Great album. Its on my list on page 1 of this thread.

Agreed.

Stunts, Blunts And Hiphop is an honourable mention too.

some more great oldies

didn't know you were into hip hop Rob.

I am into the old stuff. basically anything before people started SINGING on rap songs and shit. I hate fucking sing along choruses in rap music. HATE THEM.

Yeah funk was in full steam, but it wasn't about looking back at it yet, which is what I meant. When Kool Herc and Flash were inventing the break beat dj style it was all about keeping that James Brown or George Clinton bridge going and going. It was a form of sonic archeology that the Last Poets wouldn't have been doing because the original funksters were their contemporaries.

I thought of Gill Scott-Heron too, but I think he's more an example of influencing rap than creating it ahead of time than they are. He was very tied into soul music and his poetry to me seems closer to an expression of soul that proto-rap (but then I wouldn't really argue with somebody who interpreted it the other way). It's just that he was as likely to break into song as chant, a good example being "Home is Where the Hatred Is" while the Last Poets really traded rhymes in a style that seems (pre-) reminscent of what early hip hop groups were famous for.

Cool, I got you man. You're right about the LP's and origins of rap. Dudes weren't sampling Omar-Bin Hasaan or the other poets until the ''golden era'' which in this case we will designate as 88-94.

Yeah, I guess it comes down to the fact that the origins of rap predate hip hop, but that hip hop began as a dj and break dancing music that wasn't initially dependent on rapping anyway. So the first hip hop wasn't even about rapping and the first rap arguably happened decades ahead. So me calling the Last Poets self titled album early hip hop is technically wrong except the two genres really did fuse, especially by the end of the '80s like you say.

Man, i love this one, the song "Talk About A Girl" is just wonderful.

i think the early rappers were more influenced by Jamaican deejays like U-Roy & I-Roy than by people like the Last Poets or Gil Scott-Heron



In regards to this if you ever hear live recordings of early hiphop shows from the 70s people were saying nigga/nigger back then too, it was just years before anyone said it on record.

That's an interesting point. I'm not sure if it goes for rappers but certainly the Jamaican born DJ Clive Campbell aka Kool Herc (who is generally considered to have been the founder of hip hop music) was massively influenced by the sound systems he heard during his childhood. It's inevitable that, along with listening to sound systems, he would've also heard toasting, although in the case of Herc this translated into a style of shouting simple phrases into the mic while he mixed, rather than 'rapping' as we now tend to think of it. I think the likelihood when it comes to the rise of rapping is that it was a fusion of influences that would include toasting, but also the 'dozens' tradition, artists like the Last Poets (who were definitely pivotal for someone like Afrika Bambaataa) and the disco 'shout out'.

I'm not sure about this, but I believe there must have been an influence from Latino culture too, especially on early latino MCs such as Prince Whipper Whip, Charlie Rock, etc. It's a real shame that so much of Hip Hop's latino tradition has been written out of the genre's history, which tends to present it as an almost exclusively 'black' genre - completely undermining the significance of early groups like The Mighty Force crew, The Mean Machine and the massively important Rock Steady Crew.

1. A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
2. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
3. GZA/Genius - Liquid Swords
4. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
5. Main Source - Breaking Atoms

Edit: found Illmatic. Tis good.

It's a wonderful album you're right, but also an immensly tragic one if you know the story of Charizma's fate. I think PB Wolf writes something about it on the liner notes.

I think they were more influenced by Dolemite

Okay, so I never finished actually giving a proper top five- here's another monumental favourite..



Prince Paul and Mase are on fire here, the fucking music is incredible! 'Change Of Speak', 'Eye Know' and 'The Magic Number' being the best examples. This might actually be my favourite hip hop album of all time but I don't know. Sometimes it feels a little too long. LIKE MY DICK

Also, you have to give props to..



Am I right or what? The Ronnie Foster sample on 'Electric Relaxation' is to die for- also you have to take into consideration that Q-Tip has the sexiest, smoothest, coolest voice on the planet.

tru fax

midnight marauders is fucking GREAT

any love for the Poor Righteous Teachers? two DJ's and one MC?

The Chronic
Charizma & Peanut Butter Wolf
Enter The Wu-Tang
Operation Doomsday
The Geto Boys
Midnight Marauders
Both Sides of The Brain