S/D: Semi-forgotten early-mid 90s rappers

well it's been 10+ years since i've heard any of this stuff. i'm just wondering if i remember this all being good because i was in highschool (i did like pearl jam!) or because it was actually good.

Whatever happened to them?

djdee, that last list is all super not-forgotten artists

Some of the them are pretty forgotten though (Original Flavor anyone?)

(except for some hip-house thing I saw on telly a couple of times last year, which had both Shock and Humpty on the track, but computer-animated polar bears or something rperesenting them)

Gucci Crew
Rappin 4-Tay
Poison Clan
Crucial Conflict
Do Or Die
Freak Nasty
Dayton Family

could be interesting ..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MES9eE3T87Q

FUCK NO HE'S A ZERO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KN-LhuSOz0

awesome

I think we must never forget MC Eiht, Then U Gone and the Menace II Society soundtrack track are at least semi classics

Lady of Rage. I got her one and only album for like two bucks, she had such charisma and flow, it's a shame her career got swallowed up by the shenanigans at Death Row records.

Royal Flush. Iced Down Medallions was the shit.

thread needs more youtubes!

lady of rage is dope as fuck

Here the gun go and we don't miss
DA LENCH MOB THE GUERILLAS IN THE MIST

fuck yeah I remember buying that shit when I was like 14. I actually remember most of the lyrics to this.

I love the way the whole thing is just riffing on one really long extended metaphor.

showbiz & AG

maestro fresh wes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UFIYGkROII

whoops wrong video lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yoGGvbmdvw

Lady of Rage. I got her one and only album for like two bucks, she had such charisma and flow, it's a shame her career got swallowed up by the shenanigans at Death Row records.

The album is dope, yeah. I think The Lady of Rage was ill-fitted for Death Row, her type of lyricism feels more like an East Coast thing, and the album sounds pretty East Coast too. IIRC a couple of the tracks were even produced by Primo?

Easy Mo Bee produced a few, and he also did the first Notorious B.I.G. album as well as Craig Mack, so yea there's def an East Coast Vibe.

though Daz produced a lot of tracks and he was basically like a more 'chill' version of Dre.

There were lots of other lyrics4u-type rappers on the west coast at that time, including her then-labelmate Kurupt, not sure how that translates to "east coast-type lyricism". I guess having good lyrics is an east coast thing. And Mo Bee never was strictly an east coast regional rap producer.

haha lyrics4u

the new lyrically lyrical

she was ill-served by death row bc dre basically shelved her to deal with snoop blowing up iirc

that's probably otm

I guess having good lyrics is an east coast thing.

lol WTF smh

he was being sarcastic abt tuomas' comment

internet sarcasm is srs biz

What I meant by "East Coast lyricism" is that Necessary Roughness has a lot of insular, Rakim-influenced, rap-for-rap's sake multirhymes, and not that much of the more outwards-bound lyrical topics (be it gangsta life, or good life, or whatever) that Death Row and other West Coast artists did at the time. Granted, I'm not the biggest expert on West Coast rap, but I think there was general difference between NYC and California in the early-to-mid-90s regarding what rap lyrics were about.

I checked the CD sleeve, and Primo did indeed produce two tracks for the album.

And I didn't mean to imply that East Coast lyrics and styles were better, just that they were different, and that TLoR sounds more like an East Coast rapper.

but I think there was general difference between NYC and California in the early-to-mid-90s regarding what rap lyrics were about.

yeah West Coast rappers cruised around in cars, NYC rappers not so much

bicycles?

heiroglyphics, saafir, etc all them were def. west coast dudes with east coast style lyricism...also freestyle fellowship

Pharcyde too

I dunno I'd be more inclined to delineate east/west coast by production and rapping styles and not so much by content. people from all over rap about different stuff, apart from particular details like citing where they're from, etc.

A mixed bag of wretchedness, mediocrity and sporadic greatness here. But I used to smoke a lot at the time. I know it isn't strictly hip hop or early 90's but New Kingdom's 'Paradise Don't Come Cheap' is my album of that decade.

Grand Daddy I.U. - Smooth Assassin/Lead Pipe
Just Ice - Kool and Deadly/The Desolute One
Mad Skillz - From Where???
Hard 2 Obtain - Ism and Blues
Craig Mack - Project Funk Da World
Masta Ace - Take a Look Around
Das Efx - Dead Serious
The Afros - Kickin' Afrolistics
Paris - Sleeping With The Enemy
Onyx - All We Got Iz Us

aw yeah the Afros!!!

I dunno I'd be more inclined to delineate east/west coast by production and rapping styles and not so much by content. people from all over rap about different stuff, apart from particular details like citing where they're from, etc.

― crude interloper of a once august profession (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, September 30, Suggest Ban Permalink
2010 3:02 PM Bookmark

^^^^this

my point here is that as many lyrically lyrical rappers there were floating around the west coast in the 90s, labeling them as "east coast-style rappers" is bullshit and then some, especially since most of these rappers' style (including rage's) was pretty distinct from their east coast counterparts

It may be bullshit, but I've read many rap journalists and rappers themselves make the distinction between West and East coast lyrical/rapping style, at least in the 90s. Whatever you call it, I think there was a distinct rapping style in early-to-mid-nineties that was most prominent in East Coast rap, though of course there people doing that (or something similar) in the West too. Maybe it should be called "Rakim-influenced rapping" or "boom bap rapping" or something like that, instead of tying it to a specific geographical location. Anyway, IMO on Necessary Roughness The Lady of Rage falls pretty squarely into that camp. What do you think makes her style distinct from the East Coast (besides her accent)?

you got way too many faulty premises there for me to even

her style is way more similar to like kurupt or xzibit or other (more gangsta, less backpacker-y) lyrics4u west coast rappers of that time than anyone on the east coast, as much inluenced by like...ice-t and cube and hell, snoop as rakim. and on the other side of the spectrum, west coast started that whole backpack shit. hiero and pharcyde and freestyle fellowship and all that shit was coming out when on the east coast it was still og native tongues who didn't really have the same intentionally underground ethos. there's nothing "east coast" about being influenced by rakim or any other east coast rapper. is snoop an east coast-style rapper cause he was influenced by slick rick? ice cube cause of schooly d?

smarten up, tuomas.

there's nothing "east coast" about being influenced by rakim or any other east coast rapper. is snoop an east coast-style rapper cause he was influenced by slick rick? ice cube cause of schooly d?

Did you read my post? I didn't say that there was an universal "East Coast" style that applies to all East Coast rappers of all eras. What I said is that there was a specific style that was prominent on East Coast in the early-to-mid-90s (it wasn't the era nor the style of Slick Rick or Schoolly D), and that this style is often affiliated with East Coast. Like I said above, there probably should be a better name for it, but I've often read people speak of "East Coast lyricism", which is why I used the term.

as much inluenced by like...ice-t and cube and hell, snoop as rakim.

Ice-T maybe, but I don't really hear much Cube or Snoop on Necessary Roughness. (Except for Snoop's guest verse, of course.) And IMO the album sounds more like something that was coming out of the Boot Camp Clik at the time than what the Hieros or Freestyle Fellowship were doing on West Coast.

ftr I only agreed on the production tip, I think her style is a mix of the gangstaisms of her Death Row colleagues, mixed with a very "lite" version of The D.O.C. style rhyming.

Chunk

To clarify:

Lady of Rage was originally from New York by way of Virginia, she was in an NYC group way before they ended up moving out West, so Tuomas is correct, she is east coast.

huh crazy! had to check wiki to make sure I wasn't talkin' shit and I found this little nugget:

Chubb Rock - Bring 'Em Home Safe --->2nd verse is Lady of Rage before she moved out West, under the name "Rockin' Robin"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GniZehyFm7w

Chunk

oh man East Palo Alto repraZENT

that Chubb Rock song is one of the weirdest things in his catalog btw. really stuck out the first time I heard it.