'90s Hip-Hop

Hey, hip-hop addicts: take a second to scan the songs on your screen. Looks like any of them could spark a party in a hot minute, right? At least a party that takes full advantage of our latent nostalgia for '90s hip-hop — a golden age of beats and rhymes that bombed the suburbs (Snoop Dogg, 2Pac, Dr. Dre, the Notorious B.I.G.), catered to the clubs (Onyx, Naughty By Nature, LL Cool J), and cracked the pop charts (MC Hammer, House of Pain, Digital Underground).

In other words, close your eyes and start clicking. You'll be amazed at what happens, especially once our Next Steps unleash such woofer-wrecking singles as "Gin and Juice" and "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang."

The competitive nature of hip-hop at the tail end of the 20th century kept everyone on their toes, from beat-juggling, sound-expanding producers to rhyme-spitting MCs with rapid-fire deliveries. That may be why many artists hit their creative peak during the decade, including a suave but saucy Snoop Dogg, a kung-fu-cribbing version of Wu-Tang Clan, the sorely missed Fugees, and the beat-savvy, Blue Note-esque rap of A Tribe Called Quest.

The barely forgotten hits keep coming in our Deep Cuts as well.

There are far too many radio dial regulars in the following Deep Cuts to classify them as mere fan favorites, from total Top 40 touchstones like "Big Poppa," "Regulate," and "All About the Benjamins" to singles that are caught in a comfortable spot between the mainstream and underground. We're talkin' two crucial Illmatic cuts (check Jay-Z's own "The City Is Mine" for a reminder of Nas' public feud with Jigga Man); the slam poetry and simple, speaker-rattling loops of "Mass Appeal"; and the continued crossover campaign of OutKast, the soul, funk, and rock-inspired hip-hop duo that's been on their own plane since the beginning.

Ah, the '90s — the change-the-game moment where hip-hop switched from a street-level movement to a full-on cultural institution. And what a fine time it was for anyone into groundbreaking beats and rabid rhymes, from the low rider-ready G-funk of Dr. Dre to the relentless gangsta rap of the Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac (crystal ball cuts, in many ways, due to the bloody East Coast vs. West Coast battle), from the empire-building ways of Master P (No Limit), Diddy (Bad Boy), and Jay-Z (Roc-A-Fella . . . until he sold his stake) to the twisted pop tracks of OutKast (the gripping baby-mama drama of "Ms. Jackson," the funk-infused pimp stroll of "So Fresh, So Clean"). Things haven't changed all that much in the years since, either, as hip-hop's hungriest artists fight to retain the music's hard-earned place in pop culture.