hip hop

When Tupac Shakur was murdered in 1996, I was devastated. Not because I viewed Tupac as a “role model”, as is often assumed of young people. Certainly, the horror of murder is reason enough to be upset, but it was also because I felt the loss of Tupac’s potential. Such is the case with anyone who leaves this earth “too soon”, but the loss is especially acute when it involves someone with so much talent.

Hip-hop, as a culture and as a musical genre, moves at lightning speed. Personalities, styles, and trends exit the scene almost as quickly as they appear, and the “next big thing” is always on the horizon. As speculative as it is, there’s little hope of predicting what will be “hot”—or what won’t, for that matter. 

Thanks to waning album sales, the experts say we’ve reached the end of the Record Store Era. It looks like we’ve finally come to grips with the reality that the music business is different now, in the Digital Age, compared to the industry’s business model of the past. Much of our analysis pertains to the changes in that business model, often attributed to downloading, file sharing, and e-commerce.

Which hip-hop album deserves the honor of being called the greatest of all time? In a genre so heavily motivated by competition—among artists and fans alike—there isn’t a consensus but there are certainly a number of viable contenders. A few that come to mind are: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid in Full, Boogie Down Productions’ Criminal Minded, the Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die, Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), Dr.