BmoreGorilla
Veteran
92. When the Chronic dropped everything changed
Old heads who lived in the 90s, what was the exact year hiphop/rap became mainstream and blew up?
- Thread starter timothy_strickland
- Start date
What do you mean by 'mainstream?' Any specific metrics to judge when a genre becomes mainstream?
this is closer to the truth. I'd say early 2000s to be honest. Why? Because that's when you started seeing hip hop songs regularly going to #1 on the Billboard. Albums sales are for fans but single sales are for casuals. Seeing something #1 on Billboard is a decent measure of what everyone's listening to - from young Black kid to old white grandma.
Hip hop albums were selling but you didn't see legendary rappers Snoop, Jay-Z, etc going #1 on Billboard Hot 100 till the 2000s. Then you had outright pop artists like Kanye who had #1 songs right out the gate first album, with 4 singles within the top 20 on Billboard. Stuff like that didn't really in the 90s.
this is closer to the truth. I'd say early 2000s to be honest. Why? Because that's when you started seeing hip hop songs regularly going to #1 on the Billboard. Albums sales are for fans but single sales are for casuals. Seeing something #1 on Billboard is a decent measure of what everyone's listening to - from young Black kid to old white grandma.
Hip hop albums were selling but you didn't see legendary rappers Snoop, Jay-Z, etc going #1 on Billboard Hot 100 till the 2000s. Then you had outright pop artists like Kanye who had #1 songs right out the gate first album, with 4 singles within the top 20 on Billboard. Stuff like that didn't really in the 90s.
BmoreGorilla
Veteran
NWA wasn't mainstream like that. They didn't get radio play. They were more known for the controversy
you are explaining moreso when Hip-Hop took over.
It was mainstream and blew up long before that.
MC Hammer (watch the begining of the video)
Vanilla Ice was huge
BK The Great
Veteran
or you could say Bone Thugs kind of changed the landscape mixing up the harmony & rhymes with this classic.
one-off acts selling major units is not the same thing as an entire genre pumping out #1 after #1. If you really look at the stats, the late 90s/2000s is when this shyt went supernova. Before then, there were a lot of people who didn't listen to hip hop, especially if you weren't in urban American areas.
I went to middle school in Canada and high school in Saudi. For a while I was the only person in my schools who fukked with hip hop like that (I was also the only Black kid in middle and high school). At a certain point, shyt switched. The usual 'rap is crap' debate went out the window
MC Hammer wasnt a 1 off act tho. His debut album had songs in Rocky V, his second album was double platinum, his third album went double diamond, and the one after that went triple platinum. He eventually joined Death Row and still went platinum.
Vanilla Ice was one off, but Run DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, NWA, LL Cool J ...etc. all back to back platinum acts who did stadiums.
Will Smith even got a TV show on NBC after 6+ albums WITH a theme song he rapped on. 2pac was in how many movies? Even his last film he co-starred with James Belushi...a Blues Brother.
Hip-hop was def mainstream in the early 90's + late 80's.
Hip Hop did not take over in no 1990 nor no 1991.
1990 - 1991 was still dominated by pop.....Phil Collins, Modanna, New Kids On The Block, Wilson Philips, Paula Abdul, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, mariah Carey, Amy Grant, Michel jackson and Prince.
Hip Hop was in the mix but it didnt take over because the biggest mainstream rap songs during that time along with Hammer and PM Dawn was Ice Ice Baby and Marky marks Good Vibrations
1991 is when Grunge kicked in the door. Nirvanas 2nd album sold 30 Million. No one in Hip Hop was doing them numbers not Hammer nor Vanilla Ice.
In 97 Bad Boy dominated the charts. Bad Boy was real Hip Hop compared to Marky Mark and Vanilla Ice. 1991 is when pop rap dominated...not the official shyt. And 1998 is the first record of Hip Hop being the dominant genre.
When Puffy redid that song by The Police....The doors for dominance opened.
Hip Hop did not take over in no 1990 nor no 1991.
1990 - 1991 was still dominated by pop.....Phil Collins, Modanna, New Kids On The Block, Wilson Philips, Paula Abdul, Bon Jovi, Janet Jackson, mariah Carey, Amy Grant, Michel jackson and Prince.
Hip Hop was in the mix but it didnt take over because the biggest mainstream rap songs during that time along with Hammer and PM Dawn was Ice Ice Baby and Marky marks Good Vibrations
1991 is when Grunge kicked in the door. Nirvanas 2nd album sold 30 Million. No one in Hip Hop was doing them numbers not Hammer nor Vanilla Ice.
In 97 Bad Boy dominated the charts. Bad Boy was real Hip Hop compared to Marky Mark and Vanilla Ice. 1991 is when pop rap dominated...not the official shyt. And 1998 is the first record of Hip Hop being the dominant genre.
When Puffy redid that song by The Police....The doors for dominance opened.
breh you techinically agreeing with me.
Hip-hop didnt take over till much later, I know that
but the OP is asking when it went mainstream and blew up...blowing up is different from taking over.
Hip-hop went mainstream in the late 80's. MC Hammer was around the time it blew up (MC Hammer 20 million to Nirvana's 30 million). Official shyt or not it was still hip-hop/rap.
Hip-hop/rap didnt take over until the late 90's around the time when Master P, DMX, Diddy & Eminem ran the industry.
LOL...exactly...I was responding to u saying Hip Hop took over...not Op saying when did it blow up.
But u did an edit so thats my bad. The way u worded it first threw me off.
This is correct.
That's the year everything went to shyt and it's never recovered.
I meant one-off as in 'limited number of acts'. You can't name the only acts that were going mainstream and then saying that hip hop as a genre was mainstream. Pac was in movies but these were not mainstream movies by any stretch of the imagination. "Above The Rim" is basically an independent film shot on a 6 mil budget, which is nothing in 1994. Studios were spending up to 100 mil or more on action pics and 30-80 mil on dramas.
A genre is mainstream to me when #1 on Billboard becomes more frequent simply because that genre is in demand and established. If you look at the list below, it becomes obvious that this genre started taking the fukk off in the late 90s and especially into the 2000s. Prior to the late 90s, people had heard of hip hop and had a general idea of what it was but there was a real aversion to the genre for many years. People forget this. For years people were like "fukk this genre - I'm not listening to this bullshyt!"
Every No. 1 Rap Song in Hot 100 HistoryLudacris f/ Shawnna "Stand Up" (2003)
