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The Birth of Hip Hop

The Birth of Hip Hop

On August 11th 1973 in the rec room of an apartment building on Sedgwick Avenue, an eighteen year old Clive Campbell throws a back-to-school party with his younger sister Cindy. Friends and neighbours dance to the familiar sounds of artists like James Brown, Aretha Franklin, and The Meters — only something has changed…

Behind two turntables, Clive, better known as DJ Kool Herc, plays two copies of the same record, a technique known as the merry-go-round where one moves back and forth, from one record to the next, looping the percussion portions of each track to keep the beat alive. And amongst this community of dancers, artists, musicians and poets...Hip Hop is born.

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Equal parts biography, musicology, and cultural history, Dilla Time chronicles the life and legacy of J Dilla, a musical genius who transformed the sound of popular music for the twenty-first century.

Dilla Time: The Life and Afterlife of J Dilla, the Hip-Hop Producer Who Reinvented Rhythm

In Shades of Blue Madlib, hip-hop producer extraordinaire, tackles Blue Note's soul-jazz catalogue, enjoying free rein in the fabled label's vaults.

Over the course of her lush, expansive, defiantly sprawling new album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, released on Age 101, the Ivor Novello award-winning, Mercury nominated Little Simz delivers an undeniable modern classic, effortlessly condensing any number of disparate styles and genres into music which thrillingly broaches the gap between urgent modern treatise and hip hop.

Sometimes I Might be Introvert (Clear Vinyl)

Little Simz
Hip Hop

One of the best hip hop albums ever made. 'Donuts' is accessible without being typical or easily defined: it's hip hop without mcs; electronic music that at times sounds like a 70s soul mixtape; J Dilla doing what he does best - crafting hip hop, soul and electronic music into his own sound.

J Dilla
US Hip Hop

Madlib wanted to record with Doom. The label found the guy, brought him out to the house in the east Los Angeles hills where they were based at the time. Most of the tracks were written and recorded there, Madlib making beats in a former bomb shelter downstairs, Doom writing on the back porch and recording in a bedroom.

Madvillain
US Hip Hop

The Score is the second and final studio album by the hip hop trio Fugees.

The Score (Black Vinyl)

The Fugees
Hip Hop

The album has cemented its place in hip-hop history and has since gone on to achieve 6x platinum certification in the US, selling over 3.5 million copies, and has achieved platinum status in the UK as well.

The Notorious B.I.G.
90s Hip Hop

"People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm" is the debut studio album by American hip hop group A Tribe Called Quest, released in 1990.

People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm

A Tribe Called Quest
90s Hip Hop

For most artists who are discovered behind the mixing boards, making the transfer from producer to MC proves a daunting task. Fortunately for Kanye West, his verbal skills more than rise to the challenge of his consistently superior beats.

College Dropout

Kanye West
US Hip Hop

36 Chambers, an insular and weird album by design, arrived not a moment too soon in a decade where insular and weird music found unexpected traction in the mainstream.

Enter The Wu-Tang

Wu-Tang Clan
US Hip Hop

Madlib's solo debut LP as Quasimoto, an alter ego of the acclaimed producer. The album was conceived and recorded by Madlib during a week-long psilocybin mushroom binge.

Quasimoto
Hip Hop

Quality Control is the second studio album from the alternative hip hop group Jurassic 5.

Quality Control

Jurassic 5
Hip Hop

Much about Beat Bop is shrouded in mystery. Who really produced it? Why was Jean-Michel Basquiat relegated from rapper on the track to drawing the cover and labels? What are they actually rapping about for most of the ten-minute length?

Rammellzee & K-rob
US Hip Hop

Ol' Dirty Bastard rose to fame in the world renowned Hip Hop gang Wu-Tang Clan.

Return to the 36 Chambers

Ol' Dirty Bastard
90s Hip Hop

The ambitious album, intended as somewhat of a sequel to Ready to Die, picking up where its predecessor left off.

Life After Death

The Notorious BIG
US Hip Hop

For 16 years, the third Dr. Dre album was supposed to be The Detox, but that once-mythical, canceled LP was replaced by Compton: A Soundtrack by Dr. Dre, a supposedly final effort that was "inspired" by the N.W.A. biopic Straight Outta Compton

Rising from the wreckage of a war torn planet, Czarface joins forces with MF Doom in the epic Czarface Meets Metal Face! Blending Doom's trademark abstractions and Czarface's in-your-face lyrical attack.

Czarface Meets Metal Face

Czarface, MF Doom
US Hip Hop

Cypress Hill's eponymous debut album revolutionized hip-hop in several respects.

Cypress Hill
US Hip Hop

Following the success of King Of Rock, Raising Hell (1986) raised more than just a massive revenue stream by selling over three million albums worldwide. It's a well known fact that the record, produced by rock/ hip hop production pioneer Rick Rubin, raised the bar for hip hop albums in general.

Run-DMC
90s Hip Hop

The contributions of the late Detroit producer James DeWitt Yancey - better known to the world as J Dilla- to the world of hip-hop can't be overstated, and nowhere is his legacy more apparent than his work as a member of Slum Village.

Fan-Tas-Tic Vol 1

Slum Village
US Hip Hop

All killers and no fillers on this fabulous 1969 Motown masperpiece.

Jimmy Ruffin
Soul

It is on OutKast's debut album that the fledgling production team Organized Noize began forging one of the most distinctive production sounds in popular music in the '90s: part hip-hop; part live, Southern-fried guitar licks and booty-thick bass runs; and part lazy, early-'70s soul.

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik

OutKast
Hip Hop

The official reissue of the debut solo album from Wu-Tang Clans's Ghostface Killah.

Ironman (25th Anniversary Edition)

Ghostface Killah
US Hip Hop

Dead Serious is the debut studio album of American hip hop duo Das EFX, originally released in 1992.

Dead Serious (Purple Vinyl)

Das EFX
US Hip Hop

Hold It Down can be seen as the rebirth of Das EFX. The American hip-hop duo worked together with acclaimed producers as DJ Premier and Pete Rock.

Hold It Down (Smoke Coloured Vinyl)

Das EFX
UK Hip Hop

The Birth of Hip Hop