Your history with Rap/Hip Hop?

[DaveyDave]

Dope thread.

Everyone fukked with Hammer, dabbled with LL but on some real shyt it all started with Ice Cube. That man was the shyt to me.

My pops, he was hard on dubb plate and reggae. My step pops though, he was hip hop. He was playing Amerikkka's most wanted in the car, i was secretly eating that shyt up. I was only 10 or 11 at the time, but that shyt just sounded hard as fukk to me.

Went to the record store, looked for Cube (i didn't know the name of the album), but it was actually Death Certificate i purchased. I had to get someone outside the record store to buy it for me because i looked too young . It was a wrap from there on. That album remains the most played album of all time for me. From there got Cube's back catalogue

I had to listen to it in secret though, mum would have had none of it.

I heard Chronic, Doggystyle, the CB4 soundtrack all for the first time in my step dads car.

My friends put me on to the east coast ...... 36 chambers and Ilmatic. Special times. We all names ourselves after a member of the clan and had to spit their respective verses

From then, everything Deathrow, Pac, Nas, Mobb and the rest is history....

i remember getting a dub of AMW off my cousin, something fukked up on the tape so The Bomb always played at double speed for some reason

 

[JCalli]

i remember getting a dub of AMW off my cousin, something fukked up on the tape so The Bomb always played at double speed for some reason

Did you get that album upon it's release?

I was only like 11 or so when I first heard it, so as a shorty I couldn't fully appreciate it (despite banging the fukk out of it). When i got to 14 or so that and Death Certificate blew my mind. They just got better and better.

Considering you only saw your cousin once every five years, i hope you went to the store and purchased a fresh copy of AMW!

 

[mbewane]

First video I ever saw was Big Daddy Kane. My pops was really not feeling rap. Thought it was trash music. But as a kid, I remeber seeing Kid-N-Play and thinking they were 'fly'. Then I remember everyone in my school knew the lyrics to 'I Got It Made'. I felt like I had to learn the lyrics too in order to fit in. The 'It Takes Two' and 'Bust A Move' dropped and I was hooked. I was 9 years old. I never messed with Wild Thing by Tone Loc though .

Same here, I lived in New Rochelle when I was a kid (left when I was 8, in '88...still pissed at missing that GOAT era) and my older cousin was always listening to "It Takes two"...that and Salt n Pepa joints

When I was younger, I couldn't really listen to the more gritty hip-hop because my parents usually played the Heavy D and the Arrested Development types (on top of Haitian Kompa and Jamaican Dancehall... but that's another story).

It was these three albums that made me get into hip-hop heavy

The Score by the Fugees... the very first hip-hop album my mother let me play... and I jammed that entire album endlessly.
Supa Dupa Fly by Missy Elliott - when I first heard "Beep Me 911", that was like at that beat. Plus, Missy is VA born and raised so my mother had to support her. Had me walking around as a youngin shoutin "hee hee hee hee hooooooow"

When Disaster Strikes by Busta Rhymes - this album almost caused a meltdown in my house. My mother bought it for my older sister, I listened to it like crazy. But when my sister started going into that "teenage girl rebellious stage" my mother snatched the CD up and smashed it with a hammer

Anyway I was always around hip-hop, whether in New Rochelle or back in Central Africa...when G-Funk took off in the early 90s it was everywhere...my sister copped the Doggystyle tape and we were listening to it all the time...went back and dubbed the Chronic and would listen to the intro non-stop lol..tis went on a couple years...then someone came thru with a VHS tape and there was the Liquid Swords video...shyt had me like and from then on it was over...first albums I bought were It was written and The Score...then proceeded to steal Liquid Swords, OB4Cl, Tical, 36 Chambers, Return to the 36 Chambers and The Show

 

[Kliq_Souf]

I grew up in the city, hiphop was all around.
My parents were teens and all they listened to was hiphop. Mainly LL, KRS, Rakim, and Public Enemy.
I have two uncles who were DJ's, so i always was connected to the latest shyt out.
Block parties were frequent in the summer time. I seen niccas battle in the neighborhood.
From a tv perspective, Dr. Dre and Snoop are the earliest memories i have seeing music videos on the BOX and MTV.
Around age 8-9, I got my first boombox, and I made tapes off the radio stations, Power 99 and 103.9.
Thats when Jay, DMX, Lox, Busta, Pun, Hot Boys, etc was on top.


I went to a Christian school, and I got in trouble at 5 years old for bringing in a Ice Cube tape for our pizza party.

 

[old soul]

Kriss Kross tapes. "I missed the bus," was the story of my life.

We weren't allowed to dress up for Halloween so my brothers and I would wear our baseball jerseys and turn em (and our jeans backwards) once we got to school. Kriss Kross for like 4 straight years .

My dad used to hate on rap until "The Chronic" came out, he fukked with all those Parliament Funkadelic Records.

Discovered "conscious rap" in highschool and got stuck on that... Train of Thought

 

[beanz]

started when i stole my uncle's 36 chambers tape. took it to school and let that shyt rock in my walkman til it stopped working. then i started buying bootleg CDs(my first was jay z in my lifetime) and then napster came into play and downloaded a few. then mIRC and i downloaded thousands of songs one weekend and went crazy. i was into it HARD.

then came the realization that these rappers i looked up to were all cornballs and that rap wasnt real music and i threw it in the bushes. last shyt i bumped heavy was a couple of g unit mixtapes but that was it

moved on to actual music.

 

[DANJ!]

Did you get that album upon it's release?

I was only like 11 or so when I first heard it, so as a shorty I couldn't fully appreciate it (despite banging the fukk out of it). When i got to 14 or so that and Death Certificate blew my mind. They just got better and better.

Considering you only saw your cousin once every five years, i hope you went to the store and purchased a fresh copy of AMW!

My uncle had AMW, cause he had heard 'Gangsta's Fairytale' and was in love with it... that summer, me & my mother were staying at his place for like a month. He played 'Gangsta Fairytale' almost everyday and I thought it was funny so I would sneak and listen to it on my own... then I kept listening to the tape cause I wondered if he had some more funny shyt on there... not much. but once I heard the rest of the tape Cube was my new fav rapper.

 

[Ciggavelli]

The Chronic was my gateway album.

I was lucky enough to live in the tri-state too during the 90's golden-era, and Hot 97 held me down during my formative years.

 

[The Antagonist]

As I kid, I always knew and liked certain rap songs I heard on MTV and Radio, and My first concert ever was Kris Kross.. but I never listened to full rap albums and really get into the genre until a teenager.

My mom played a part in me becoming a hip hop fan. She bought Shyne's first album cause she like Bad Boys and she bought Nelly for Country Grammar. I remember her playing those albums, and she only liked the singles so I took the Cd's and listened to them in full on my CD walkman and loved them both, and from there I was hooked and just got in to it heavy from there. I remember in like 2002 we found out that this Flea Market near me had dudes that would set up tables and they'd sell burned rap albums for 5 bucks a pop.. that's where I got 50 Cent's No Mercy, No Fear, Clipse - Lord Willin', Cam'Ron - Come Home With Me, Jay-Z - The Blueprint and a bunch of other stuff...

 

[god shamgod]

Run dmc you be illin,adidas,walk this way put me on as a kid.LL's bigger and deffer was the 1st tape I ever owned and bad was the 1st song I ever knew word for word.Been a hip hop junkie ever since

 

[W.I.Z.E.]

Great Thread.

1983 - White Lines by Grandmaster Flash was my first intro into Rap. I used to just keep repeating "don't don't don't do it...ba..ba.baby"
That same year the B side of It's like that "Sucker MC's" REALLY hooked me in.
1985 - Watched the "Krush Groove" movie and seeing the story of these rappers amazed me
1987 - BAD by LL, was the first "tape" I ever owned. I listened to that joint front to back...over and over. For us old heads, back then Walkmans looked like this and only had three buttons (Play, Stop and Fast Forward)

1987-1990 - The floodgates opened. I listened to KRS, Kane, Rakim, MC Lyte, Cube, DJ Red Alert on 98.7Kiss...watched Video Music Box on Channel 31. There was so much great music
1991 - 1995 - This was the second part of the Golden Era for me. Worked with a bunch of cats who later became Natural Elements. I remember when KA first started rhyming in the Studio and he and this guy Staxx formed Raidermen. L-Swift (Swigga) put me on to rhyming and we formed a group that clearly he was much better than and shouldn't have been a part of. Charlegmagne was KILLING IT and to me was just as good as Pete Rock. First time I heard him actually making



I was like I mean if you've EVER seen a producer create a classic from sample to bassline, etc. it's an amazing thing.
In between, I would listen to Stretch and Bobbito and hear underground stuff from lesser known people like Wu-Tang, Biggie, Akineyle and some guy named Nas. I remember I heard Big L and Jay-Z and thought damn...who was that clown L was rhyming with?

This was my golden era....Wu and Big blew up. Mobb Deep dropped Peer Pressure which was ehh...then Shook Ones which was Fuggees were killing it. Outkast and southern cats had a strong buzz. West Coast was KILLING it. I LOVED Hip-Hop then.

Late 90's - Bling era and other stuff took me out of hip hop a lil. It was just too commercialized. To this day, I feel the same way. There's some great music out there but so much garbage to sift through. Nowadays songs that were spoofs back in the day are now serious songs.

 

[southpawstyle]

Big brother bought me E. 1999 when I was in kindergarten. Game Over.

 

[Pool_Shark]

Never "got" into rap cause it wasn't like I had a choice but when I was 12 I started looking for it and begging my parents to buy me a CD player and stealing tupac mixes from my uncle. It was always there and my parents never cared about curse words. But the Internet shyt started when I was 17, then I learned about east coast music like wutang, jayz, and nas, and a lot about the history of hiphop. Before that it was just westcoast music and the classic songs everyone knew about.

 

[big bun]

Have an older brother who was listening to rap back in the early 80's. First tape I remember was Mr. Magic's Rap Attack. That was like 30 years ago.

 

[Redwing80]

My older brothers and cousins always had the hottest and latest shyt in Hip Hop/R&B, so I knew who I wanted to listen to

Jay Z, Nas, DMX etc was always playing around the house

At 8/9 I liked Nas A LOT but then 50 Cent became the only thing I would be hearing for the next 2 years

The rest is history