How the Golden Age of Hip-Hop Conquered the 1990s
From The Chronic to Illmatic, the Golden Age of hip-hop turned the 1990s into the most fearless decade rap ever had. Here’s how it happened.
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MC Hammer: The Rise, the Pants, the Bankruptcy, and the Legacy
On February 12, 1990 — the same day Nelson Mandela walked free from Victor Verster Prison — a 27-year-old kid from Oakland named Stanley Kirk Burrell released his third studio album and accidentally changed pop culture forever. By August, it was selling 100,000 copies a day. By the following spring, it had gone diamond with…
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The Night Hip Hop Was Born: What Really Happened in the Bronx
The history of hip hop begins on one specific night: August 11, 1973, in the recreation room of an apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the West Bronx. An 18-year-old Jamaican kid named Clive Campbell — who the neighborhood would soon know as DJ Kool Herc — hooked up two turntables, grabbed a microphone,…
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90s Hip-Hop Fashion That Defined Street Style
In 1986, an Adidas executive watched 40,000 fans inside Madison Square Garden hold their sneakers in the air on cue from Run-DMC. The next morning, the brand cut the first million-dollar endorsement deal hip-hop had ever seen. That moment did not just change sneaker marketing — it set the rules for a decade of 90s…
