Golden age hip-hop refers to hip-hop music created from roughly the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, building on the genre's advances of the mid-1980s. The golden age is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation, and influence on overall hip-hop,Green, Tony, in Wang, Oliver (ed.) Classic Material, Toronto: ECW Press, 2003. p. 132Jon Caramanica, "Hip-Hop's Raiders of the Lost Archives" , The New York Times, June 26, 2005. Cheo H. Coker, "Slick Rick: Behind Bars" , Rolling Stone, March 9, 1995. Lonnae O'Neal Parker, "U-Md. Senior Aaron McGruder's Edgy Hip-Hop Comic Gets Raves, but No Takers", Washington Post, Aug 20 1997.Jake Coyle of Associated Press, "Spin magazine picks Radiohead CD as best" , published in USA Today, June 19, 2005. Cheo H. Coker, "Slick Rick: Behind Bars" , Rolling Stone, March 9, 1995. Andrew Drever, "Jungle Brothers still untamed" , The Age [Australia], October 24, 2003. and is associated with the genre's development and mainstream success. Subject matter was varied, while the music was experimental and the sampling eclectic.Roni Sariq, "Crazy Wisdom Masters" , City Pages, April 16, 1997. Scott Thill, "Whiteness Visible" AlterNet, May 6, 2005. Will Hodgkinson, "Adventures on the wheels of steel", The Guardian, September 19, 2003.

The artists most associated with the period are LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Ultramagnetic MCs,Linhardt, Alex (June 10, 2004). Album Reviews: Ultramagnetic MC's: Critical Beatdown . Pitchfork Media. Retrieved on December 24, 2014. the Jungle Brothers,Per Coker, Hodgkinson, Drever, Thill, O'Neal Parker and Sariq above. Additionally: Cheo H. Coker, "KRS-One: Krs-One" , Rolling Stone, November 16, 1995. Andrew Pettie, "'Where rap went wrong'" , Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2005. Mosi Reeves, reeves,31875,22.html "Easy-Chair Rap" , Village Voice, January 29th 2002. Greg Kot, "Hip-Hop Below the Mainstream", Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2001. Cheo Hodari Coker, "'It's a Beautiful Feeling'", Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1996. Scott Mervis, "From Kool Herc to 50 Cent, the story of rap -- so far" , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 15, 2004. Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince, Eric B. & Rakim, Kid 'n Play, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Biz Markie, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, Gang Starr, and A Tribe Called Quest. These acts coexisted with 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, MC Hammer, and Vanilla Ice.Bakari Kitwana,"The Cotton Club", Village Voice, June 21, 2005. Most of these artists and musicians originated from the New York metropolitan area.

Characteristics

The golden age is noted for its innovation—a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre", according to Rolling Stone. Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age",Jake Coyle of Associated Press, "Spin magazine picks Radiohead CD as best" , published in USA Today, June 19, 2005. Spin's editor-in-chief Sia Michel said, "there were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time", and MTV's Sway Calloway added: "The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived. Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new".Scott Mervis, "From Kool Herc to 50 Cent, the story of rap – so far" , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 15, 2004. Jelani Cobb wrote, "what made the era they inaugurated worthy of the term golden was the sheer number of stylistic innovations that came into existence... in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time".Cobb, Jelani William, 2007, To the Break of Dawn, NYU Press, p. 47.

The term golden age hip-hop frames the late 1980s in mainstream hip-hop,Caramanica, Jon. "Hip-Hop's Raiders of the Lost Archives" , The New York Times, June 26, 2005. Retrieved on July 2, 2008.Coker, Cheo H. "Slick Rick: Behind Bars" , Rolling Stone, March 9, 1995. O'Neal Parker, Lonnae. "U-Md. Senior Aaron McGruder's Edgy Hip-Hop Comic Gets Raves, but No Takers", Washington Post, August 20, 1997. Retrieved on July 2, 2008. said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation, and influence,Coyle, Jake. "Spin magazine picks Radiohead CD as best" , Associated Press, published in USA Today, June 19, 2005. Coker, Cheo H."Slick Rick: Behind Bars" , Rolling Stone, March 9, 1995. Drever, Andrew. "Jungle Brothers still untamed" , The Age [Australia], October 24, 2003. Retrieved on July 2, 2008. and associated with Public Enemy, KRS-One and his Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle BrothersPer Coker, Hodgkinson, Drever, Thill, O'Neal Parker and Sariq. Additionally: Coker, Cheo H. "KRS-One: Krs-One" , Rolling Stone, November 16, 1995. Pettie, Andrew. "'Where rap went wrong'" , Daily Telegraph, August 11, 2005. Reeves, Mosi. reeves,31875,22.html "Easy-Chair Rap" , Village Voice, January 29th 2002. Kot, Greg. "Hip-Hop Below the Mainstream", Los Angeles Times, September 19, 2001. Coker, Cheo Hodari. "'It's a Beautiful Feeling'", Los Angeles Times, August 11, 1996. Mervis, Scott. "From Kool Herc to 50 Cent, the story of rap -- so far" , Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, February 15, 2004. Retrieved on July 2, 2008. with their themes of Afrocentricity and political militancy, experimental music, and eclectic sampling.Sariq, Roni. "Crazy Wisdom Masters" , City Pages, April 16, 1997. Thill, Scott. "Whiteness Visible" AlterNet, May 6, 2005. Hodgkinson, Will. "Adventures on the wheels of steel", The Guardian, September 19, 2003. Retrieved on July 2, 2008. This period is sometimes called "mid-school" or a "middle school" in hip-hop and covers acts such as Gang Starr, the UMC's, Main Source, Lord Finesse, EPMD, Just Ice, Stetsasonic, True Mathematics, and Mantronix.Scholtes, Peter S. "True MCs" , City Pages, January 7, 1998. Retrieved on July 2, 2008.DJ Shadow in conversation with William E. Ketchum III, "DJ Shadow Knockin' Doorz Down" , XXL, August 24, 2006. Retrieved on July 2, 2008.Downes, Maurice. , The Free Williamsburg issue 53, August 2004.

The innovations of Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, and new-school producers such as Larry Smith and Rick Rubin were built upon by Marley Marl and his Juice Crew MCs, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Eric B. & Rakim. Hip-hop production became denser and rhymes and beats faster as the drum machine was augmented with sampler technology. Rakim took lyrics about the art of rapping to new heights, while KRS-One and Chuck D pushed "message rap" toward black activism. Native Tongues artists' inclusive, sample-crowded music accompanied their positivity, Afrocentricity, and playfulness.

Samples were heavily used during the golden age. The ability to sample beats, riffs, and patterns from a wide variety of sources birthed a new breed of producers and DJs who did not need formal musical training or instruments, just a good ear for sound collages. These samples came from various genres, ranging from jazz, funk and soul to rock and roll. For example, Paul's Boutique, Beastie Boys' second studio album, drew from over 200 individual samples, 24 of which were on the album's last track. Samples and sound bites were not limited to music. RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, a hip-hop collective formed in the 1990s, sampled sound clips from his collection of 1970s kung-fu films to bolster and frame the group's gritty lyrical content. Many of these sample-laden albums released could not receive legal clearance today.McLeod, Kembrew & Kuenzli, Rudolf E. "Crashing the Spectacle: A Forgotten History of Digital Sampling, Infringement, Copyright Liberation and the End of Recorded Music". Culture Machine.

The era also provided some of the greatest advances in rapping technique. Kool G Rap said of the golden age, "that era bred rappers like a Big Daddy Kane, a KRS-One, a Rakim, a Chuck D... their rapping capability and ability—these dudes were phenomenal".Edwards, Paul, 2009, How to Rap: The Art & Science of the Hip-Hop MC, Dave Shewring, Chicago Review Press, p. vii. Many of hip-hop's biggest artists were also at their creative peak. AllMusic said the golden age "witnessed the best recordings from some of the biggest rappers in the genre's history... overwhelmingly based in New York City, golden age rap is characterized by skeletal beats, samples cribbed from hard rock or soul tracks, and tough dis raps... rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, Rakim, and LL Cool J basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".

In addition to lyrical self-glorification, hip-hop was also used as a form of social protest. Lyrical content often drew attention to social issues, including Afrocentric living, drug use, crime and violence, religion, culture, the U.S. economy, and the modern man's struggle. Conscious and political hip-hop tracks were a response to the effects of U.S. capitalism and President Ronald Reagan's conservative political economy. According to Tricia Rose, "In rap, relationships between black cultural practice, social and economic conditions, technology, sexual and racial politics, and the institution policing of the popular terrain are complex and in constant motion. Even though hip-hop was used as a mechanism for different social issues it was still very complex with issues within the movement itself.Rose, Tricia. Black Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary American. Hanover: Wesleyan U, 1994. Print.

There was also often an emphasis on black nationalism. Hip-hop scholar Michael Eric Dyson wrote, "during the golden age of hip hop, from 1987 to 1993, Afrocentric and black nationalist rap were prominent",Dyson, Michael Eric, 2007, Know What I Mean?, Westview Press, p. 64. and critic Scott Thill wrote that during this period "the form most capably fused the militancy of its Black Panther and Watts Prophets forebears with the wide-open cultural experimentalism of De La Soul and others".Scott Thill, "Whiteness Visible" AlterNet, May 6, 2005. Stylistic variety was also prominent; MSNBC wrote, "rappers had an individual sound that was dictated by their region and their communities, not by a marketing strategist," the Village Voice referred to the golden age's "eclecticism",Mosi Reeves, "Easy-Chair Rap" , Village Voice, January 29th 2002. and Ben Duinker and Denis Martin of Empirical Musicology Review wrote, "The constant flow of new, boundary-pushing Golden Age album releases exemplifies this era's unprecedented stylistic fluidity."

Time period

The specific time period that the golden age covers varies among different sources and may overlap with other subcurrents in hip-hop. AllMusic writes, "Hip-hop's golden age is bookended by the commercial breakthrough of Run-D.M.C. in 1986 and the explosion of predominantly West Coast gangsta rap with N.W.A in the late 80s and Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg in 1993." The New York Times described hip-hop's golden age as the "late 1980s and early 90s".Jon Caramanica, "Hip-Hop's Raiders of the Lost Archives" , The New York Times, June 26, 2005 Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers said, "there was that golden age of hip-hop in the early 90s when the Jungle Brothers made Straight Out the Jungle and De La Soul made 3 Feet High and Rising"Will Hodgkinson, "Adventures on the wheels of steel", The Guardian, September 19, 2003. (though these records were in fact made in 1988 and 1989 respectively). MSNBC called the 1980s the "Golden Age" of hip-hop music. The Guardian states, "The golden age of hip-hop, from 1986 to 1993, gave the world an amazing number of great records," and also describes the period in November 1993, when A Tribe Called Quest and Wu-Tang Clan released albums, as "The Next Golden age."