Native Tongues artists' inclusive, sample-crowded music accompanied their positivity, Afrocentricity and playful energy.ĭuring the golden age of hip hop, samples were heavily used. Rakim took lyrics about the art of rapping to new heights, while KRS-One and Chuck D pushed "message rap" towards black activism. Hip hop production became denser, rhymes and beats faster, as the drum machine was augmented with the sampler technology. The innovations of Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, and new school producers such as Larry Smith, and Rick Rubin of Def Jam Recordings, were quickly advanced on by the Beastie Boys, Marley Marl and his Juice Crew MCs, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Eric B.
This Run-D.M.C.-branded Adidas running shoe illustrates the increasing market power of rappers, who became a valuable brand. This same period is sometimes referred to as "mid-school" or a "middle school" in hip hop, the phrase covering acts such as Gang Starr, the UMC's, Main Source, Lord Finesse, EPMD, Just Ice, Stetsasonic, True Mathematics, and Mantronix. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers due to their themes of Afrocentricity and political militancy, their experimental music, and their eclectic sampling. The term "Golden age hip hop" frames the late 1980s in mainstream hip hop, said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence, and associated with Public Enemy, KRS-One and his Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time". Writer William Jelani Cobb said, "what made the era they inaugurated worthy of the term golden was the sheer number of stylistic innovations that came into existence. Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new". Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age", Spin's editor-in-chief Sia Michel said, "there were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time", Īnd MTV's Sway Calloway added: "The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived. The golden age is noted for its innovation – a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre," according to Rolling Stone. Releases by these acts co-existed in this period with, and were as commercially viable as, those of early gangsta rap artists such as Schoolly D, Ice-T, Geto Boys, N.W.A, the sex raps of 2 Live Crew and Too Short, and party-oriented music by acts such as the Fat Boys, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice.
& Rakim, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Biz Markie, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Gang Starr, and A Tribe Called Quest. The artists most often associated with the period are LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Ultramagnetic MC's, the Jungle Brothers, Run-D.M.C., Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, Eric B. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic. An outgrowth of the new school hip hop movement, it is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the old-school era, and is associated with the development and eventual mainstream success of hip hop. Golden age hip hop is a name given to mainstream hip hop music created from the mid-1980s to early -mid 1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. Chuck D of Public Enemy performing in 1991