Weekend Warm-Up No. 16: Hip-Hop’s Golden Age

–Words & list by Kevin Madert

After developing quickly in the late 1970s and early 1980s, hip-hop hit what most music historians consider its pinnacle in the middle of the decade. With honed, intelligent lyricism, complex interior rhyme schemes, innovative production styles, and a steady diversification of subject material, hip-hop saw itself expand in explosive fashion. In Rolling Stone‘s accurate assessment, “it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre,” during the Golden Age, which persisted well into the 1990s.

This week’s warm-up is just as much a history lesson as a tool for the fabrication and proliferation of psychitude. You’ll hear intricate narratives detailing everything from the struggles of black youth in America (“Temperature’s Rising”) to the minutiae of everyday life (“The Jam”), not to mention the occasional chest-thumping soliloquy (“The Rep Grows Bigga,” “Gz & Hustlas”).

Tracklist:

Gang Starr – The Rep Grows Bigga
Nas – The World Is Yours
Eric B. & Rakim – Paid In Full
Slick Rick – The Ruler’s Back
Wu-Tang Clan – Protect Ya Neck
A Tribe Called Quest – The Jam
Black Sheep – The Choice Is Yours (Revisited)
Mobb Deep – Temperature’s Rising
The Notorious B.I.G. – Machine Gun Funk
Snoop Doggy Dogg – Gz And Hustlas