Will You '90s Babies Shut Up and Admit Rap Was 100 Times Better in the '90s?

I mean, seriously.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Wait, you really, actually, seriously think hip-hop is better today?

You don't have to be old to know how that's complete nonsense.

Sure, there's a lot of great technology and a lot of free music. But the signal-to-noise ratio is preposterous, and much of what's made music easy to access and cheaper than ever hasn't made things any more enjoyable. If anything, it's made the task of hunting down the good stuff even more laborious, proliferating some of the worst parts of the culture.

And no, we're not Bitter Old Heads; all of us write about new rap daily, and have no problem finding new rap worth listening to. But there's plenty of other things missing from today's hip-hop that we took for granted back in the day. Now that they're gone, it's become so obvious how much better things used to be. As such, one small request:

Will You '90s Babies Stop It—Just Stop This—Shut Up, and Admit Rap Was 100 Times Better in the '90s?

(You probably won't. But we can still talk at you.)

Hip-hop style had nothing to do with the fashion industry.

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Sample-based hip-hop spawned an entire culture of celebrating old, obscure, or forgotten artists.

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There was no such thing as ironically bad rap.

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Freestyling meant freestyling.

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Not everybody rapped.

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New Yorkers could still be snobby about New York rap.

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Rap didn't give a fuck about a goddamn Grammy.

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Regional styles developed independently and weren't treated like trends.

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Mixtapes were actually tapes, and DJs had to have skills to create them.

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We weren't so quick to call every album a classic.

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It was OK to be a "funny" rapper

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We preferred quality over quantity.

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People believed rap could actually change the world.

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A rapper's live show was crucial, showmanship ruled, and people actually paid attention instead of taking pictures of themselves or checking Instagram.

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Rappers didn't talk about their "brand" or do corporate-sponsored showcases.

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We went to music stores to get music.

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Figuring out the meaning to lyrics was a personal process of decoding and discovery.

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You appreciated all coverage of hip hop.

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Music videos were big-budget and watched on TV, not 600-pixel width YouTube boxes.

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Social media hadn't yet ruined rapper mystique.

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