Let's talk about Hip Hop

Pretty much anything that bboys dance to. Looks like the reddit folks did a pretty good job though!

I found myself in the same situation when I started my hookah lounge gig. Reddit gave a lot of great suggestions, but I really want to underline A Tribe Called Quest. Easily one of the most underrated hip-hop groups.

You also can’t go wrong with Bell Biv DeVoe, Montell Jordan, Biggie, or Pun.

Hey, Jordylu…what do you know about that Slum Village “Climax”? Woooooo weee that’s a jam. When I first heard that cut I thought SV came from a time warp…LOL. Consequence’s “Please Disperse” sort of fits that bill too.

What’s up Dan. I take it that you’re entertaining a certain age group when you refer to 90’s hip hop and R&B? The previous responses pretty much laid out a LOT of music from the 90’s. I think 90’s R&B and Rap was a golden era for Hip Hop culture. I’m sitting here now wondering how long did it take the other guys to come up with all those names because they covered a lot of them. There were a lot of folks releasing banging hits back then, and for the most part it was GREAT music. Believe it or not, in most cases you could distinguish southern rap from west coast and up north flavors. Now, it appears everyone commercial are using a handful of producers that put out country rap tunes.

If you have a chance check out this brother’s Youtube channel in the UK named DJ Soops. He does a lot of Neo Soul mixes, but he also has a few videos where he mixes 90’s R&B and Rap. I’m also sure you can find more mixes available on Youtube if you do a search for 90’s Rap or 90’s R&B.

BTW, there’s one group I don’t see, but someone they’re associated with Del the Funkee Homosapien who was mentioned on the Reddit forum, and that’s Souls of Mischief. They had a bangin’ track called “’93 ’til Infinity”. And while we’re on the West Coast, we can’t forget Tha Alkoholiks. Check out Tha Liks album “21 & Over”. The West Coast had their own style. For the East Coast, Doo Wop’s “’95 Live Part 1” has to be one of the greatest mix tapes ever released. Doo Wop’s mix tape will give you more flavor of the 90’s gritty lyricists flaunting their talents. Can’t forget MOP, Group Home, Gangstarr, Nice & Smooth, Mob Deep (I nearly lost my mind when I first heard Mob Deep’s debut song “Shook Ones Part II” in a club), Digital Underground (West Coast), Sweet Sable (not rap, but a clash of R&B and hip hop), Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature, Rottin Razkals, Special Ed (late 80’s, early 90’s), Da Bush Babees, Poor Righteous Teachers, Main Source, Nas, Mos Def, Jeru The Damaja, Ill & Al Skratch, The Roots, Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, The Pharcyde, Redman, Keith Murray, Jamal (formerly of Illegal), Kriss Kross, Common fka Common Sense, Black Moon, The Beatnuts, Big Pun, Fat Joe, Digable Planets, Apache (“Gangsta B”), Diamond D, Big L, Goodie Mob (Southern Rap, but not what you think, Ceelo was a member of this group), Too Short, Geto Boys (they represented southern rap, but the Texas way: in other words, southern rap was conscious too and wasn’t all about Miami bass music), Lords of the Underground, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Mase, Craig Mack, Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz………

Ok….that’s a lot of people and I’m 100% sure I didn’t get everyone nor will we ever finish the list from all the responses here…LOL. It’s just a lot of folks to name, but I hope by now you have a good listing. You have a good 10 years to cover (give or take a year) so take your time. It never hurts to go with the chart busters because a lot of songs remained “B”side, but they are club classics.

Oh, let me give an honorable mention to DJ Kool’s “20 Minute Work Out” and “Let Me Clear My Throat” which had the clubs bangin’ back then too!

Good luck with your discovery because once you go down the road of hip hop of the 90’s you’ll soon discover the artists and producers sampled a lot of the music from a wide variety of genre’s from Soft Rock to Jazz from prior years. Back then artists and producers were very creative and tried to make different tunes from their parent’s music. Yes, some of it was a direct sample, but a lot of it was made from short snippets. It’s very cool to figure out where they got the music from. There are probably only a handful that do it now.

Schoolly D, Young MC (not just his “bust a move” song), Big Daddy Kane, Slick Rick – all are good crowd movers.

Coltrane09, post: 32740, member: 2800 wrote: Hey, Jordylu…what do you know about that Slum Village “Climax”? Woooooo weee that’s a jam. When I first heard that cut I thought SV came from a time warp…LOL. Consequence’s “Please Disperse” sort of fits that bill too.

What’s up Dan. I take it that you’re entertaining a certain age group when you refer to 90’s hip hop and R&B? The previous responses pretty much laid out a LOT of music from the 90’s. I think 90’s R&B and Rap was a golden era for Hip Hop culture. I’m sitting here now wondering how long did it take the other guys to come up with all those names because they covered a lot of them. There were a lot of folks releasing banging hits back then, and for the most part it was GREAT music. Believe it or not, in most cases you could distinguish southern rap from west coast and up north flavors. Now, it appears everyone commercial are using a handful of producers that put out country rap tunes.

If you have a chance check out this brother’s Youtube channel in the UK named DJ Soops. He does a lot of Neo Soul mixes, but he also has a few videos where he mixes 90’s R&B and Rap. I’m also sure you can find more mixes available on Youtube if you do a search for 90’s Rap or 90’s R&B.

BTW, there’s one group I don’t see, but someone they’re associated with Del the Funkee Homosapien who was mentioned on the Reddit forum, and that’s Souls of Mischief. They had a bangin’ track called “’93 ’til Infinity”. And while we’re on the West Coast, we can’t forget Tha Alkoholiks. Check out Tha Liks album “21 & Over”. The West Coast had their own style. For the East Coast, Doo Wop’s “’95 Live Part 1” has to be one of the greatest mix tapes ever released. Doo Wop’s mix tape will give you more flavor of the 90’s gritty lyricists flaunting their talents. Can’t forget MOP, Group Home, Gangstarr, Nice & Smooth, Mob Deep (I nearly lost my mind when I first heard Mob Deep’s debut song “Shook Ones Part II” in a club), Digital Underground (West Coast), Sweet Sable (not rap, but a clash of R&B and hip hop), Queen Latifah, Naughty by Nature, Rottin Razkals, Special Ed (late 80’s, early 90’s), Da Bush Babees, Poor Righteous Teachers, Main Source, Nas, Mos Def, Jeru The Damaja, Ill & Al Skratch, The Roots, Brand Nubian, Grand Puba, The Pharcyde, Redman, Keith Murray, Jamal (formerly of Illegal), Kriss Kross, Common fka Common Sense, Black Moon, The Beatnuts, Big Pun, Fat Joe, Digable Planets, Apache (“Gangsta B”), Diamond D, Big L, Goodie Mob (Southern Rap, but not what you think, Ceelo was a member of this group), Too Short, Geto Boys (they represented southern rap, but the Texas way: in other words, southern rap was conscious too and wasn’t all about Miami bass music), Lords of the Underground, Missy Elliott, Timbaland, Mase, Craig Mack, Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz………

Ok….that’s a lot of people and I’m 100% sure I didn’t get everyone nor will we ever finish the list from all the responses here…LOL. It’s just a lot of folks to name, but I hope by now you have a good listing. You have a good 10 years to cover (give or take a year) so take your time. It never hurts to go with the chart busters because a lot of songs remained “B”side, but they are club classics.

Oh, let me give an honorable mention to DJ Kool’s “20 Minute Work Out” and “Let Me Clear My Throat” which had the clubs bangin’ back then too!

Good luck with your discovery because once you go down the road of hip hop of the 90’s you’ll soon discover the artists and producers sampled a lot of the music from a wide variety of genre’s from Soft Rock to Jazz from prior years. Back then artists and producers were very creative and tried to make different tunes from their parent’s music. Yes, some of it was a direct sample, but a lot of it was made from short snippets. It’s very cool to figure out where they got the music from. There are probably only a handful that do it now.

Loving this thread even if I only check in on it every couple of weeks or so hahahaha. You are a hip hop head as well good to see. Yeah that Slum Village climax is just WOOOOOOOOOO. I used to play a lot of tunes of that ilk when I was starting the evening out and 3 people were standing in the room I was playing or ending the evening and wanted the I’m just here to dance to the radio bangers crowd OUT of the room. What’s THIS????? Uhhhh its Slum Village Climax…It sounds weird….Yeah I’m sure it does. Most folks had no clueand just wanted to hear the track that ALWAYS got radio play. In fact if you tried to school them on hip hop outside of the mainstream they would look at you like a unicorn was standing behind you. I always had a leaning towards that whole mellow ethereal sound though. Really good tracks to but the harder boom bap beats behind and most of the time you could get away with playing the songs you really like as long as you had a decent enough track to mix with it. I used to drop the instrumental of Jazzy Jeff Fresh Prince Brand New Funk 3 or 4 times a night because it would be behind Slum Village or behind Bahamadia so people were toleratiing the songs I liked by Slum and Bahamadia because at the end they knew I would eventually drop the Brand New Funk vocal or put Climax on and cut in the instrumental track of Get into It by Big Daddy Kane. Couple scratches and let it go and voila of course you could only play that for about 30-45 seconds before the crowd would get restless and start to go sit down so then you’d have to cut Rock Dis Funky Joint in by Poor Righteous Teachers to keep the crowd moving but yeah. That list you have is impeccable love it. I have been fortunate that a ton of the clubs, bars and lounges here in Philly play/played a lot of that type of hip-hop. When I briefly moved to Oakland Ca I noticed that in both Oakland and San Francisco while they certainly wanted to hear their hometown artist and had a brutally underrated hip hop scene the minute they found out I was from back east if I attempted to play a Bay Area cut folks would do the walking strong routine up to where I was DJing and ask why I wasn’t playing stuff from the east coast. Sometimes I would throw on these obscure cuts strictly local to Philly or Regional to the PA/NJ/DEL tristate like a group out of Camden NJ called the Krown Rulers had this song called Kick the Ball and these folks would dance to them like they had been fans of that particular cut for years. Another time I played this song called My Part of Town by the Tuff Crew out of Philly and these cats were on the floor going for broke. I guess that why I really hip hop culture or the older classic cuts because there is nothing like seeing a room with a mixed age crowd(from lets say 21 or 22 to 33,34) and everyone is saying the words to T.R.O.Y by Pete Rock and CL Smooth then you put on another less well know cut by them like Lotsa Loving and now its a much smaller portion singing but the ones who dont know it continue to dance because to them this cat next to me that was kicking T.R.O.Y at the top of their lungs is all in on the cut too so it must be pretty good. Oh well again good thread, great song/artist suggestions guess I’ll be back in another 2 or three weeks with hopes that there are a couple of more comments.