page_title: Golden age hip hop
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Golden age hip hop / Description
caption_attribution_description: Taken during MyCokeFest at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta
context_page_description: Golden age hip hop is a name given to mainstream hip hop music created from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s, particularly by artists and musicians originating from the New York metropolitan area. An outgrowth of the new school hip hop movement, it is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence on hip hop after the genre's emergence and establishment in the old school era, and is associated with the development and eventual mainstream success of hip hop. There were various types of subject matter, while the music was experimental and the sampling from old records was eclectic.
  The artists most often associated with the period are LL Cool J, Slick Rick, Ultramagnetic MC's, the Jungle Brothers, Run–D.M.C., Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, KRS-One, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane, EPMD, Biz Markie, Salt-N-Pepa, Queen Latifah, and A Tribe Called Quest.
context_section_description: The golden age is noted for its innovation – a time "when it seemed that every new single reinvented the genre," according to Rolling Stone. Referring to "hip-hop in its golden age", Spin's editor-in-chief Sia Michel said, "there were so many important, groundbreaking albums coming out right about that time",
  and MTV's Sway Calloway added: "The thing that made that era so great is that nothing was contrived. Everything was still being discovered and everything was still innovative and new". Writer William Jelani Cobb said, "what made the era they inaugurated worthy of the term golden was the sheer number of stylistic innovations that came into existence... in these golden years, a critical mass of mic prodigies were literally creating themselves and their art form at the same time".
  The term "Golden age hip hop" frames the late 1980s in mainstream hip hop, said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence, and associated with Public Enemy, KRS-One and his Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, Ultramagnetic MCs, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers due to their themes of Afrocentricity and political militancy, their experimental music, and their eclectic sampling. This same period is sometimes referred to as "mid-school" or a "middle school" in hip hop, the phrase covering acts such as Gang Starr, The UMC's, Main Source, Lord Finesse, EPMD, Just Ice, Stetsasonic, True Mathematics, and Mantronix.
  The innovations of Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, and new school producers such as Larry Smith, and Rick Rubin of Def Jam Recordings, were quickly advanced on by the Beastie Boys, Marley Marl and his Juice Crew MCs, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Eric B. & Rakim. Hip hop production became denser, rhymes and beats faster, as the drum machine was augmented with the sampler technology. Rakim took lyrics about the art of rapping to new heights, while KRS-One and Chuck D pushed "message rap" towards black activism. Native Tongues artists' inclusive, sample-crowded music accompanied their positivity, Afrocentricity and playful energy. 
  During the golden age of hip hop, samples were heavily used. The ability to sample different beats, riffs and patterns from a wide variety of sources gave birth to a new breed of producers and DJs who did not necessarily need formal musical training or instruments, just a good ear for sound collages. These samples were derived from a number of genres, ranging from jazz, funk and soul to rock and roll. For example, Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys' second studio album, drew from over 200 individual samples, 24 of which were featured on the last track of the album. Samples and sound bites were not limited to just music. RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan, a hip hop collective formed in the 1990s, sampled sound clips from his own collection of 1970s kung-fu films to bolster and frame the group's gritty lyrical content. Many of the sample-laden albums released during this time would not be able to receive legal clearance today.
  The era also provided some of the greatest advances in rapping technique. Kool G Rap, referring to the golden age in the book How to Rap said, "that era bred rappers like a Big Daddy Kane, a KRS-One, a Rakim, a Chuck D... their rapping capability and ability – these dudes were phenomenal". Many of hip hop's biggest artists were also at their creative peak. Allmusic said the golden age "witnessed the best recordings from some of the biggest rappers in the genre's history... overwhelmingly based in New York City, golden age rap is characterized by skeletal beats, samples cribbed from hard rock or soul tracks, and tough dis raps... rhymers like PE's Chuck D, Big Daddy Kane, KRS-One, Rakim, and LL Cool J basically invented the complex wordplay and lyrical kung-fu of later hip-hop".
  In addition to lyrical self-glorification, hip hop was also used as a form of social protest. Lyrical content from the era often drew attention to a variety of social issues including Afrocentric living, drug use, crime and violence, religion, culture, the state of t
caption: Rapper LL Cool J.
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