re: Will rap ever be as good as it was in the early/mid 90's?

Yeah, Reasonable Doubt is one of my favorites of all time as well. The storytelling, wordplay, and the production were great, and his flow was amazing.

quote:

---

It is like people forget that Jay even released Reasonable doubt. I love The Blueprint but it isn't as good as Reasonable Doubt. And I'm one of the biggest Jay fans out there but besides for American Gangsta all of his stuff after the Black Album has been average.

As for favorite hip hop albums
Nas - Illmatic
Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die
Wu Tang Clan - Enter the Wu : The 36 chambers
Outkast - Aquemeni
UGK - Riding Dirty
Dr. Dre - The Chronic
Mobb Deep - The Infamous
Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

---

Riding Dirty, Chronic, Aquemeni

UGK was so big in the south in the mid 90's. I absolutely loved Riding Dirty! The Chronic is a rap staple, I don't think the CD can be left out of any top 10. Aquemeni, what can I say it's probably the most innovative rap CD I've ever heard. I know a lot of people that think it's the best ever. It's all subjective?

The only one I've heard but no songs come to mind isTribe Called Quest? I think the 18th letter by Rakim has to be in the conversation. Almost every rapper alive has stolen lines from that album.

We need to pull a top 20 rap album thread and hash all this out?

i think early 90's rap was a lot like early 90's grundge in the fact that there were a lot of artist coming out from the underground making a big one hit wonder , you forget how many good songs are out there that the rapper maybe only had 1 hit. now days all rappers that hit the mainstream are so commercial that a little guy it's hard for him to get play on the big stage. they are recycling c-lo for christ sake.

quote:

---

The only one I've heard but no songs come to mind isTribe Called Quest?

---

seriously?


and to whoever said the 2nd chronic is better is crazy. i think the 2nd one blows.

quote:

---

We need to pull a top 20 rap album thread and hash all this out?

---

Hells yea. Great idea.

Rakim > Nas

A late bump to this thread because there have been some good responses. Nas and Biggie were left out of my OP simply because they were really late 90s, and I was posting songs from the early 90s. Both of those artists are amazing and fit right in with the ones I posted. Almost every example of rap from anywhere in the 90s still blows away anything I've heard in the last decade.
Eminem had one decent album. Kanye just does absolutely nothing for me. Roaad summed him up perfectly. He is actually an example of the self indulged douchebag that I think makes rap terrible these days. More style than substance. BoB is pretty good, as is Lupe Fiasco.

How can there be conversation about 90's rap without mentioning artist like Scarface, 8 Ball & MJG & Goodie Mob? The Diary, Coming Out Hard & Soul Food were very solid albums. The Diary, imo, was Scarface's best album up until he came out with The Fix.

Anyway, after reading this entire thread, I see that there are several opinions as to why rap has changed so much since the 90's & I would like to add mine as well.

Early on, many records labels viewed rap as a fad that would eventually die off. Even into the 90's after almost 10 years of existence, labels still hesitated to sign rap artist. The artist during the time had be not just good but great.

Secondly, because the genre was fairly new, A & R's didn't dare mess with an artist style because they knew nothing about musical art form. Plus those early artist would not allow someone from a major label tell them how to make "their" music, plan & simple. Nowadays when an artist gets signed, the first thing labels want to do is carbon copy an artist in the form of what's hot at the moment. If that hot artist is shite, it just makes for shite piled on top of shite in return the audience gets a cellpool of mainstream music. This why you now see the assembly line of the same type of artist over & over again. It's just rap though, its across all genres of music. The record labels want to tell us what is good music instead of letting the artist be artist & letting the audience decide.

A perfect example of this when Nas first signed his label wanted to promote him as a sex symbol. Nas wouldn't have any of it & because he stuck to his guns & his style, we were able to witness one of the greatest lyricists of all time be born.

I hate single out artist for contributing to the decline in rap but its true. Master P became the prime example of someone with limited rapping skills who made a ridiculous amount of money off of "rap hustling". P wasn't the first rap hustler but he surely did it the biggest & had the most success. His rise to the top made everybody & their momma believe they could rap & make millions doing so. The deal P had with Priority Records was so artist friendly that it basically ended up putting Priority out of business. Not long after P's success became a nationwide phenomenon, artist owned labels became the norm & for majors to sign a single artist they ended up having sign a distribution deal for that artist label & the artist under him. This lead to many major labels losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars. Nowadays, those type of deals are few & far between.

Because labels lost so much money during that time, they fought back to take most of the control artist had gained in that time. Now artist have do as the label says or face having their career placed legal limbo as the labels will hold them hostage in court because of their contacts. Many artists have fallen off the map ala Chamillionaire because of contract disputes with label officials.

With the explosion of the internet these last 15 years, its given more artist, for better or worse, a platform to get their music out & to be heard. In the late 80's thru the 90's, the only format to be heard across the country was to be signed with a major label. That just isn't the case now. The internet is both a gift & curse because it allows use to listen to talented up & coming artist but at the sametime it also gives the "garbage" the same platform to do so.

Complaining about the mainstream or certain artist won't change a damn thing. As fans, we just have to use the outlets that are available to us to find the type of artist & rap we like. There's something out there for everybody's taste, you just have to search but if you are looking for it on the radio then you are looking in the wrong place.