same.
  
    We started off  the cold month of January with a clear indication of where hip hop was headed - 2Pac had the first top single of the year. But it wasn't "shoot 'em up" Pac, it was the kinder, gentler gangsta, with his ode to the single mother, "Keep Ya Head Up". Another notable track from this month was Snoop Dogg's "What's My Name", one of the biggest songs of the time to cross-over - it was Snoop's gangsterish vocals over the ultra danceable track that made it so popular.
  
    Then, in February, Too Short, a Cali native from Oakland, came out with "Money In The Ghetto". A self-professed pimp and prolific user of the dirty word, Short presented a tale of the hard times growing up in the ghetto, but told his story over a classic dance sample. It was an early warning that the days of the silly, fun hip hop song were numbered. In direct contrast, Queen Latifah peaked on the charts with "U.N.I.T.Y."  that same month, a feel-good plea for working together instead of against one another. Closing out February, a relatively unknown emcee named Jeru tha Damaja, more popular in the underground than mainstream, released an instant classic, "Come Clean", a sparse battle track that was also funky enough to be popular in dance clubs.
  
    March brought more proof that gangsta was on its way in - "Mass Appeal" by Gang Starr and "Gin & Juice" by Snoop Dogg - two emcees representing opposing coasts pushing thug anthems. The fact that they crossed over into the dance clubs was a testament to the public's need for good dance music, even if the content was angrier than they were used to.
  
    April came along soon after, and although April showers might bring May Flowers, in 1994, it brought more guns and drugs to the party. Wu-Tang Clan's "C.R.E.A.M." and Ice Cube's "You know How We Do It" topped the Billboard charts - more of the same quasi-dance tracks, laid over with gangster themes and thinly-veiled set claims. It seemed that the Day Of The Thug was upon us for sure when "Born To Roll" peaked on the charts, a trash-talking bass anthem by Masta Ace, but then in late April, "Electric Relaxation" topped the charts, and A Tribe Called Quest helped us all breathe a sigh of relief. The relief would be short lived though.
  
    Outkast (the thugs you could bring home to mama) released Player's Ball in May, which was midway through the year, and a perfect "in-between" song - a group with a thug image, dance tracks and a positive message - all the better to help cement Gangsta in the hearts and minds of America's youth.  If it wasn't for Heavy D & The Boy's "Got Me Waiting" that same month, it very well could have been curtains for happy hip hop right then and there.
  
    June had one notable entry - "It Ain't Hard To Tell", by Nas, hip hop's pre-eminent thug spokesperson, and an early adopter of the "hardcore" image. Nas was a true story teller though, so his songs were threaded not only with references to guns and drugs, but also the occasional positive message, which made it easy  for the mainstream to incorporate more gangster into its playlists. "But it has a positive message!" was heard in A&R offices across the land that month.
  
    Public Enemy tried hard to quash the imminent gangster craze by releasing "Give It Up", a scathing tale of fake-gangsta-wannabe's that hit the top of the charts, but it was too little, too late. There were plenty of pseudo-thugs to be found already, and in July Ill Al Skratch released "Where My Homiez" which charted quickly as a "Hot Billboard" single. It was pretend ghetto, and the sappy ode was quickly followed up by more fake gangster hits, like "Regulate" by Warren G. It seemed the hood wanted it's fifteen  minutes of fame, and it would take any route to get there. The final big hit of July was "Fantastic Voyage" by Coolio, who sampled another classic dance groove and turned it into a story about the hood - it was quickly becoming clear that even the fun songs were getting the gangsta treatment.
  
    The end of summer rolled around and in August, it finally seemed like America was becoming wise to the ways of the gangsta groups, and a slew of more traditional hip hop songs were released. Ahmad's "Back In The Day" was a tribute to a kinder time in the world, "Funkdafied", by Da Brat, was another nod to an older, more funky time. The Fugees, a brand new group at the time, would try to hold back the tide of gangster over the next few years, but were eventually unable to avoid breaking up - one member became a recluse, the second made the jump to commercial pop rap and the third no one cared about.  The last two big hits of August were "The World Is Yours" by Nas and "Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik" by Outkast, both stories told in a murky, unclear manner that left you feeling vaguely excited and confused about the purpose at the same time - were they gangstas? Were they positive emcees? It was hard to tell.
  
    September was another backslide - no major thug tracks, but "This D.J." by Warren G and "Bop Gun" by Ice Cube were overshadowed by Heavy D's "Nuttin But Love" in the clubs. A small victory, but one not to be repeated for a long time.
  
    In October, The Notorious B.I.G. hammered in a few nails in the coffin of feel-good hip hop, by presenting the world with one of the best feel-good tracks America had ever heard, but one glossed over with thug themes and criminal ambience.  "9th Wonder" by Digable Planets was a classic beat, ruined by the amateurish vocals of the group, and was no match for the lyrical mastery of B.I.G. - the youth were almost completely sold on gangster.
  
    Autumn brought a weird, eclectic mix of chart toppers that would almost make you think America wasn't quite so sure about gang music, but you would be wrong. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony's "Thuggish Ruggish Bone" was not only a new style of hip hop, it also quickly became the anthem of many young men new to the world of the hoodlum.  Craig Mack's more light hearted "Flava In Ya Ear" was a hit in the clubs, but still leaned more toward hardcore imagery rather than the fun style of yesteryear. And then there was "Lucas With The Lid Off" - which was not only not gangsta, it also barely qualified as rap at all, and yet it charted on the hip hop charts, handily beating out many other, harder tracks.
  
    And then the year was at an end. What song would most aptly describe the year that hip hop died? Would it be Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes The Hotstepper", a fun dance track? Would it be Outkast's "Git Up, Git Out", an emotional plea to stop wasting your life and get yours, but in a legal way? No, none of those. Instead, the song most aligned with the year 1994 was a solo effort by Method Man, of Wu-Tang fame, who released "Bring The Pain" and in so doing, hammered the final nail in the coffin of hip hop. At least, the kind of hip hop that makes you feel good, encourages you to dance and be a better person, the kind of music that you can share with anyone in your family, because the words are more than just sex, drugs and violence.
  
    In 2009, rap music still exists. It flourishes, even. It dominates the air waves, it's used in advertising across the world, the same ten "hit" songs can be heard blasting out of commercial radio stations all over America and some of them are even good! But don't get it twisted - hip hop has been slowly but surely turned out - from the battle raps of the parks in NYC, the freestyle sessions in the California underground and the days when you would rush home from school to see what new videos would be on Yo! MTV raps or Rap City, to the soul-crushing, creativity denying, formulaic drivel of today's commercial rap world, hip hop is no longer the music we fell in love with.
  
    Hip hop is dead and 1994 is the year it died.
  
    Props to the person who put this video together:
  
   

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