Boom Bap/Nineties

For fans and devotees, '90s-era N.Y.C. hip-hop represented the apex of the genre. It emerged from the late-'80s Golden Age hip-hop, when dinosaurs such as Public Enemy and EPMD still roamed the planet, and was ushered into the world by a flurry of gunshots and lawsuits. The aesthetic roots of the genre can linked to the now infamous Turtles vs. De La Soul case when sampling large swabs of songs was ruled illegal. Overnight, hip-hop changed, and its producers resorted to adopting new sampling techniques to stay commercially and artistically viable. Future superstars such as DJ Premier, RZA, Large Professor and Pete Rock led the charge, and their attack was two-pronged: first, the samples they chose grew increasingly obscure, limiting the potential for exposure and lawsuits; second, they chopped the samples up into nearly unrecognizable bits -- taking a high hat from one song, a snare from another and a bass drum from still another track. Thus the focus shifted from looping samples to chopping them into small pieces. Perhaps no one was more adept at this than Gang Starr producer DJ Premier, and his work with Nas, Jay-Z and Guru stands as some of the most memorable of the decade.

Hip-hop was also experiencing a class change during this time. Acts with middle class backgrounds -- Run DMC, Public Enemy and De La Soul -- were increasingly falling from favor, and lower class, street-based poets such as Nas, Mobb Deep's Prodigy and Jay-Z became increasingly popular. The focus on drug narratives was bemoaned by many both inside and outside of the hip-hop universe, but the albums that came from this period are perhaps the most poetic in the hip-hop canon. Nas's Illmatic, Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt and Big L's Lifestylz of the Poor and Dangerous contain some of the most harrowing and haunting narratives ever committed to wax. And while there's abundant gunplay throughout these classics, there are also more introspective tracks that attempt to reach beyond the narrow confines of street life and locate the bigger problems affecting the African-American community.