’94 Til Infinity
We’re stamping 1994 as the greatest year in rap, when hip-hop became whole. Argue us
Many rap heads consider 1988 to be hip-hop’s zenith. The Reagan-Bush years brought us protest rap, intrepid street reportage and madcap experimentation; Rakim and Big Daddy Kane tangoed for the title of best rapper alive while Slick Rick narrated the greatest story ever told. But hip-hop at the time was marred by inequality of opportunity. Coastal rappers were disproportionately publicized, no doubt benefiting from their proximity to Viacom and other mainstream bedrocks. MCs from fly-over country, meanwhile, were left to toil in largely thankless obscurity. How many Tri-State rap heads deigned to acknowledge Kilo Ali? Regionalism was a self-defeating habit of coastal elites at the time: Outsiders were assumed to be intellectually and morally deficient for reasons as superficial as their diction or zip code. To wit, Miami bass impresario Uncle Luke was dismissed as an oversexed ne’er-do-well, and Houston hellions the Geto Boys were initially shunned by New York power circles. This exclusionist attitude created a gaping paucity of diversity. An exorbitant number of classic hip-hop albums came out over the next half-decade, but the genre remained incorrigibly shackled to the laws of geography. There were about three options for the discerning hip-hop listener: jazz-informed boom-bap, Bomb Squad-style anarcho-rap and G-funk hiss. Then came 1994—a year that marked a shift in priorities. Within this 365, hip-hop began to democratize, bringing with it a full flourishing of musicality to the genre. And for this reason, ’94 is pound-for-pound the strongest year in rap’s history books. 1994 has always been synonymous with Nas’s bellwether debut, Illmatic, which was justly mythologized as a boxcutter rap classic. Far from the syringe-strewn staircases of Queensbridge, though, a day of reckoning had dawned. Twenty years ago, a hookier, more melodically inclined generation of rappers—including the Bay Area’s E-40 and Spice 1, Port Arthur’s UGK and Memphis’s Triple Six Mafia—had ascended upon the rapscape. These artists put a premium on gratifying, latch-able melodies and groovy homegrown funk. And hip-hop perked up considerably. Gone were the samey, narcoleptic breakbeats. Even the New York set learned to have fun: Redman’s Dare Iz a Darkside is colorfully musical, and with Gang Starr’s Hard to Earn, vinyl aficionado DJ Premier pushed his sample material in adventurous new directions. Meanwhile the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die has an addictive and approachable R&B sheen. In 1988, Biggie might have been labeled traitorous for shouting out the Texas imprint Rap-A-Lot, as he did without consequence on Craig Mack’s ’94 posse cut “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix).” Prior to ’94, you’d rarely hear about black poverty outside of New York or L.A. This changed with the advent of hip-hop multiculturalism. The Coup’s Genocide & Juice and OutKast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik pontificated on hardships unique to Oakland and Atlanta, respectively. Credit Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s Creepin’ on Ah Come Up for exposing the degradations of life in the post-industrial Midwest. Common’s Resurrection is most famous for the relationship post-mortem “I Used to Love H.E.R.,” where Com metaphorically voices his dismay at the supposed dilution of hip-hop. The song longs for a time when hip-hop was just “a few New York niggas… in the park.” But only when the old guard began to welcome Southerners, Midwesterners and others into its company did the genre experience a true golden age. Democratization allowed for input from the funkier elsewheres of America. 1994 will be remembered as the year when hip-hop embraced pluralism and unfettered creativity blossomed like a wildflower patch in every walk of American life. —M.T. Richards
