I think a big part of it is that emcees who came of age in the mid-90s and later (Nas, Jay-Z, etc.) were able to have longevity that emcees from the 80s never enjoyed.
People like Nas and Jay seemed to be relevant for longer and eventually put together very deep catalogues.
If you look at 80s emcees, who had any longevity? What I mean is longevity in terms of putting out quality material and being "relevant" (receiving a certain level of mass recognition among hardcore hip-hop fans). There are a lot of albums I love that went double aluminum and generated little buzz among even hardcore hip-hop fans.
- Rakim: basically absent after 1992 except for a brief resurgence in 1997 with The 18th Letter and one or two guest spots during his Aftermath days. I try to forget about the indignity of Ra being shelved by Dr. Dre.
- Kane: basically irrelevant from the early 90s on, even though he still had skills
- KRS: has released a lot of albums, but stopped being relevant around 2000
- G Rap: never made it as big as the others in the first place (i.e., no gold albums) ... in the late 90s/early 00s it looked like he might finally get his time in the sun, but things never worked out. Is most widely known in "mainstream" hip-hop circles for being superhead's baby's daddy.
- LL: stayed relevant for a long time, but not really as an emcee held in high regard by purists
- Ice Cube: basically same category as LL
The crazy thing about this is that most of the 80s emcees I mentioned are only slightly older than Jay-Z. They were considered dinosaurs before they even turned 30!!
in any decade.
