2009: The Year That Hip-Hop Died?

Thirty years ago, three guys from Englewood, New Jersey took the instrumental track from Chic’s disco hit “Good Times,” added some rhymes and before you could say, “You don’t stop,” The Sugarhill Gang was climbing the charts with “Rapper’s Delight.”

It was the song that introduced hip-hop to America’s pop music charts. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five followed days later with “Superrappin” and street corner hip-hop was on its way to becoming a Top 40 mainstay. The late eighties brought NWA and gangsta rap from big names like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, and later Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent.

The golden age of hip-hop is fading, or that’s the read from The New Yorker’s pop music critic Sasha Frere-Jones. He says that the electronic sounds of techno and club music are replacing the bluesy swing that once fueled the genre. Don’t ditch your gold chains just yet. Sasha has an artist or two up his sleeve that he says are bringing back the old school sound.

The New Yorker: Wrapping Up

indieWIRE: Is hip-hop really dead? Or just resting?

(Photo by id-iom via Flickr/Creative Commons)