Hip-Hop
I was wondering what to post today and then I realised the answer was starting me in the face on New Year’s EVE. So here she is with her 2001 hit Who’s That Girl?
Long Island rapper Roc Marciano samples old soul and jazz records and Memphis horrorcore instrumentals to create his unique style of hip-hop.
This is powerful stuff: it reminds me of when I first heard Linton Kwesi Johnson back in my youth. Like LKJ, Cleeshay uses spoken word, though the music is stripped-back R&B rather than roots reggae.
I have to admit that, like most others, I was initially attracted to this tune by its sampling of Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side. But there was much more to the New York rappers than that – though Reed got all the money and the teenage rappers never saw a penny.
DJ Shadow teamed up with rap duo Run The Jewels on Nobody Speak, one of the standout tracks from his 2019 comeback album.
Kneecap are a hip-hop trio from Northern Ireland with a strong republican message in their raps, aided here by Grian from Fontaines DC.
The Streets came out of nowhere, creating kitchen sink dramas of life as a young working-class man in the UK at the turn of the millennium.
Sad to hear of the death of one of hip-hop’s unsung pioneers, Keith LeBlanc, creator of this landmark collaboration with black rights leader Malcolm X.
Before he became a pop star singing sweet soul pastiches, Plan B was a hardcore rapper tackling social issues like the death of Damilola Taylor.
I can’t pretend I was an early adopter of hip-hop and I can’t remember whether I heard this landmark song when it came out in 1983.