An Old Head answers your burning hip hop questions

You're younger than you think FD, you're not an oldhead YET. You're a young unc.

This thumbnail crazy

“Find old heads in your vicinity” is hilarious

As a NYC old head, I feel like there’s a whole other level of conversation that you really only hear from NYC old heads. Like from our perspective, we saw the West Coast, Dirty South, and Midwest as novelty acts vying for second place. So people were talking about Uncle Luke or Scarface as GOATS, we were laughing. Thinking “if they were any good, they’d be in NY”. If I haven’t heard them on Hot 97 or Power 103, they weren’t ready for the main stage. Unfortunately, that made us lazy. And we got stale. Add to that the “east cost/west coast rivalry” and the country ass No Limit sound, and we got real proud and stubborn. By the time we realized that we were no longer the center of the hip hop universe, the center fell out and the internet age expanded the playing field even more.

Whoever handling FD’s thumbnails/titles lately is having so much fun 😂

bro made a whole rap video without mentioning the goat once. This Iggy azalea hate gotta stop

47-year-old black woman in America here…Big conscious rap fan. Back in the ‘90s I was told my musical preferences were alternative. That said, loved, loved, loved Common, the Roots, OutKast, the Neptunes, LL, Digable Planets, Arrested Development, Black Star (Mos and Talib’s solo projects, as well).I also claim Lupe, and my OG favorite: Pete Rock & CL Smooth. And my guilty pleasure that I don’t usually admit to…MC Brains. Special shout out to Oaktown 3.5.7…and who am I liking now, ladies first: Doechii and Leikeli47; and the usual suspects: Kendrick, J. Cole. Also, didn’t feel it needed mentioning, but obviously, Ñas.

Actual old here. For the most part, your takes are spot-on, let me provide some touch-up: 1. Music spread mainly through a. radio, b. tours like freshfest, and c. TAPES. Cassettes & VHS were the circulatory system of music back then, ESPECIALLY hip hop. Some mixes and concert recordings were literal legends, mythic items. If you had a cousin in NYC, and they came for a visit, they inevitably had at least one or two recordings of WBLS or KISS FM shows. Kids would have dubs of dubs. And every place had a record store and if you were lucky, someone in there knew wtf they were doing and would stock 12" records for the DJs and the fans. This is before rap was even an acknowledged category (outside of NY/NJ/LA), so they would typically be sorted in alphabetically with the pop/rock records. So going into a store and coming out with a record by someone you never heard of was a real and common thing - which was why it was important for new artists to signify that (a) rap and (b) here's who I'm down with. 2. The 80s old heads most definitely grumbled about the 90s rap. The term "new jack" started out as derisive before the culture flipped it. And NYC in particular went through a shift as the next up didn't want to rock Fila and dookey gold chains and kangol and considered all of that played out. Conscious rap (or at least the vibe) took over the culture for a hot minute right before NWA blew everything up and NYC hip hop culture stopped steering the culture for the first time ever. Which is the actual roots of the coast beef, because NYC saw the west coast as 1. less lyrically capable 2. fraudulent with the gangster posturing, and 3. crowding out NYC artists. The West Coast did have lyricists though, and many of them stepped up to the lyrical challenge and even the conscious rap challenge and weren't at all on gangster stuff but that's off topic. Point is, generational grumbling has always been a thing, it's just the social media amplifies everything. And to your point about 90s rappers, yep social media is about engagement so the engagement farmers just roll with what gets most engagement, so 5000 threads about tupac,jayz,biggie,nas.

I'm an oldhead and the impact of the crack era totally and completely changed the message and energy of hip hop. Also, "the meeting" that took place in the early 90s with music execs was a real thing and shaped who got heard and who didn't.

"Old FD isn't real he can't hurt you" Thumbnail old FD:

That fucking question about people in the 90s writing on stone tablets HAD ME WEAK Sorry old man but this shit too funny 😭😭😭

Omg that cover photo. 😂 Those high rank Tekken matches got you going grey early, huh?

The difference between underground culture between then and now is that it used to be a localized, in-person lifestyle and event based thing you had to actively participate in, or know someone within willing to share it with you, whereas now it's just clicking the right link, getting the right algorithmic response, or searching the right term.

there's a show called hip hop evolution which literally documents hip from the 70's to the late 00's it's really helpful

I think the class gap in content/lyrics is the biggest difference from our era and this one now. Rakim could wear a gold chain and rap about getting paid in full, but showed tons of community and class solidarity. Even if today’s rappers tried to show the same solidarity, it would come across hollow with their constant wealth brags n shit. And i know there were plenty of rappers who were like that to some degree back in the day, but they were usually rejected. Shit-talked by the best rappers on the regular.

Old head here. I'm in my mid 40s and you are right, Rakim changed everything, at least from my mainstream, white suburban perspective at that time. I'm sure badass-itude was always respected in the underground, but from my perspective there were a lot of novelty tunes---like Fat Boys rapping about how they were looking for food, Heavy D rapping about being chunky but funky, Kurtis Blow rapping about his phone bill being too high because hey, that's the breaks, etc. Rappers like Rakim and Kool Moe Dee hit the scene and, I gotta tell you, I don't know what it was for me at the time, but it just felt correct. "I Ain't No Joke" came out and things just changed, and they changed forever. This was the new hyper-masculine cool in hip hop, and it kind of still is. If there's anything I miss from the 80s and 90s, and even the 00s, it's the groups of next level rappers getting together and tearing it up. Geto Boys. A Tribe Called Quest. Arrested Development. Jurassic 5. Blackalicious. The Pharcyde. That last one, good God. I've listened to Bizarre Ride II more times than any other hip hop album. Sorry, old habits die hard. The one thing hip hop never discarded, though, was socially conscious rap. The kind of hip hop Public Enemy and Rage Against the Machine made are still in the rotation, but now I put it alongside rappers like King Los and Kendrick Lamar in 2024. As far as explicitly LGBT rap goes, I gotta be honest, I didn't hear any of it until Cakes da Killa in the early 2010s, but that's likely because I was out of the loop. Love his music regardless of my general cluelessness as a straight white cis male. Also, just one more note from an old head, I'm also really happy with the direction rap has gone in in the Spanish language. I'm really into artists like Snow Tha Product, Bad Bunny, and Santa Fe Klan. The fact that rap spread to so many other cultures outside of the one that birthed it is a testament to its power. Speaking of which, you are right about white people in rap in the 80s and 90s. The Beastie Boys are foundational in that regard, but if you look at their history they were going to shows and hanging with the great MCs that were around at that time. Yeah, they were still a punk and hardcore band, sure, but a LOT of the rap they were listening to found its way into their music, and absolutely no one questioned it, at least at that time.

In my experience, early hip hop fans did have a problem with 90s hip hop. My elders would always have something negative to say about the music I listened to growing up. Calling it violent and more raunchy and lacking the five elements, over commercialization, etc.

FD Signifier is so good at presenting information and sharing his thoughts that I would click on a video of him reading the phone book

I'm 27 and Rakim is in my top 3 for all the reasons he's not recognized as much. In 06 when saints row came out I was 11 I thought I ain't No Joke was newer than what it was. His lyricism really did flip the game from the early dance era n set the stage for the 90s

People don't talk about Guru and GangStarr enough.