Month of US hip-hop

To celebrate the month of April I have decided to immerse myself in American hip-hop music. I spent a good deal of time yesterday culling a list of about 40 records that I really want to listen to down to just 12. My goal is to listen to each album through at least twice and blog about it here. I’m going through the 12 chronologically and hoping to get a bit of a handle on how the genre has evolved over time. Some of the choices are pretty obvious/commercial releases so you may already be well acquainted with them. I’ve never owned any of these albums before embarking on this task.
So please come with me as I explore hip-hop music starting with LL Cool J’s 1985 debut studio album “Radio”.
LL Cool J is one of those super famous MCs that I’ve never really listened to prior to this month so I’m really not sure what to expect when I press play on track one “I can’t live without my radio”. It becomes immediately apparent that we are well and truly in the 80’s. The beat is incredibly simple and repetitive with what would now be considered horrendous production qualities. His lyricism is rather simple too talking a lot about his neighbourhood and his apparent need to have his radio around him at all times. LL Cool J’s natural ability as an MC shines through strongly though.
It really is hip-hop in its most fledgling stages the beat is still derived heavily from the ‘break’ in a funk or disco song and sampling seems to be relied on fully rather than something to compliment a well-crafted beat.
The album really kicks into gear with the track ‘Dear Yvette’. In this track LL calls a girl out on her promiscuous activity in a way that MCs would continue to do throughout hip-hop music with tracks like ‘She Swallowed It’ by NWA. This track also uses a strong support crew of MCs and LL steps into a more aggressive flow that seems to suit his style. In all this was the standout track from the album for me.
Overall it’s a really fun album, LL Cool J makes claims at being: the best MC, a concerned citizen, a natural lover and a dangerous man but never at being a gangster, something that would develop in rap and hip-hop over the next five years. This was hip-hop when it was still guys shouting out from their street corners just having a good time.
This was released in the same year as the Live Aid Album and Kate Bush’s classic ‘The Hounds of Love’ so there was a lot of pop still going around and hip-hop was still just carving out a name for itself with Run-DMC and Grandmaster Flash. Next post I’m going to look at an album widely considered to be the best hip-hop album of all time; held responsible for hip-hop being taken seriously as an art form and having a huge impact on the artists that would take hip-hop to the apex of its commercial success.

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