The Most Influential Hip-Hop

6. “Juice (Know the Ledge)” (1991) – Eric B and Rakim

Rakim has been acknowledged hands down as an essential pioneer. Unanimously, emcees point back to him as an inspiration, a true master. Rakim innovated what today we call rap. It is original, compelling, real, rough, raw. Street poetry. He came directly out of the first generation: Cold Crush Brothers, Grandmaster Flash, Treacherous Three. With the exception of “Juice (Know the Ledge),” most of his early work today sounds dated. Strictly judging lyrical ability, content, and production, Juice is a perfect rap song. Sampling and amplifying Ron Carter’s bassline from Nat Adderly’s “The Scavenger,” Rakim layered a track with bold break beats and a powerful story. It’s one of those special songs. "In control of many / an Ayatollah Khomeini / hang out with Smith & Wesson / don't try to play me." A perfect lyric that could not be improved upon. When I was older I delighted in going back to the original tracks used to create the rap songs I grew up with. My interest in jazz and soul and R&B, in fact, came from trying to figure out where samples and loops from those rap songs originated. It has been a great joy to discover these hidden and obscure historical links.

Recently it has come to light that Eric B had little to do with the group’s musical output. Rakim, for the most part, made the beats, wrote the rhymes, delivered and performed them. Eric B, it turns out, had some connections to the industry and that was about the extent of his contribution. He was more of a PR person than a producer or a DJ. Rakim was the artist, one of the first to openly write about the Five Percenters, or The Nation of Gods and Earths, an esoteric offshoot of the Nation of Islam. It’s somewhat strange that this small belief system played such a pivotal role in the beginning of hip-hop. Their teachings can be traced back directly to Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, the Wu-Tang Clan, Brand Nubian, Nas, Poor Righteous Teachers, Gang Starr (Guru), Jeru the Damaja, Killarmy, Sunz of Man, Gravediggaz, Public Enemy, Busta Rhymes, Digable Planets, Jay Electronica, and Erykah Badu among many others, an astonishing plethora of artists. Five-percent teachings and symbolisms are prevalent on their persons, in their artwork and videos. Much of early hip-hop slang directly emanates from their discourse. “What’s up, G?” which stands for god, not gangster. “Word is bond.” “Peace.” “Dropping science.” “Represent.” The use of acrostics, acronyms, and backronyms are commonplace now but originated with them. It’s like hip-hop was designed specifically for this thought system. It is empowering and ennobling to anybody who reads up on it. It can turn a small mind universal. I once read online that it was the GZA who turned the RZA on to the alphabet and mathematics. On a post beneath the article a kid wrote, “Big deal, he taught the guy how to read and write.” The RZA could already read and write, what he was talking about was the Supreme Mathematics, the Divine Alphabet, and now all of us can cipher.

5. Public Enemy

Relistening to old school Public Enemy, I cannot seem to locate a single track or album. P.E was and is a state of being. I’m still impressed with the quality of Terminator X’s production. The Bomb Squad, an innovative sound system way ahead of its time, stands out. These songs referenced things I learned in school. There was a connection.

Chuck D questioned and criticized the assumptions underlying the textbooks. I learned there were alternatives to what I had learned, different ways of thinking. Here’s where my underground education began.

“Have you seen this before,” he asked, handing me a dirty magazine.

I hadn’t seen one before. I took it from him.

“Where did you get this,” I asked, paging through the magazine.

“I stole it,” he said. “I’ve got a whole stack here.”

Where do these girls come from, I wondered. And where do they go?

4. Ice-T – “Colors” (1988) / Afrika Islam

Through a friend I met a thief. There was nothing in the world he loved more than stealing. He talked about it day and night and explained to us all the in’s and out’s. What to look for and what to steer clear from. He drove fast and recklessly explaining everything about the process along the way. Part of a small crime syndicate on the other side of town that had just been brought down by the police, someone from the syndicate had insinuated that he had talked, so everything with the thief was leery and secretive. If he was arrested once more, he told us and any number of girls who would listen, he was going to the shit house for sure. If the guys he used to run with caught up with him, he exclaimed, it would be the end. I think I met him during a pivotal point in his life. He was trying to extricate himself from the life. I want to say that he was sixteen or seventeen to my thirteen or fourteen. He showed us how to break into cars, homes, and garages and what to look for and what to pass on. It was all basically common sense, but a good thief is a good thief, and, despite instruction, when it comes down to it you either get it or you don’t.

The thief's favorite song was “Drama” by Ice-T. He would crank this song every chance he got. He knew all the words and rapped it out loud when he played it. He had some kind of piece of shit hatchback car that he quite literally destroyed at every opportunity – he loved to drive through parking lots and smash into shopping carts at full speed – but it had a good system, a gigantic speaker box with an amplifier and an Alpine tape deck. We learned a lot about car stereos from the thief, too. The more I think of it, the more I think he only stole so that he could improve the sound of his car stereo. Sitting in the backseat of his car, speeding through the city on some kind of late night odyssey, smoking, bullshitting, seeking, Ice-T blasting the speakers apart, it was living theater. It all made sense to us. We couldn’t get enough.

Most people acknowledge Ice T as the father of gangster rap with the release of “Six in the Morning.” The crazy Terminator-like bass line of “Drama” struck me as powerful, but the track “Colors,” which led to the next fascination, moved me something tremendous.

3. Boyz-n-the-Hood (1988) – Eazy-E
The quintessential rap song par excellence, if not the greatest. This is what it’s all about. The only reason the song itself is better than “La Di Da Di,” a street corner beat box rap for all intents and purposes, is because of its studio production (not the actual original, which sounds like it was produced in a garage because it was), in this case from the beatmaster himself, the musical mind of his generation, Dr. Dre.

Originally released as a B-side to the “Dopeman” single in 1986, it was on N.W.A.’s first album, N.W.A. and the Posse, in 1987 and then remixed, or reengineered by Dre, mastering studio technology at the time at Audio Achievements in Torrence, and re-released on Straight Outta Compton in 1988.

It’s that clean 1988 version I remember. This would have been one of the first (if not the first) forthright vulgar violent songs I’d ever heard. This hit you right in the mouth and left your ears ringing. I guess I would have been exposed to violent media before this through television, but there is something to be said about the effect of a song, rather than a television screen, on the imagination. As with reading, listening permits, if not engages, active participation by the audience whereas viewing allows for a more passive role. I was hypnotized by Eazy’s portrayal of the street gangster, my mind electrified by the wordplay.

Ice Cube in fact wrote the song while in high school. Hardly a wordsmith, Eazy, the brains behind Ruthless Records, by all accounts, was not a great lyricist or rapper. But his laidback, high-pitched delivery caught our attention and instantly Eazy-E and N.W.A. were household names. About the dirtiest thing we could get our hands, we relished the music and passed these tapes along as like contraband to listen to secretly in our rooms. We had all heard Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and adored them, but there was something about the music and the sexually explicit lyrics that appealed to us all.

NWA to us was like a revelation, a rebellion. You could say that? Who knew? The words and the ideas expressed by them were absolutely forbidden fruit: the fruit of knowledge. It was word from the underground, word from the streets. “Look,” it said, “I know what you have been told, but here’s what it is. Here is the heartbeat from beneath. This is what’s happening.” A way to resist parents, teachers, leaders, any and all forms of authority, institutions, everything, finally, an alternative to the humdrum of our boring lives.

Ruthless Records, Eazy’s idea, came out of Macola Records, a vinyl pressing company in L.A. just off the corner of Santa Monica and Vine. Unknown artists would bring their demos to Macola, and for a fee the outfit would press a few hundred copies, sometimes a few thousand. These would then be distributed underground to the community. Steve Yano, a friendly Japanese fan of the music, owned a popular record shop stall at the Rodium, an outdoor swap meet in Torrence. He often played the most recent cuts out loud, so naturally people congregated at his stall. And an artist could tell right away if they had a hit or not. Macola was totally off the chart, completely underground. Jerry Heller realized this when he tried to wrap his mind around what Eazy was offering. Here, he said, was the nuts and bolts of the music industry. Unsanctioned. Unregulated. Strictly off the charts. Uncut. Uncensored. Pure profit.

Underground.

2. Run-DMC and the Beasties

I mention these two as honorary titans, although for some reason I never really liked either band. I never bought their albums but that’s because ALL of my friends did. The Beasties definitely paved the way for hip-hoppers because they made the music accessible to everyone (before it was only cliquish and I remember being bullied at school for liking rap music instead of rock music).

I would have to place Jam Master J in the pantheon of all time greats. He basically innovated the essential DJ style by first locating a catchy sound on an old album and then figuring out a way to incorporate that sound over a measured beat to create a new kind of composition altogether.

The opening beat of “Mary, Mary,” a Monkee’s sample; the funky horn blasts and drum-breaks of John Davis and the Monster Orchestra’s disco song “I Can’t Stop,” along with “The Amen” break by The Winstons, one could almost say that hip-hop began here; Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band’s salsa-styled bongo heavy “Apache,” truly one of the best samples of all time; and Bob James’s jazzy, dreamlike remake of Paul Simon’s, “Take Me to the Mardi Gras,” definitely the greatest sample of all time.

Only a great mind could fuse this together into new forms, visions and parlance. Peace Jam Master, pioneer.

1. La Di Da Di (1985) – Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew

"La Di Da Di," an early original rap song from 1985, is a prototype of the form itself, a classic in every way possible. It has been sampled, covered, mocked, and referred to continually since its release. If longevity is one attribute of a classic joint then this song has it. It still sounds fresh today, if not slightly silly, which is okay, as it was originally conceived as a silly kind of song. The listener gets the impression that the MC is just clowning around. Unique in that there is no DJ on the track, the rap is performed by Slick Rick (MC Ricky D at the time) over the beatbox beat of Doug E. Fresh. Produced by Dennis Bell and Ollie Cotton, the song first appeared as the B-side on a record called "The Show," by Doug E. Fresh and the Get Fresh Crew, which included DJ's Barry Bee and Chill Will. The song "A Taste of Honey" by Sukiyaki is sampled toward the end, but due to copyright infringement subsequent versions of the song have Slick mockingly singing the words of "A Taste of Honey" himself in a female voice, another device copied endlessly by subsequent artists and perhaps the greatest sample ever employed.

Released by Danya/Reality Records, a subsidiary of Fantasy, an eclectic label that had acquired an impressive number of independent jazz labels in the 70s (even Stax in 1977), "La Di Da Di" would have been a comedic novelty in 1985 as rap and hip hop culture was still relatively underground and unknown. Most people would have considered the song a joke, a joke song, something like an extended joke, think "Funky Cold Medina" by Tone Loc, "My Penis" an early NWA (Ice Cube specifically) riff on "My Adidas" by Run DMC, or 2 Live Crew. (Remember The Fat Boys?). Crude, vulgar, and not intended to be taken seriously, these songs, unlike for instance "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, are rooted in humor and play. Introduced to me by a neighbor friend on a cassette tape called "Rapmasters, Volume 7: Best of the Laughs," alongside "La Di Da Di" appeared the Rappin' Duke, The Fat Boys, and Chubb Rock. By far "La Di Da Di" was the best song on the album. It was complex and innovative. I remember listening to this song over and over, going over it again and again with notepad pad in hand, until I had it memorized.

Twenty-five years late I still hear references and remnants of this song in popular culture. It is no doubt one of the best rap songs of all time, a simple, humorous narrative as catchy now as it was to that 11-year-old boy scribbling down the lyrics on a notepad by himself in a bedroom with nothing more than time and the world around him to spin.