Old heads who lived in the 90s, what was the exact year hiphop/rap became mainstream and blew up?

[SirBiatch]

Those movies wouldn't have been made at all if not for the interest generated in the genre.

No one makes a movie to LOSE money.​

of course. That goes without saying but doesn't help your point at all.

The fact of the matter is that there were hundreds, if not thousands of films made around the world at that time with similar budgets to Breakin. They weren't mainstream fare either. $1mil for a film back then was damn near pennies. They thought it would work for a inner city markets. Which is true.

Films made for smaller, non-mainstream markets happen all the time.

 

[Renzo]

When the Chronic dropped it became mainstream. It went into the suburbs.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

A genre is mainstream to me when #1 on Billboard becomes more frequent simply because that genre is in demand and established.

Mainstream is a combination of overall influence/level of permeation







......anyone who thinks hiphop wasn't mainstream in the 80's doesn't know what they're talking about. In the 80's, rock/new wave/synthpop groups had even started being influenced by hiphop. It was all over popular culture, in all of it's main 4 elements

 

[Rekkapryde]

I'd have to say 96 with 98 being the point of no return

But in 96 the divide between mainstream/crossover and traditional/underground was very noticeable.

 

[SirBiatch]

Mainstream is a combination of overall influence/level of permeation







......anyone who thinks hiphop wasn't mainstream in the 80's doesn't know what they're talking about. In the 80's, rock/new wave/synthpop groups had even started being influenced by hiphop. It was all over popular culture, in all of it's main 4 elements

But that doesn't really mean much. Pop incorporates fads all the time. So if hip hop is the new fad, some pop/rock/new wave artists are gonna incorporate it at that time. You didn't really see the merging of hip hop with other genres in a serious, established way till the 90s imo.

OP needs to clarify what he means by 'mainstream'. Because I think it does a disservice to the genre to say it was mainstream and accepted as early as Rappers Delight - when we all know how much the pioneers and builders had to go through to make hip hop an established genre. It didn't happen overnight. It took decades of work, and as you know, there was a lot of hate.

 

[DANJ!]

This is such an open ended question, cause there were several times waaaay before the late 90s that hip-hop 'went mainstream and blew up'. There's no one specific year that it happened. You could say it happened with Run DMC, because their viability brought them to MTV when MTV was a huge deal, which later gave MTV the inclination to start Yo!, which was the first mainstream look for a lot of rap artists. Or you could say it happened when The Chronic blew up and a lot of hip-hop artists were selling big numbers and being on TV/radio every day. Then there's the post-BIG/Pac era which was hip-hop's biggest years- between '97 to about '03, when you couldn't get away from artists like Puff, Jay, DMX, Dre, 50, Em, Snoop, Lauryn, etc., etc. There's a lot of different times it happened.

 

[Vandelay]

Back in the mid-80's with Run DMC.

When authenticity and quality took a major turn for the worst...97-98...I credit Puff with that...what's crazy is, I like 90% of the shyt Bad Boy was putting out, people just bit they're style like crazy because it wasn't overly hard to copy.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

But that doesn't really mean much. Pop incorporates fads all the time. So if hip hop is the new fad, some pop/rock/new wave artists are gonna incorporate it at that time.

You didn't really see the merging of hip hop with other genres in a serious, established way till the 90s imo.

you had synthpop/new wave, rap hybrids, r&b + hiphop (new jack swing), latin freestyle, funk +Hiphop, urban club music hybrids in the 80s

OP needs to clarify what he means by 'mainstream'. Because I think it does a disservice to the genre to say it was mainstream and accepted as early as Rappers Delight - when we all know how much the pioneers and builders had to go through to make hip hop an established genre. It didn't happen overnight. It took decades of work, and as you know, there was a lot of hate.

there's always going to haters of a given genre but hiphop was fully entrenched in the 80's. Don Cornelius of Soul Train, who hated HipHOp even had to bow down to it's impact

 

[IllmaticDelta]

White people and other minorities accepting hip hop en masse is a fairly recent phenomenon.

no way

 

[TheRtist]

But that doesn't really mean much. Pop incorporates fads all the time. So if hip hop is the new fad, some pop/rock/new wave artists are gonna incorporate it at that time. You didn't really see the merging of hip hop with other genres in a serious, established way till the 90s imo.

OP needs to clarify what he means by 'mainstream'. Because I think it does a disservice to the genre to say it was mainstream and accepted as early as Rappers Delight - when we all know how much the pioneers and builders had to go through to make hip hop an established genre. It didn't happen overnight. It took decades of work, and as you know, there was a lot of hate.

Rappers Delight was too early but late 80's/early 90's hip-hop was officially mainstream

Bart Simpson did the Bartman in 1990.


corny or not; it was MC'ing.

 

[TheRtist]

This is such an open ended question, cause there were several times waaaay before the late 90s that hip-hop 'went mainstream and blew up'. There's no one specific year that it happened. You could say it happened with Run DMC, because their viability brought them to MTV when MTV was a huge deal, which later gave MTV the inclination to start Yo!, which was the first mainstream look for a lot of rap artists. Or you could say it happened when The Chronic blew up and a lot of hip-hop artists were selling big numbers and being on TV/radio every day. Then there's the post-BIG/Pac era which was hip-hop's biggest years- between '97 to about '03, when you couldn't get away from artists like Puff, Jay, DMX, Dre, 50, Em, Snoop, Lauryn, etc., etc. There's a lot of different times it happened.

faxx my G

 

[hex]

I don't know because the OP was so vague....when I think of "mainstream" I think of unavoidable even if you weren't into rap, at all. A lot of people are posting songs and videos and movies but unless you had some kind of knowledge of rap you wouldn't be interested in most of that stuff, regardless.

Which is why I said gangsta rap. When politicians started trying to ban rap groups and holding Congressional meetings on it, it became mainstream. Snoop on the cover of Newsweek in 1993 = it's a fixture in pop culture totally independent of whether or not you care about it. It's unavoidable at that point.

This was the first time I thought to myself "people gotta acknowledge rap music", for better or worse.

Fred.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

 

[Big Mel]

1989.

 

[TheRtist]

I don't know because the OP was so vague....when I think of "mainstream" I think of unavoidable even if you weren't into rap, at all. A lot of people are posting songs and videos and movies but unless you had some kind of knowledge of rap you wouldn't be interested in most of that stuff, regardless.

Which is why I said gangsta rap. When politicians started trying to ban rap groups and holding Congressional meetings on it, it became mainstream. Snoop on the cover of Newsweek in 1993 = it's a fixture in pop culture totally independent of whether or not you care about it. It's unavoidable at that point.

This was the first time I thought to myself "people gotta acknowledge rap music", for better or worse.

Fred.

Fair but no one could avoid Hammer "Can't Touch This" in 1990