I’ve focused so far on the so-called “backpack” hip-hop, which is admittedy where my bread was buttered in 1993-94, but one group rose out of the Shoalin Slums in 1993 to show us that hip-hop with a bleaker, hard-edge can still carry innovative production and brilliant wordplay.
1993’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) came seemingly out [...]
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About Joryland
Joryland is the online home of Brooklyn-based nonprofit musician and online communications specialist Jory Cunningham. The views expressed in my blog are mine and do not reflect those of my employer.
Category Archives: What I'm Listening To
Hip-Hop 93-94: Wu Tang
October 22, 2009 – 7:13 pm
Hip-Hop 93-94: A Tribe Called Quest
October 20, 2009 – 3:57 pm
ba-ba-baaah..
ba-ba-baah…
You’re already dancing aren’t you? Ali Shaheed Muhammad should get the Nobel Prize for beatsmithery.
That Weldon Irvine sample that kicks off the first single from 1993’s “Midnight Mauraders” triggers a pavlovian head-nod in any fan of hip-hop. That the first voice we hear is Trugoy from De La Soul, is fitting on an album that [...]
Hip-Hop 93-94: Del tha Funkee Homosapein
October 17, 2009 – 4:48 pm
Sticking to Oakland, and the Hieroglyphics crew for the today’s look at Hip-Hop 1993-1994, here’s “Wrong Place” off of Del the Funkee Homosapian’s 1993 album, “No Need for Alarm”. Built around a woozy, heavily phased guitar loop from the B.T. Express’ “What You Do In The Dark”, this track finds Del in his “stoney jester [...]
Hip-Hop 93-94: Souls of Mischief
October 15, 2009 – 7:23 pm
I’ve been thinking about and listening to a lot of hip-hop that came out or was popular during 93-94. Maybe it’s because associate this music with mix tapes blasting out of the 1984 Mercury Marquis Station Wagon that was my first car, but I challenge anyone to come up with a better 24 months [...]
The Antlers – Hospice
August 10, 2009 – 11:13 pm
The Antlers’ Hospice is a beautiful, morbid meditation on loss, guilt, and responsibility. Antlers frontman Peter Silberman’s rich falsetto evokes Jeff Buckley at his most beautiful, yet never slides into ostentatious as Buckley’s could. The pacing of the album and frequent revisting of melodic motifs brings to mind Neutral Milk Hotel’s peerless In an Aeroplane [...]