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Whoever said progress was a slow process wasn't talking about hip-hop. The art form that grew from block parties in the Bronx to a monumental force in popular music in a matter of years did so mainly by virtue of constant reinvention. And while innovation never moved forward in one simple straight line, there have always been certain songs that made a singular, undeniable impact.
Sometimes the songs happened to also be one of the best songs by the given artist, as is the case with Biggie and "Juicy." Other times they weren't even the artist's signature song, as is the case with Biz Markie. And some of the songs were by made by artists who would not go on to have legendary careers, as is the case with Soulja Boy. But in every case, these songs led to a significant, measurable change in the genre. And although there are many songs that have shaped hip-hop, we chose to focus on a select few. Here, in chronological order of release, are 20 Songs That Changed Rap Forever.
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Treacherous Three f/ Spoonie Gee "New Rap Language" (1980)
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Producer: Bobby Robinson
Album: N/A
Label: Enjoy Records
One of hip-hop's earliest cases of "B-Side Wins Again," if not the ultimate example, is the flipside to Spoonie Gee's first single for Enjoy Records. Spoonie's solo A-Side, "Love Rap," wasn't exactly slow—hardly the proto-LL rap ballad the title might lead you to expect. But the tempo was cranked up to a small yet crucial degree for the B-Side, "New Rap Language," which featured the Treacherous Three despite the fact that Spoonie Gee had already left the group at that point.
A furious 8-minute showcase of the group's signature "speed rapping," the 1980 track's relentless flows instantly made every previously recorded rap on wax sound slow and clumsy by comparison. Featuring the on-record debut of future legend Kool Moe Dee and setting a precedent for the kind of rapid-fire delivery that the best rappers still aspire to today, "New Rap Language" actually managed to live up to its ambitious title. —Al Shipley
Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force "Planet Rock" (1982)
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Producer: Arthur Baker, John Robie
Album: Planet Rock: The Album (1986)
Label: Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. Records
At a time when hip-hop that draws on electronic beats from European dance music or lyrics that resemble call-and-response chants more than intricately arranged rhymes are seen as a divergence from the genre's roots, it's important to remember "Planet Rock." In the 1970s, being a "hip-hop DJ" was not simply a matter of playing the latest hip-hop records—there weren't even enough singles to fill a milk crate at that point—but of being able to make any music work in a hip-hop context.
None of the South Bronx's first wave of hip-hop DJs was more adventurous in bringing different sounds to the ears of breakers and MCs than Afrika Bambaataa. Disco and funk records may have provided the bedrock of the majority of early hip-hop's classic beats, but Bambaataa's nods towards Kraftwerk and Gary Numan in "Planet Rock" planted the seeds of a more outward-looking philosophy towards crate-digging that continues to make hip-hop such a varied and omnivorous genre. —Al Shipley
Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five f/ Melle Mel & Duke Bootee "The Message" (1982)
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Producer: Ed Fletcher, Clifton "Jiggs" Chase, Sylvia Robinson
Album: The Message (1982)
Label: Sugar Hill
Conventional wisdom in hip-hop presumes that the industry is always swaying rappers away from putting messages in their music, because socially conscious hip-hop isn't as profitable. So it's perhaps ironic that a label CEO was the driving force behind one of hip-hop's first, greatest, and most famous "message" songs, "The Message."
Sugar Hill Records founder Sylvia Robinson co-wrote "The Message," and was reputedly instrumental in shepherding the track from a promising demo to a hit single. In another ironic twist, the biggest hit by a six-man group headlined by its DJ actually only featured the rapping of one member, Melle Mel, whose incredible storytelling and charisma on "The Message" helped presage the impending shift from DJs to rappers dominating the spotlight. —Al Shipley
T La Rock "It's Yours" (1984)
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Producer: Rick Rubin
Album: N/A
Label: Def Jam
Being the first rap record with a Def Jam logo or a Rick Rubin production credit is enough to make "It's Yours" a landmark song. But to top it off, the skeletal jam's influence was immediate on contemporaries like LL Cool J, who according to Russell Simmons was inspired by T La Rock's penchant for "40-letter words." And even though T La Rock never followed the song's promise with a classic album of his own, "It's Yours" has been sampled and interpolated on albums no less significant than Illmatic, It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, and Wu-Tang Forever (not to mention indirectly referenced on Drake's recent "Wu Tang Forever"). —Al Shipley
Schoolly D "P.S.K (What Does It Mean)" (1985)
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Producer: J.B. Weaver Jr.
Album: Schoolly D (1986)
Label: Schoolly D
In the early years of recorded hip-hop, the freestyles and improvised tangents that enlivened live performances were largely left off wax as MCs gathered and perfected their best written material for studio sessions. But in 1985, Schoolly D helped put Philadelphia on the map as one of hip-hop's first strong outposts outside New York, largely by coming off the top of the dome with the classic "P.S.K. (What Does It Mean)."
The track's explosive drum pattern and Schoolly's conversational cadence have both been imitated on countless tracks (recently sampled by Eminem on "So Far...") but the true legacy of "P.S.K." may be in how its off-the-cuff creation presaged our current era of based freestyles and rappers who hop in the booth and offer a stream-of-consciousness view into their lives. —Al Shipley
Doug E. Fresh and MC Ricky D (Slick Rick) "La Di Da Di" (1985)
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Producer: Dennis Bell & Ollie Cotton for City Slicker Productions
Album: N/A
Label: Def Jam Records
"La Di Da Di" is, like "New Rap Language," a B-side that unexpectedly took on a life of its own, and like "The Message," a group effort in which a non-rapper received top billing but an MC stole the spotlight. Slick Rick (then MC Ricky D) traded rhymes with Doug E. Fresh over banging drums on the equally classic A-side "The Show," but the flip, "La Di Da Di," became the ultimate beatboxing record of all time.
Between Fresh's virtuosic rhythmic performance, and Slick Rick's storytelling verse, each had a calling card that would last a lifetime. The British-born Ricky D had the most foreign accent that any New York hip-hop head had likely ever heard at that point, but it was his suave delivery and sharp turns of phrase that made him an overnight star, influencing future legends like Snoop Dogg, who covered "La Di Da Di" word for word on his debut album, Doggystyle. —Al Shipley
Ice T "6 'N The Mornin'" (1986)
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Producer: The Unknown DJ
Album: Rhyme Pays (1987)
Label: Techno Hop Records
In 1987, Run-D.M.C. only had to raise their voices and wear leather jackets to be the baddest motherfuckers in rap music. But with Ice-T's debut album, Rhyme Pays, helping to kick off the gangsta rap era, things would quickly change. The standout is its second track, the seven-minute tour de force "6 'N The Mornin',"
Although he'd later incite a fever pitch of controversy with "Cop Killer," and his greatest fame came from playing a police officer on TV, all Ice-T really does on "6 'N The Mornin'" is escape from the police. But the vivid and explicit language, which earned Rhyme Pays rap's first Parental Advisory sticker, was convincing enough to make Ice-T hip-hop's favorite outlaw at a time when that was becoming, for better or worse, an increasingly common component of rap stardom. —Al Shipley
Eric B. & Rakim "Eric B. Is President" (1986)
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Producer: Eric B.
Album: Paid In Full
Label: Zakia Records, 4th & Broadway
"I came in the door, said it before/I never let the mic magnetize me no more/But it's biting me, fighting me, inviting me to rhyme/I can't hold it back, I'm looking for the line/Taking off my coat, clearing my throat/The rhyme will be kicking it until I hit my last note."
That, friends, is pure lyricism at its best. Those are the opening lines to Eric B. & Rakim's first-ever single, "Eric B. for President," the opening salvo to the duo's game-shaking debut album, Paid in Full. "Eric B. for President," with a neck-snapping sample flip (of Fonda Rae's "Over Like a Fat Rat"), introduced Rakim as a new breed of MC. Before Rakim made his auspicious debut in 1986, the best rappers were lyrically excellent but at times abrasively so—Rakim, though, delivered his intricate, multi-syllabic rhymes with the coolness of a zen master.
Rakim redefined what an MC could be: a master swordsman who cuts through his competition with razor-sharp words. In 1986, as it's remained throughout his entire career, there was nothing flashy about Rakim. He wasn't a pretty boy, or a militant soldier in a rapper's garb. He was the dude you'd see on the corner or in the nearby Mickey D's. Rakim put his lyrics above all, and the six-minute rap-fest "Eric B. for President" was a positively and refreshingly one-dimensional exhibition of his writing chops—the same kind that post-Rakim disciples like Nas, Eminem, and current lyrical extraordinaire Kendrick Lamar continue to execute. —Matt Barone
The Showboys "Drag Rap (Trigger Man)" (1986)
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Producer: Cliff Hall
Album: Drag Rap (1986)
Label: Profile
Hip-hop is often seen as a zero-sum game, where history is written by the winners and everyone who doesn't make smash hits gets swept under the rug. But missed connections and accidental innovations are constantly pinging around the periphery of the mainstream, proliferating sounds and ideas that eventually reach a tipping point.
That circuitous path is best exemplified by a pivotal song like "Drag Rap," a Dragnet-themed 1986 novelty single by the Queens group Showboys that failed to make much of an impression on New York during the Run-D.M.C. era. Instead, the song took on a second life in the South, where the track's distinctive xylophone loops, frenzied snare fills, and "alright!" shouts became building blocks of the New Orleans Bounce sound. —Al Shipley
Public Enemy "Rebel Without a Pause" (1987)
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Producer: The Bomb Squad
Album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)
Label: Def Jam
Eric B. & Rakim had just changed the sound of hip-hop, but that doesn't mean that everyone who reacted to their innovations was simply following suit. When Public Enemy heard those James Brown breaks, they were spurred to make something even sharper and harder. The Bomb Squad piled on textures like that screaming tea kettle of a horn loop and Terminator X's transformer scratches, all in service of making Chuck D.'s voice sounding bigger and more urgent than any MC's ever had before. Within a few years, even pop hits by the likes of TLC would feature the kind of sample-delic wall of sound that Public Enemy pioneered. But ultimately, nobody was really ready to take P.E.'s sound to a higher level like Chuck D. & Co. had done for Eric B. & Rakim. —Al Shipley
De La Soul "Me Myself and I" (1989)
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Producer: Prince Paul, De La Soul
Album: 3 Feet High and Rising (1989)
Label: Tommy Boy
A Tribe Called Quest gets most of the props, but De La Soul was there first. One year before the release of Tribe's seminal debut, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm, their Native Tongues brethren De La (Posdnuos, Trugoy the Dove, and Maseo) confused many a rap fan with their debut single, "Me Myself and I." And with it, they ushered in a new kind of rapper: the disarming everyman who's as socially conscious and forward-thinking as he is funny and charming.
Dismissively labeled as "hippie" rap, De La Soul—hailing from the uncharted hip-hop terrain of Amityville, Long Island—challenged the culture's perceptions. Before "Me Myself and I," rap was predominantly an image-conscious business, with that image commonly featuring hats turned backwards, Adidas jumpsuits, and other fashion statements that screamed, "I'm bad!" De La, however, as seen in the single's playfully self-aware video, dressed like they'd just stepped out of a time machine whose last stop was Woodstock. They were the new kids walking the hallways whom the tough kids (read: rap's harder acts) would have stuffed into lockers and blew spit-wads at (read: diss or simply outright dismiss).
But De La had the skills to back up their singular presentation, and "Me Myself and I," an uptempo head-nodder merging breakbeats and nostalgic funk, couldn't be overlooked. It broke down rap's superficial barriers, giving future like-minded artists like Common, Lupe Fiasco, and Kanye West the confidence to be themselves—insecurities, scholastic valedictorian-isms, and all. —Matt Barone
Biz Markie "Alone Again" (1991)
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Producer: Cool V and Biz Markie
Album: I Need A Haircut (1991)
Label: Cold Chillin
To some, hip-hop's methods of recontextualizing sounds from old records, particularly the blatantly uncleared samples of the genre's first decade, will always be looked at as simple, uncreative theft. And if unlawful sampling was finally stopped by "Alone Again," a deep cut on Biz Markie's under-performing third album, I Need A Haircut, it was the copyright law equivalent of Al Capone going to jail for tax evasion.
Biz's song, which looped up Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Alone Again (Naturally)," spurred a court case that changed industry attitudes overnight about unauthorized samples. Sampling never died, but the wall-to-wall sampling technique pioneered by Public Enemy and De La Soul soon went out of fashion. To this day, sample clearance continues to delay album release dates, eat up production budgets, and even keep great songs off of albums ("Control," anyone?). —Al Shipley
Dr. Dre f/ Snoop Dogg "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" (1992)
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Producer: Dr. Dre
Album: The Chronic (1992)
Label: Death Row
After N.W.A made gangsta rap a platinum phenomenon, and "Deep Cover" established both Dr. Dre as a solo artist and Snoop Doggy Dogg as his charismatic new protégé, it wouldn't have taken a psychic to predict that their next record would be a smash. But it's hard to imagine that anybody expected that record to be so...smooth. Instead of coming straight back out of Compton with another uptempo banger, Dre cruised to superstardom with a mellow, funky Leon Haywood loop that spun gangsta rap into G-funk. It was the perfect showcase for Snoop's infectiously casual delivery, and a Trojan horse to usher raw West coast rap into MTV's daytime rotation. —Al Shipley
The Notorious B.I.G. "Juicy" (1994)
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Though Biggie had recorded tracks before "Juicy," the song is the moment his story turned into a saga and he became a true star. Without his classic introductory single, the larger-than-life lyricist from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, might have remained an underground NYC rapper—Mr. "Party and Bullshit," minus the platinum plaques. And without "Juicy," there's also a chance Puff Daddy would have never become the grandiose hip-hop entrepreneur he is today.
Co-produced by Tone (of the Trackmasters) and Puffy, and vibrantly sampling Mtume's "Juicy Fruit," "Juicy" embodied all that would come to distinguish Biggie's legacy and help his music to remain timeless—its radio-friendly vibe, lyrical proficiency, and identifiable theme of aspiration overcoming struggle. It's a party record that's also raw, an ode to the streets ready for suburban house parties and corporate mixers. The opposite, that is, of what had been dominating New York's rap scene previously, from the dark grit of Wu-Tang to the Timbs-and-hoodies aura of Black Moon and KRS-One's boom-bap. All of which, at the time, was being usurped by hip-hop's post-The Chronic wave of West Coast G-funk and gangster rap.
With "Juicy," Biggie created a template—a hood pass that was accessible to all—for the boom in popularity of mid-to-late ’90s NYC rap that helped propel Puffy's Bad Boy Records into an empire. —Matt Barone
Juvenile f/ Lil Wayne and Mannie Fresh "Back That Azz Up" (1998)
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Producer: Mannie Fresh
Album: 400 Degreez (1998)
Label: Cash Money, Universal
Although "Ha" was the opening salvo that launched Juvenile and his label into the mainstream, it was the third single from 400 Degreez that truly made Cash Money Records a force to be reckoned with. Even setting aside the wave of ass anthems it kicked off or the label that continues to dominate hip-hop today, "Back That Azz Up" just seems to keep popping back up in new forms: Snoop quoting Wayne's refrain for "Drop It Like It's Hot," Drake redoing its hook on "Practice," and Juvenile's flow from the song being borrowed on two current hits, "Used 2" by 2 Chainz and "Part II (On The Run)" by Jay Z. And of course, it was the first time most of America heard the voice of Lil Wayne. —Al Shipley
Jay-Z f/ Big Jaz & Amil "Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99)" (1998)
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Producer: Timbaland
Album: Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life (1998)
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
When the sound of contemporary R&B changes with the times, that usually means it's lagging a year or two behind the sound of hip-hop. But the usual order was reversed when Timbaland and Missy Elliott ushered a bold new sound onto urban radio in 1996 and 1997 with a staggering series of hits for Aaliyah, Ginuwine, and others. Debut albums from Missy Elliott and Timbaland & Magoo paired that sound with playful rhymes, but it wasn't until 1998, when Jay-Z drafted Timbaland for two tracks on his multi-platinum breakthrough, Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life, that the Virginia beatmaker found his true hip-hop muse.
The busy hi-hat triplet rhythms, pockets of empty space, and striking sci-fi sonics of "Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator 99)," paired with double-time flows from Jay and his mentor Jaz-O made for an explosive combination. Within a couple years seemingly every rapper in the mainstream was either on beats by Timbaland or ones that conspicuously showed his influence. —Al Shipley
Soulja Boy "Crank Dat (Soulja Boy)" (2007)
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Producer: Soulja Boy
Album: Souljaboytellem.com (2007)
Label: Collipark, Interscope
"Crank Dat" was not just the birth of Soulja Boy's career, but also of viral rap. By 2007, YouTube was already a phenomenon but it hadn't created a rap star yet. That is, until a teenager from Mississippi provided a template for how user-uploaded videos can offer dozens of variations on a theme.
When "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" topped the Hot 100, six years before Billboard actually factored YouTube plays on its charts, the floodgates opened and kids started getting major label deals off of songs like "Crank Dat Spiderman." It wasn't just a matter of freestyles over the same beat, or even answer records—the interactivity and anyone-can-do-it spirit of the Internet was taking hold on a new generation of teenagers, in a way popular music had never seen before. —Al Shipley
Kanye West "Love Lockdown" (2008)
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Producer: Kanye West, Jeff Bhasker
Album: 808s & Heartbreak (2008)
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
Hip-hop heartthrobs from LL Cool J to Ja Rule have perfected the art of the rap ballad, using hip-hop to harness the sentimentality previously only accessible to the most emotive singers. And the flirtations with Auto-Tune that T-Pain ignited in rappers like Lil Wayne were, similarly, done in a fashion that emulated R&B.
But the approach taken by Kanye West on 808s & Heartbreak, along with that of his protégé and muse during that period, Kid Cudi, was different simply for using the spleen-venting disposition of hip-hop to address matters of love with melody. When a rapper warbles about their life on record, with or without Auto-Tune, it's probably Kanye—not T-Pain or anybody else—that lit the fire in them to do so. —Al Shipley
Lil Wayne "A Milli" (2008)
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Producer: Bangladesh
Album: Tha Carter III (2008)
Label: Cash Money, Universal Motown
Bangladesh didn't think he was finished producing the track when he gave Lil Wayne a slowed and stuttered Phife Dawg vocal loop and a threadbare drum pattern to rap to. But that was all Wayne needed. The ample open space in the beat gave Wayne the room to unleash Mixtape Weezy on the street single for his long-awaited Tha Carter III. Songs like Cam'ron's "Oh Boy" had shown how vocal loops could be woven into a beat in a way that the rapper can playfully interact with, but "A Milli" was a strange and infectious demonstration of a new way to stack voices on top of voices—one static and unchanging and the other constantly reaching for new words and flows. Even the distinctive, halting snare fills of "A Milli" have become a basic building block of dozens of hit songs that followed in its wake. —Al Shipley
Rick Ross f/ Styles P "B.M.F (Blowin' Money Fast)" (2010)
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Producer: Lex Luger
Album: B.M.F. (Blowin' Money Fast) (2010)
Label: Maybach, Slip-n-Slide, Def Jam
Although Lex Luger's ascendance to hitmaker status was short-lived, it's hard to imagine rap three years later without Luger's sound. Luger's thumping track and chaotic sputter of hi-hats took the trap sound of Atlanta to new extremes that continue to influence other regional rap sounds like Chicago's drill scene, as well as other genres like the dance music also referred to as "trap." "B.M.F." is also the monumental street anthem that elevated Rick Ross to a level that a dozen of his R&B collaborations couldn't. Whenever a rapper namechecks somebody in the "I think I'm ____" or "I'm ____" construction of "B.M.F." and its companion single, "MC Hammer," what they're really saying is, "I think I'm Rick Ross." —Al Shipley