#Best 90s hip hop songs for dancing how to

And if the label’s colonel, Master P, understood anything, it was how to orchestrate an onslaught-of artists, releases, videos, and hooks-in order to overwhelm listeners via brute force and charm. Priority / No Limit Master P: “Make ’Em Say Uhh!” (1998) But the song’s most resonant association is the moment it soundtracks in Barry Jenkins’ classic 2016 film Moonlight: Our now full-grown hero wakes from a nightmare, looking tough as nails, scarred within by trauma that’s deeper than the red Georgia clay. Its gutturally drawled, often-surreal vision of life near the trap would be familiar to Atlanta viewers, let alone EarthGang or Denzel Curry listeners, and its eerie, dub-cavernous production also set a course so irresistible that it was echoed by Gorillaz and sampled by Travis Scott.

“Cell Therapy” was both menacing and menaced, fucked up by conspiracy theories but also the conspiratorial realities of systemic racism.

While this ad-hoc crew of OutKast affiliates had never recorded a song together before the sessions that would become 1995’s Soul Food, their debut album’s bone-chilling hit laid out a lasting template for how Southern hip-hop could be at once conscious and crunk. Just because Goodie Mob were paranoid didn’t mean people weren’t following them. The song became an emo-rap touchstone, referenced by artists from Biggie to OutKast to Kid Cudi, who credited it with inspiring his breakout “Day ’n’ Nite” and called it “his favorite song in the world.” –Will Hermes Reprising the candles-in-a-dark-room scenario from the band’s horrorcore salvo “Mind of a Lunatic,” Scarface goes deep, evoking Jim Crow nightmares and a present-day vision of himself “sleeping with my finger on the trigger,” as well as contemplating suicide as an escape, rejecting it on his son’s account, and lamenting the love he lost through his callousness. Rap-A-Lot / Priority Geto Boys: “Mind Playing Tricks on Me” (1991)Īmong the most haunting street-life narratives ever recorded, this masterpiece by Houston’s Geto Boys rewired hip-hop’s supposed binaries-between East Coast and West, conscious poets and amoral journalists-unpacking drug game paranoia over a plaintive loop of Isaac Hayes’ “Hung Up on My Baby.” The ghostly, pitched-down guitar figure sets up some ironic distance from the grim narration while also telegraphing cartoon violence by way of the Blaxploitation classic Three Tough Guys, which starred Hayes and featured his song on its soundtrack. “Bling Bling” spread New Orleans lingo across the world, and prefaced the ’00s ascent of Wayne, one of rap’s greatest talents. Lil Wayne’s hook-“Every time I come around your city, bling bling”-is responsible for birthing one of the most iconic expressions of wealth in rap history. Thanks to the proliferation of bounce music and early successes from Juvenile and the Hot Boys, Cash Money Records was already a force in Southern hip-hop when this single from B.G.’s Chopper City in The Ghetto brought the Hot Boys-B.G., Lil Wayne, Juvenile, and Turk-and the Big Tymers-label boss Birdman and house producer Mannie Fresh-together to stunt over fast-paced synthetic horns about watches that cost as much as mansions. But in the summer of 1999, six rappers from New Orleans changed the way we’d talk about it forever. There are so, so many rap songs about jewelry: acquiring it, flexing with it, hoarding it, even beating people with it. Smooth player-pimp shit for the streets and clubs took hold in Atlanta and Memphis with groups like OutKast and 8Ball & MJG.Ĭash Money / Universal B.G.: “Bling Bling” (1999) In Houston and nearby Port Arthur, DJ Screw slowed rap to a syrupy crawl and UGK told introspective tales of street hustling. Louisiana had bounce, its own take on bass-heavy dance music, as well as now-legendary labels Cash Money and No Limit, which nurtured local talents into national stars. In Florida, rap mixed with the pounding dancefloor rhythms of bass music. Of course, the South is more than one place, and its rap music is more than just one thing. But while the two coasts were battling for supremacy, the South was gearing up to sweep the competition. California threw its hat in the ring with hardcore gangsta rap before turning the BPM way down and the blunted grooves way up with G-funk.

After giving birth to the genre two decades earlier, New York entered the ’90s with an emphasis on dusty sample-based beats and gritty realism. In the early 1990s, as hip-hop mutated and expanded, most ears were focused on the East and West Coasts.

Best 90s hip hop songs for dancing