Nearly everybody has that one annoying friend who clings to dusty copies of what he considers “real” hip-hop while shunning much anything else that enters the rap market. As insensible as your friend may seem, he may have a point. Sure, the term “golden age of hip-hop” has become a bit of a cliché in recent years, but not to the extent that it’s totally devoid of meaning. The thing I miss most about that “golden age”—which, according to some people, started in the mid ‘80s and ended in the early ‘90s—is the dominance of the rap group. Essentially a “team” that consists of multiple MCs and a turntablist, the rap group is important because it stresses an egalitarian ethic that is missing from modern, solo-oriented hip-hop.
Don’t get me wrong—rap groups are by no means extinct, but the rap industry just doesn’t place the same emphasis on such collectives as it used to. Consequently, rather than being seen as the norm as it used to be, the rap group is perceived as more of a novelty in today’s music culture. One need look no further than the contrived street-toughness of G Unit or the publicity-starved D12. Even the highly respected group Outkast has degenerated almost to the point of novelty; they milked the media by playing up the squabbles of André 3000 and Big Boi and even making their own movie, Idlewild.
Rap groups used to be the primary vehicles steering the course of hip-hop, and most of them seemed to have their own agenda. N.W.A. wanted to incite violence against the police force, while Public Enemy tried to cure people’s fear of mixing black and white. The Beastie Boys fought for, well, their right to party. The unity that characterized rap groups of the time is striking.
While the golden age of rap groups may have passed, several forward-thinking groups still remain, albeit with more ambiguous aims. Lately, the Virginia Beach-based group the Clipse have been releasing some incredible hip-hop. However, their agenda of entreprenurial drug hustling is too self-serving for them to reach the ranks of the rap groups of old. Likewise, many indie-minded hip-hop groups fail to reach the importance of groups like Public Enemy because they either lack a mission statement or bury it under layers of experimentation. The first example that comes to mind is Subtle, whose presumably thought-provoking lyrics are often lost under loud guitars and claustrophobic production. Just give me a group of five disaffected men unafraid to use a sharp, simple beat and yell, “Fuck tha police,” in your face.
