Results for “hip-hop mastery”

Songs

Rose Hip November

Vashti Bunyan

A brief, hushed instrumental-scale miniature that treats a single autumn day as a small ceremony, pairing seasonal images with a…

seasonal change rural pastoral life folklore and superstition

The R

Eric B.

A late-80s Eric B. & Rakim track that doubles as a comeback statement and a victory lap, addressing fans who waited through a…

hip-hop mastery community and borough pride patience and delayed gratification

Hollis Crew (Krush-Groove 2)

Run-DMC

An early foundational Run-DMC record built almost entirely around boasting: each MC takes a turn establishing his name, his…

braggadocio and self-mythologizing identity and naming hip-hop lineage/crew loyalty

MIDDLE CHILD

J. Cole

J. Cole positions himself as hip-hop's bridge generation, flexing competitive bravado while pivoting into mentorship and social…

generational responsibility authenticity vs. materialism hip-hop legacy

Where I'm From

Digable Planets

This posse-cut catalog builds a portrait of a hip-hop upbringing not through a single narrator but through overlapping voices…

cultural identity and community Afrocentric consciousness hip-hop as inheritance

We the People....

A Tribe Called Quest

A Tribe Called Quest opens their comeback album with a song that fuses street-level survival talk with a chorus that mimics the…

racism and xenophobia economic precarity media distortion

Award Tour

A Tribe Called Quest

A victory-lap travelogue disguised as a posse cut, where the pleasure of touring the world with a hip-hop crew becomes the whole…

hip-hop craft and lineage global travel and touring life authenticity vs. imitation

Sweet

Common

"Sweet" is Common's confrontational rebuttal to the softer, more romantic image he'd cultivated on prior albums, delivered as a…

reclaiming masculinity/toughness hip-hop legacy and authenticity boasting and self-mythologizing

Sex, Drugs and Violence

Public Enemy

Public Enemy uses three loosely connected vignettes of unsolved shootings tied to hip-hop culture to indict the industry and…

media complicity violence in hip-hop culture commercialization of black death

What They Do

The Roots

A mid-90s Roots track built around a single defiant refrain, positioning the group's artistic integrity against a hip-hop…

authenticity vs. commercialism artistic integrity hip-hop lineage and craft

9th Wonder (Blackitolism)

Digable Planets

A loose, jazz-inflected posse cut in which the Digable Planets crew trade boasts about style, borough pride, and lyrical…

borough/regional pride Afrocentric and cosmic imagery lyrical dexterity as identity

Mathematics

Mos Def

Mos Def builds a dense, statistics-driven indictment of American racial and economic injustice around the conceit of numbers,…

mass incarceration systemic racism economic inequality

It's Good To Be Here

Digable Planets

Digable Planets frame their own arrival on the hip-hop scene as an interstellar landing, spinning a mock-sci-fi mythology in…

Afrofuturism as playful self-mythology hip-hop and jazz lineage group identity and unity

The Magic Number

De La Soul

De La Soul turns Schoolhouse Rock's arithmetic lesson into a manifesto for the trio itself, using the number three as a stand-in…

group identity and unity originality vs. imitation in hip-hop numerology/mysticism as playful device

Excursions

A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip opens The Low End Theory with a genealogy lesson, tracing hip-hop back through his father's love of bebop and framing rap…

lineage and continuation of Black music integrity versus phoniness time and history repeating

Raising Hell

Run-DMC

The title track of Run-DMC's landmark album is a boast-battle anthem built almost entirely from self-crowning imagery and…

braggadocio hip-hop supremacy battle rhetoric

Still D.R.E.

Dr. Dre

A comeback statement dressed as a boast, in which Dr. Dre answers years of speculation about his relevance by cataloguing…

reputation and legacy authenticity versus commercialism loyalty to origin/streets

Go to Church

Ice Cube

A crunk-era posse cut in which Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg trade boasts built around a single taunt: prove your toughness or admit…

performative masculinity authenticity vs. fraudulence street credibility

euphoria

Kendrick Lamar

This is Kendrick Lamar's opening salvo in his 2024 feud with Drake, a slow-building diss track that escalates from clinical…

authenticity vs performance cultural appropriation of Blackness manipulation and dishonesty

Rapp Snitch Knishes

MF DOOM

MF DOOM turns a satirical eye on rap's tough-guy posturing, mocking MCs whose lyrics function as confessions that could be used…

hip-hop authenticity and posturing self-incrimination and surveillance street credibility vs. performance

Eye Know

De La Soul

"Eye Know" is De La Soul's sunniest love song, built on a Steely Dan sample and playful Daisy Age slang. Both Posdnuos and…

courtship and seduction wordplay as intimacy group identity and self-naming

Hit It Run

Run-DMC

A boast-driven b-boy anthem in which D.M.C. asserts lineage, dominance, and craft over Jam Master Jay's stripped-down beats. The…

braggadocio hip-hop lineage and authenticity self-naming/identity

Coffin Nails

MF DOOM

Coffin Nails is an instrumental beat from MF DOOM's Special Herbs series, the long-running set of production-only tracks he…

mortality vice and self-destruction underground hip-hop craft

Notorious B.I.G.

The Notorious B.I.G.

A posthumous Bad Boy track (from the 1999 'Born Again' album) built as a victory-lap anthem, stitching together a Biggie verse…

posthumous myth-making excess and materialism hyper-masculine bravado

Rosa Parks

OutKast

A brash, funk-driven boast track in which Outkast repurpose a civil-rights phrase as a battle-rap taunt, using the chorus as a…

competition and dominance in hip-hop staying artistically ahead Southern regional pride

One Beer

MF DOOM

A boozy, freewheeling posse-cut of a track built on the pun of "one beer" doubling as "one beer left" and a coded jab at fake…

intoxication as metaphor for scarcity/competition hip-hop authenticity vs. imitation supervillain persona

Steve Biko (Stir It Up)

A Tribe Called Quest

A three-MC posse cut built almost entirely from boasts, wordplay, and Queens pride, borrowing the name and instrumental cue of…

hip-hop bravado and lyrical skill group identity and borough pride fleeting social consciousness

As the Rhyme Goes On

Eric B.

A dense, self-referential display of MC craft in which Rakim narrates his own performance as it happens, treating the rhyme…

self-reflexive artistry mic authority and lineage hip-hop as physical/mental control

Moment of Truth

Gang Starr

Gang Starr's title track is a meditation on accountability and betrayal dressed as street philosophy, moving from meditative…

betrayal and loyalty accountability/karma paranoia at success

Where It's At

Beck

A cut-and-paste party anthem that treats meaning as beside the point, stitching together carnival barker patter,…

collage/pastiche nostalgia for analog music-making irony toward hip-hop authenticity tropes

Breakadawn

De La Soul

A loose, free-associative posse-cut style track from De La Soul's most abstract album, built on stream-of-consciousness wordplay…

identity and origin hip-hop lineage and Native Tongues affiliation industry skepticism

Pacifics (From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack “N.Y. Is Red Hot")

Digable Planets

Digable Planets turn a Sunday in New York into an extended meditation on rest, community, and creative replenishment, moving…

urban leisure and rest Black cultural inheritance (jazz, literature, hip-hop lineage) community and belonging

Paid In Full

Eric B.

This is the title track and origin document of hip-hop's most sampled record, a first-person account of a hustler talking…

hustling and survival redemption through legitimate work the music industry as a means of escape

Recurring

Bonobo

"Recurring" is an instrumental mood piece from Bonobo's Days to Come, built on looping samples, muted percussion, and layered…

repetition memory cyclical time

Doomsday

MF DOOM

The title track of MF DOOM's debut solo album is both a resurrection and a mission statement. Rapping under a new mask after the…

reinvention through persona mortality and legacy underground rap ethics vs. commercial rap

Lyrics to Go

A Tribe Called Quest

A pure showcase track in which Q-Tip and Phife Dawg trade verses of boastful wordplay, with the title hook functioning less as a…

braggadocio craft and mastery of rhyme group identity and loyalty

Running Kind

Merle Haggard

A confessional country ballad in which the narrator diagnoses his own restlessness as an inborn condition rather than a choice.…

compulsive restlessness self-knowledge without self-mastery home as confinement

Move the Crowd

Eric B.

A foundational Golden Age hip-hop track in which Rakim narrates his own creative process in real time, describing how a beat…

craftsmanship and artistic discipline self-mythologizing music as spiritual/intellectual pursuit

You Know My Steez

Gang Starr

This is a straight-up hip-hop statement of purpose: Guru surveys a rap landscape he considers watered down and reasserts Gang…

artistic integrity authenticity vs. commercialism spiritual/moral authority

Rhymin' & Stealin'

Beastie Boys

An opening track built entirely on cartoon-pirate bravado, splicing swashbuckler movie tropes with hip-hop boast rhetoric to…

outlaw bravado juvenile provocation pop-culture pastiche