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Spin: “The Death and Resurrection of Conscious Rap.”

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Part one in a three part series about “conscious hip-hop.” What it did well, how it failed, and how it’s been making a comeback thanks to the Internet.

Though rap music has had its socially and politically aware side from its inception, the term is most frequently applied to artists of the late 1980s, like Public Enemy and Boogie Down Productions, or early-’90s innovators like A Tribe Called Quest and others (Digable Planets, Arrested Development). But the focus here is on the underground movement that hit critical mass from 1996 forward, just as hip-hop started to become the mainstream.

Rappers as disparate as Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli (collectively Black Star), Company Flow, Blackalicious, the Roots, Jurassic 5, the Coup, and yes, believe it or not, an early incarnation of the Black Eyed Peas, seemingly merged into a clump of what came to be termed “alternative rap”; all supposedly were doing battle with the shiny suits and corny sampling of Puff Daddy, who was in the process of overtaking “the culture.” At least that’s the conventional narrative. The real story is a more complex…

Written by Brandon

May 28th, 2011 at 11:40 pm

Posted in Common, Spin, Spin column

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2 Responses to 'Spin: “The Death and Resurrection of Conscious Rap.”'

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  1. Good article. I started listening to Common in 2000, and by that time “I Used to Love H.E.R.” seemed at lot truer, but I’ve never put much thought to the time in which he actually recorded and released it!

    The thing is, he did come to acknowledge his “narrowcasting” in an infamous gripe on The Roots’ “Act Too (Love of My Life),” and furthermore came to all but renounce his original stance on Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life.” I would go into more detail but I figure there’s some chance you might address those lyrics in parts two and three? Either way, I look forward to the continuation.

    Oh, and let me know if you’d like me to comment on the main article, but the comments there seem a bit dire (although the dude posting all caps rants about the Koch brothers was at least novel).

    Carl Walker

    29 May 11 at 6:06 pm

  2. Carl-
    Thanks for reminding me of those Common lyrics. Pt 2 does indeed deal with the way that this attitude switches up and I may insert those references in there.

    Thanks for commenting. It’s up to you but yeah, I’d love to have the original article be a place for some smart conversation so if you wanna cross-post your comment, that’d be great!

    Brandon

    29 May 11 at 6:43 pm

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