In the 50 years since hip hop’s emergence in New York City in the 1970s, the genre has grown to dominate the popular music field worldwide. The 1980s marked the diversification of hip hop, as the genre developed more complex styles and spread around the world. The music produced between the mid-80s and the mid-90s is known as hip hop's "golden age", which is characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence.
The success of Public Enemy's ‘Fear of a Black Planet' in 1990, played a key role in hip hop's mainstream emergence, dubbed by Billboard editor Paul Grein as... "the year that rap exploded". By the late 1990s, in the wake of the deaths of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., a new commercial sound had emerged, sometimes referred to as the ‘bling era’, which saw hip hop became a best-selling genre.
By the late 2000s, ‘alternative’ hip hop had secured its place within the mainstream, due in part to the declining commercial viability of gangsta rap, with the sales race between Kanye West's ‘Graduation' and 50 Cent's ‘Curtis' seen as a turning point for hip hop. Kanye West emerged the victor, selling nearly a million copies in the first week alone, proving that innovative rap music could be just as commercially viable as gangsta rap, if not more so.
In 2017, rock music was usurped by hip hop as the most popular genre in the United States, and while this may not be the case in Aotearoa New Zealand, here at Flying Nun we know that hip hop is uber popular, so we strive to find represses from the ‘golden age’ as they become available and to stock key new vinyl hip hop releases. You can buy hip hop on vinyl and CD from the Flying Nun record stores at 202 Karangahape Rd, Auckland and 173 Cuba St in Wellington.
