#Upbeat 90s hip hop songs full

Some of the most powerful hip-hop songs are tracks with elements so simple your brain would explode trying to explain their logic: Take the unstoppable two-note guitar stab in Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear.” (I hounded the producer, Easy Mo Bee, for 17 years for the secret behind it – then wanted to throw someone out the window when I heard how basic it was.) Or the huge sound of the Roland 909 on Schoolly D’s “PSK” – an echo that seemed like it came from a church cathedral eight city blocks wide. “Rapper’s Delight” turned this future high school band geek into a superstar for the month of October 1979. My boy Aantar became my agent that week, scheduling performances of the song in exchange for snacks or hand-holding with girls in gym class. The next night, I was prepared, with a prehistoric tape recorder in hand and a black-and-white composition notebook. I said a hip, hop, the hippy to the hippy/To the hip hip hop, you don’t stop. . . . Me and my sister, Donn, were sneaking a listen of the local soul station while washing dishes when an army of percussion and a syncopated Latin piano line came out of my grandma’s JVC clock radio – what appeared to be Chic’s “Good Times.” How was I to know that my world would come crashing down in a matter of 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . on a Thursday, after a dinner of porgies, string beans and creamed corn. I was eight years old when “Rapper’s Delight” made its world premiere on Philadelphia radio.

#Upbeat 90s hip hop songs full

Click to read the full list of voters.Īn Introduction by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson Looking for the full list of the 100 greatest hip-hop songs of all time? Check it out right here.Įditor’s note: To make this list, Rolling Stone asked 33 artists and experts – from Rick Rubin to Busta Rhymes – to choose their favorite hip-hop tracks, then crunched the numbers.