Because we have to undo the damage done.Īs vague a distinction as it may be, “classic hip-hop” is fitting because hip-hop’s “classic” period is just as extended and diverse as classic rock’s or classic soul’s.

That’s why the term “classic hip-hop” should be more prevalent and embraced. & Rakim, EPMD and MC Lyte are considered “old school” today, and with them being much more well-known to casual fans than the late-’70s/early-’80s wave of hip-hop artists like the Cold Crush Brothers or Spoonie Gee, they’ve become the “pioneers” to an audience that wasn’t truly paying attention to hip-hop until it’s uber-mainstreaming in the late 1990s.īut the erasure of these acts from hip-hop’s earliest era on wax - and the stigma of “old-school hip-hop” as a blanket term - has hurt hip-hop’s canonization. Though characterized as rap’s “new school” at the time, late-’80s artists like Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. The term “old school”, as used by casual fans and media, doesn’t just refer to the “yes, yes y’all” energy of early hip-hop - nowadays it just as often means Golden Age hip-hop that emerged in the wake of Run-D.M.C., and Def Jam acts like LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys launching the rap industry to more consistent and visible heights. After decades of marginalizing hip-hop’s early days and “golden age,” maybe it’s time to rethink - and perhaps outright discard - the idea of “old-school hip-hop.” Our affection for “old-school hip-hop” is often arbitrary or connected to nostalgia, and the term itself evokes something antiquated and novelty. Those who created this art before it was put on records - names like DJ Kool Herc, Coke La Rock, Lovebug Starski, Grandmaster Flowers and DJ Hollywood - have practically been written out of that history altogether. Even “Rapper’s Delight” was the culmination of almost a decade of hip-hop gestation as a live artform performed at uptown block parties and eventually downtown nightclubs. Even the most casual rap fan can give you the cliff’s notes version of why that single is important, but so much hip-hop from those early days has been left to languish in obscurity. It’s been 40 years since “Rapper’s Delight” announced hip-hop’s transition from Bronx block parties to the pop charts.

Soundbunny classic hiphop