The 12 best Golden Age Hip-Hop tracks of all time
Golden Age Hip-Hop
The stretch from roughly 1986 to 1996 when sampling law was loose, technique advanced every month, and hip-hop produced more permanently important records than any comparable decade in popular music.
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Public Enemy / Fight the Power
The Bomb Squad layered dozens of samples into something closer to protest collage than a beat. Still the most confrontational record ever to become a genuine popular hit.
Nas / N.Y. State of Mind
A twenty-year-old writing with the density of a novelist over a DJ Premier loop. The bar for lyrical technique moved here and arguably has not moved since.
Eric B. & Rakim / Paid in Full
Rakim introduced internal rhyme and a conversational flow, and every rapper before him instantly sounded old-fashioned. The single most consequential technical leap in the form.
Wu-Tang Clan / C.R.E.A.M.
RZA's production is deliberately murky and cheap-sounding, which makes Raekwon and Inspectah Deck's verses land like documentary. Nine members and not one wasted line.
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth / They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)
A Tom Scott horn loop turned into an elegy for a friend. The warmest record of the era, and the clearest proof that boom bap could carry real grief.
A Tribe Called Quest featuring Leaders of the New School / Scenario
Five MCs trading verses and then Busta Rhymes arriving to end the argument. The most purely joyful posse cut ever recorded.
Boogie Down Productions / South Bronx
KRS-One and Scott La Rock's answer record in the Bridge Wars, and the moment hip-hop's competitive instinct started producing art rather than just arguments.
The Notorious B.I.G. / Juicy
The rags-to-riches story told so well it became the template for every one that followed. Biggie's timing over the Mtume loop is effortless in a way nobody has replicated.
Big Daddy Kane / Ain't No Half-Steppin'
Kane raps with the poise of a lounge singer and the speed of a battle MC. The most purely skilful performance of the late eighties, delivered as if it cost him nothing.
De La Soul / Me Myself and I
A Funkadelic loop and a flat refusal to be anybody's idea of a rapper. De La opened the space that every alternative hip-hop act since has occupied.
Gang Starr / Mass Appeal
DJ Premier's chopped strings and Guru's monotone are the platonic boom bap record. Premier's scratched hooks became a genre convention on the strength of tracks like this.
EPMD / Strictly Business
Eric Sermon and Parrish Smith rapped as if half asleep over an Eric Clapton sample, and invented a laid-back delivery that most of the West Coast would later build on.