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As with anything like this, exclusion is the norm and inclusion the exception. Ihaven’t necessarily chosen the

best

songs that I could (but I didn’t hesitate to includeone if I found that it demonstrated my point), but rather the most illustrative examplesavailable, with the aim of giving the uninitiated a feel for the rap game. Notableexclusions include Latino rappers (who have had a major impact from the late 80sthrough to the present day—Big Pun and Delinquent Habits are the threads youshould pursue if interested in that), women, the South (a

big

exclusion, but one thathasn’t really shaped what hip-hop has become, it’s more of a contemporary thing— UGK, Outkast, and Scarface are the best the South has to offer, although there are somany more), and the Wu-Tang Clan—which deserves an anthology in itself, the best product of this group being Raekwon’s

Only Built for Cuban Linx...

. (You shouldnotice that there is no shortage of white people on my list, though.)HistoryThese songs outline in their lyrics the history of hip-hop (or at least try to). I think thisis peculiar to hip-hop, and it’s something that comes up again and again—this kind of self-reflexivity, an anxiety about the genre itself and its state reverberates through somuch of the post-1996 period. (There’s a song I didn’t put in here—because I think it’s not only overrated but just not very good—Common’s ‘I Used to Love H.E.R.’,which tells the story of hip-hop as personified by a woman he met. It’s one of thesesongs that whitewashes the history of the genre, claiming that it was all good until theWest Coast starting making music.)Cunninlynguists – Seasons (feat. Masta Ace prod. RJD2) (from

Southernunderground

, 2003)This is as creative as it gets, imposing a narrative on the previous 25 years. It uses aclichéd four seasons analogy to do some clever things (e.g., spring is the first season,connoting the beginnings—‘the game start to bloom and blossom’—and summer comes next—‘the skin was tanner’—fall, and then winter—‘winter brought along platinum causing the ice age’ (a reference to jewellery—I don’t know how widespreadcalling jewellery ‘ice’ is, so forgive my possible condescension, as well as thecountless instances still to come). The first two verses (particularly the second) are far better than the last two. Form inadvertently imitates content, with the drop in thequality of the raps mirroring the drop in quality of the periods they narrate (not tomention the fact that the two latter rappers are white). There are so many referencesscattered throughout, namedropping of famous albums that if you’re not ‘in’ on it probably sounds like rambling (e.g., ‘backstroking through darksides and illmatic beginnings’ references Nas’s

Illmatic

and Redman’s

Dare iz a Darkside

).Edan – Fumbling Over Words That Rhyme (from

Beauty and the Beat

, 2005)I choose this for a number of reasons. First, it shows how important the tradition is tothe majority of rappers. Ironically, for a young white boy who (presumably) didn’tgrow up in an environment saturated with this music, he feels impelled to ‘give praiseto the true scientists’. You can’t just come in and take; you must pay dues. (LupéFiasco angered the hip-hop world when a year or two ago he arrogantly proclaimedthat he’d never heard

Midnight Marauders

, a seminal album from A Tribe CalledQuest—it’s like being a priest and not knowing what’s in the Old Testament.) Also,

there is a whole thing about referring to the genre as a game (the ‘rap game’ isconstantly spoken of), like something for which there are rules and for which loyaltymust be pledged—selling out is a big thing, although that’s obviously not confined torap (what is different about it though is that hip-hop

definitely

doesn’t have this bohemian ‘art for art’s sake’ ethos about it that I’m sure a lot of forms of (softer) rock have, so selling out is not seen as bad because people are making too much money but because they transgress the boundaries of the game, doing songs with popstars, for example). Second, the sampling in this is amazing. From the drums and the varied andlayered sounds (something which, due to new copyright legislation—wait until PublicEnemy and the Beastie Boys—is almost impossible to do while selling a lot of records), to the vocal interpolation on the hook, this is a very complex thing fittingwith Edan’s aesthetic. Third, it is the only example I’ll give of underground, white boy rap. (But this I think is right up your alley—he described himself as somethinglike Syd Barrett’s face on Biz Markie’s body, with Nas’s brain. The album this camefrom,

Beauty and the Beat

is heavily psychedelia-influenced, particularly the songs‘Making Planets’ and ‘Beauty’.)2Pac – Old School (from

Me Against the World

, 1995)I put it in because it’s a 2Pac song (and, despite his—mostly negative—influence,there isn’t a whole lot that’s good enough to include in something like this). This willalso be a good place to explain 2Pac. This is from his third solo album (probably theone that will have the most longevity), the last record we have of him before he wentcrazy (see ‘Hit ‘Em Up’ below) and thought everybody was trying to kill him (just because a few people tried to do so). He was shot, left hospital a day or two after,attended court where he was being tried for sexual assault, and was sentenced. Thisalbum was number one on the Billboard chart while he was incarcerated. Anyway,this song is more of this nostalgic reverence and namedropping that characterizes theother two (

nostalgia

, which I haven’t mentioned, is a major thing too. When we cometo the ‘conscious’ rappers in the late 90s, we’ll see that they and their fans acted as if rap was completely pure and innocent until the West Coast came with its gangstersand materialism—when in actual fact things have pretty much been the same since the beginning, the only difference being any kid with a computer can (and does) nowmake a rap record).BeginningsSugarhill Gang - Rapper’s Delight (1979)This isn’t the first song or anything, but it’s usually said to be the one that brought iton to the popular music stage. It also introduces sampling (Chic’s ‘Good Times’ is thesource here), albeit in a very basic form. There isn’t much more except that the lyricsare recycled in various forms throughout the next 20-30 years (e.g., ‘hotel, motel,holiday inn...’) and it shows that materialism was present from the very beginning —‘Checkbooks, credit cards, more money than a sucker could ever spend’.Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five – The Message (1982)‘It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under’ and‘Don’t push me, ‘cause I’m close to the edge’ have almost been assimilated into the

idiom of hip-hop. They’re possibly the most oft-quoted lines in the whole genre. I’venoticed them in general popular culture too. I put this in here specifically because itwas the first song to gain notoriety that speaking about the ills of life in the ghetto.Despite being released by the same label (Sugarhill Records), this song and Rapper’sDelight are basically the origins of two contradictory but intertwined traditions in hip-hop—the materialist, bravado tradition and the ‘Black CNN’ (as Chuck D from PublicEnemy called it), reporting the truth, but with a political edge.Eric B. & Rakim – Paid in Full (1987)Following on from the materialism aspect of the other one, ‘Paid in Full’ (which EricB. derives credit from, but actually contributed nothing towards—Rakim did all therapping and almost all of the beats, and when he didn’t somebody who wasn’t Eric B.did—the latter did basically nothing). The cover of the album on which the songappears (also entitled

Paid in Full

) shows the two of them with big gold chainsclutching several $20 bills. Apart from this, the song very good and is full of quotables (which have been duly quoted through the last decades) as well as beingrapped by Rakim, who is universally regarded as a top 10 all time emcee (and whohasn’t released an album since about 1998). Also, the album contains numerousexamples of early polysyllabic rhyming—something that really hadn’t been done untilRakim (and unfortunately has lost its mainstream appeal).SamplingMore than the violence and the sexism, sampling has been the most controversialaspect of hip-hop among music listeners. People deride it as being predatory and parasitic, making money from music that

real

musicians have put bodily effort intocreating. Others see creativity in taking something, rearranging the sequence, alteringthe sample rate, adding some other drums, changing the tempo etc. etc. I think a big part of it stems from a concern for property rights that is peculiarly American.Sampling is a very un-American activity. Nevertheless, it is what hip-hop owes itsexistence to. Around the beginning of the 1990s, sampling was pretty much outlawed(at least as it had been practiced until then), effectively leaving it an option only for those who didn’t plan on selling many records or those who had big budgets (still, inthe latter case, which was rarely, labels had to pay very large sums of money tosample even one song, so the style of sampling was pretty much dead—this layered,‘sonic deluge’ method which characterizes several of the songs I’ve chosen). I mustadd that the new demands produced novel creation nonetheless: it became incumbentupon producers to disguise their samples. So, rather than layering sample uponsample, they chopped the samples up almost beyond recognition so as to continuesampling but not have to suffer the financial consequences (DJ Premier is theexemplar of this style—he has people still guessing what he sampled on recordsreleased 10 years ago. Also, there’s a reference to his style in the first verse of theCunninlynguists’ ‘Seasons’ track, too: ‘before Preem learned the art of the chop’).Beastie Boys – B-Boy Bouillabaisse (from

Paul’s Boutique

1989)This consists of nine movements and samples from over 20 sources. It varies in tempoand mood throughout. I put it on for two more reasons: I won’t include another of these songs in the Run-DMC vein where the emcees almost yell the lyrics. It was an