Educate a late stage Millennial on why the "Shiny Suit Era" was the beginning of the end for rap

[FreshAIG]

In entertaining, it was always follow the leader

When Das Efx came out, mad rappers started trying that tongue twisting/iggity flow shyt (Fu-Schnickens, Young Black Teenagers, Lords of the Underground, Common Sense)

When gangsta rap got popular a bunch of acts started harding their style to fit in like UMCs, Hammer, Run DMC

1997 was no different with the Shiny Suits. shyt worked so some labels/acts tried it since it worked for Mase and Puff

 

[FukkaPaidEmail]

No way out and Harlem world was released in 1997. 2 arguable classics. The rhyming and song creation was top notch on both albums. Y’all let the media poison y’all brain with this made up term and a few music videos. By 1998 this era was over. If u want to even call something that lasted a year an era. Puff and Mase 2nd albums didn’t even drop yet. Jay and X took over.

I don’t care about the “shiny suit era “ because that’s some east coast shyt and I was in elementary school . But it’s easy to see why nikkas had a problem with it coming off a run of years that is seen as hip hops peak. There is a clear drop off in overall quality from that point to current day .

nikkas defend and juelz about the shiny suit era but then shyt on the “bling era” when that bling shyt wouldn’t have popped off if the shiny suit era didn’t lay that foundation.

 

[WIA20XX]

That shiny suit shyt seemed harmless to me

Do yall mean NY rap specifically?

Is this an opinion held strictly by East Coast elitists?

How I remember it.

Artistically, 88's Straight Outta Compton opened up gangsta rap lyrical content in general. Not only did NYC rappers start getting tough, every village and ghetto around the states replaced their Run DMC clones with NWA clones. All that "keep it real" stuff came from that era. I won't even start on the anti-R&B bias, because folks got amnesia about it. But Hip Hop had such problems with Black Radio (and low key white radio) that folks seem to forget.

92/93 - The Chronic and Doggystyle - basically moved the entire culture away from "digging in the crates" to having live instrumentation replay hits from the 70's and 80's. So on a lot of levels, sonically P-Funk hit the audience much stronger than James Brown Breaks. It's actually reminiscent of Rapper's Delight in a way, except that Sugarhill was contemporaneous with disco, but Dre was 10-20 years later.

But on the sales level, the West Coast, (and a bit of the South) was making money.

Puffy's practice of mixing R&B in with Hip Hop is the real key to the east coast's "revival". Biggie's Juicy, reinterpolating Mtume's Juicy Fruit, was the thing that really changed the game for the East Coast. Instant NATION-WIDE hit.

I distinctly remember coming up to see fam and hearing "The What" by Method and Biggie on afternoon radio. That was strictly underground/college radio stuff everywhere else in the country. NY was just different. I can't imagine females dancing to Boot Camp or Wu Tang, but that type of "grimy" hip hop was regular airplay in 94 in NYC.

That would change.

Masta Ace, who was definitely a hater of the new West Coast sound (listen to that album), released a parody remix of his Jeep A$$ Niguh called Born to Roll. Essentially in a bass heavy "west coast style". It was a hit. Hearing him explain it now, the song wasn't born out of being a hater, but it most definitely was.

If you were getting promos back then, the labels sent out "west coast remixes'' and all sorts of hybrid acts. Ill and Al Skratch comes to mind. Indo G and Lil Blunt. Real rap, a lot of the industry trends are better defined by the clone failures than the actual hits. Lil Zane was a Tupac clone...

Little by little the East Coast moved away from sampling/Boom Bap/"enter the cipher" type lyrics into more radio friendly, more sing along choruses, more flashy videos and more catchy sounds.

• Was it artistic experimentation?
• Was it artistic greed?
• Was it the greed of the labels?

Prolly a bit of all of this.

While that's happening, ATL is on a come up. The Neptunes are on a come up. Cash Money and No Limit are on a come up. Timbaland coming up. Missy Elliott, etc. A lot of non-boom bap/cipher raps type stuff is getting made and getting popular.

By 98? Wu Tang is on MTV with their 2nd lp, but not really on FM radio. Premier Boom Bap/Grimy mc's aren't really making music for what Black Radio has become. MTV is fine and all, but the real heart of the music is Black Radio.

After Illmatic flopped financially, Nas had moved to a Puffy style of production. If I Ruled the World was way bigger than any of the singles on Illmatic. It took 10 years for Ill to go platinum, but 1 only 1 year for It Was Written. It's only hip hop journalists that want to hear Ny State of Mind Part 4.

Jay Z was already making moves. In my opinion, he figured out the Madonna model - stay the same, just jump on new beats every few years.

The Shiny Suit era of NYC artists making hits for the charts, turning away from jazz breaks and 5% references. Big L could have been a legit Star like Kane in 91, instead of doing shows in the Netherlands



Since then, NYC has only continued to take inspiration from other places both lyrically and musically, and become more and more generic.

For me, A$AP era was the nail in the coffin for NYC. They opened the door for the Pop Smoke's and Fetty Wap's. Random NYC rapper these days, no way of knowing they're not from Macon or Savannah.

Stuff like Roc Marciano and Griselda is essentially throwback, and for the most part only appeals to old heads and young hip hop nerds and industry types.

Talib, Mos Def, Native Tongues, Roots type rappers - they been done.

This is the world we live in now.

I can't blame Puffy, because he adapted.

The real problem,, if there is even a problem, was 1996 communications act letting Clear Channel buy up all these radio stations, and play the same songs from coast to coast. 1) Only Playing "national" hits and 2) stopping regional sounds from getting on - that was the real thing that changed hip hop, imo.

 

[badboys11]

I distinctly remember coming up to see fam and hearing "The What" by Method and Biggie on afternoon radio. That was strictly underground/college radio stuff everywhere else in the country. NY was just different. I can't imagine females dancing to Boot Camp or Wu Tang, but that type of "grimy" hip hop was regular airplay in 94 in NYC.

That would change.





The real problem,, if there is even a problem, was 1996 communications act letting Clear Channel buy up all these radio stations, and play the same songs from coast to coast. 1) Only Playing "national" hits and 2) stopping regional sounds from getting on - that was the real thing that changed hip hop, imo.

A lot of good points in this post, and this part about the radio is really what the caused the drop off.

Growing up in the Detroit area, I would say west coast music and Detroit local artists dominated the rap playlists, followed up by rap a lot and suave house music. No limit records, especially young Mystikal. NY rap was basically the hits.

Visited the east coast a handful of times 96/97 era and it was musical paradise, all the songs we used to listen to in somebody's basement was bumping on the radio and from peoples cars nonstop, it was a completely different environment.

Best part of road trips was listening to the local stations, Atlanta seemed like they had at least 10 rap stations, one Friday night they were doing a top 25 weekly countdown of just Atlanta artists, I would get stuck in traffic on purpose driving down to Florida just to hear the music.

Florida used to have a thriving radio scene between dj prostyle on 102 jams and the flood of pirate radio stations playing everything from new York to strictly down south Florida music. T pain and his group the nappy headz caught attention like that, there's a real reason so many rappers popped off from Florida earlier this century, there was an active scene here.

Clear Channel destroyed the art of music across all genres. No more originality, u needed to look and talk a certain way and the same 10 songs get played in every city coast to coast, it's pathetic. No political music, no messages unless they have been approved by the establishment. All the pirate stations got sued or raided.

No BET rap city, no top 10 countdown on Saturdays

It wasn't puffy and the shiny suits, that was blip on the radar and it barely lasted a year. It was a corporate takeover

 

[Art Barr]

nikkas are excusing the hell out of that shiny suit era and then turn around and shyt on the current era

this shyt is the twilight zone

This.

Then be speaking all outta turn.
then asking a whole bunch of Jadakiss why face ass questions.


Art Barr

 

[WIA20XX]

It wasn't puffy and the shiny suits, that was blip on the radar and it barely lasted a year. It was a corporate takeover

It's way too easy to blame corporations for the change in NYC hip hop.
The hip hop audience needs to do better than point at white people and say they did it.

The music mattered.

On one level, for Puffy's contemporaries - they realized they needed to change their sound up to appeal to mainstream markets.

Hard Knock Life is a direct result of that "market" mentality.
That's not the label telling them to do anything, that's them trying to make money.
Hard Knock Life did so well, they followed up with another Broadway rip with "Anything".

Dip Set, Kanye, the Heatmakerz - all that "chipmunk" soul was about artists following trends, not corporations telling artists how to make music.
Early era Kanye was basically a return to form, but he thought of it as "Backpack Rap", even though the backpack was Louis Vuitton not Jansport.

On another level, rappers on the come up, and kids that don't realize they're gonna be rappers - their favorite music is whatever is on the radio. That's their basis of what is "good rap". They're not digging in the crates for Lord Finesse and Poor Righteous Teachers - they grew up on Ja Rule. They grew up on D4L. They grew up on Swag and Surf. And now they're making records.

Harlem's ASAP Rocky (name for Rakim) was talking about how he grew up on UGK.

Pop Smoke sounded the way he did, not because no one played him a Tribe Called Quest record in his formative years. It's not like he didn't hear 50 Cent coming up.

At a core level, not the corporate level, artists were making decisions on what they wanted to sound like.

And that all goes back to the Shiny Suit Era. (which was a reaction to G-Rap's commercial and artistic dominance)

 

[DontEemTry]

People make it sound like this was an actual era when it was really like 14 months tops.

 

[Art Barr]

No way out and Harlem world was released in 1997. 2 arguable classics. The rhyming and song creation was top notch on both albums. Y’all let the media poison y’all brain with this made up term and a few music videos. By 1998 this era was over. If u want to even call something that lasted a year an era. Puff and Mase 2nd albums didn’t even drop yet. Jay and X took over.

The shiny suit era with badboy.
as their dominant draw did not end till puff flopped on pe 2000.

Jiggy lived on in jay finally being pop on volume ii.

How are we acting like jiggy died.

When imaginary player is the I am king of jiggy anthem.

How did jiggy end and jayz was the fourth drawing pop act behind em/Nelly and dmx. Plus is still regarded as on a higher plain in pop public sentiment just off his genre of jay's music being viewed as more palatable because it is bitten from disco/pop/house/jiggy. As puff is Stacy latisaww background dancer by basic foundation in skill metric. Puff was never a bboy in hiphop culture.

When being an house music background dancer was taboo in hiphop.
from the conversion of the new school way of thought.
Hiphouse was outlawed in hiphop as well.
Only reason jay did not have the lighting and backgrounds anymore. Was simply because of the negative response to how he viewed himself in the sunshine video. After comments internally was possibly in speculation said about his looks. Yet in that and even in Nas. How did jiggy end and Nas and Jay were both still jiggy?

Art Barr

 

[Art Barr]

It's way too easy to blame corporations for the change in NYC hip hop.
The hip hop audience needs to do better than point at white people and say they did it.

The music mattered.

On one level, for Puffy's contemporaries - they realized they needed to change their sound up to appeal to mainstream markets.

Hard Knock Life is a direct result of that "market" mentality.
That's not the label telling them to do anything, that's them trying to make money.
Hard Knock Life did so well, they followed up with another Broadway rip with "Anything".

Dip Set, Kanye, the Heatmakerz - all that "chipmunk" soul was about artists following trends, not corporations telling artists how to make music.
Early era Kanye was basically a return to form, but he thought of it as "Backpack Rap", even though the backpack was Louis Vuitton not Jansport.

On another level, rappers on the come up, and kids that don't realize they're gonna be rappers - their favorite music is whatever is on the radio. That's their basis of what is "good rap". They're not digging in the crates for Lord Finesse and Poor Righteous Teachers - they grew up on Ja Rule. They grew up on D4L. They grew up on Swag and Surf. And now they're making records.

Harlem's ASAP Rocky (name for Rakim) was talking about how he grew up on UGK.

Pop Smoke sounded the way he did, not because no one played him a Tribe Called Quest record in his formative years. It's not like he didn't hear 50 Cent coming up.

At a core level, not the corporate level, artists were making decisions on what they wanted to sound like.

And that all goes back to the Shiny Suit Era. (which was a reaction to G-Rap's commercial and artistic dominance)

This is not spoke from a culture based actualized life in a pillar of hiphop.
You are giving them a pass and just like you paraphrased here.

About people not digging in the crate.

Seems you need to do some digging before speaking out of complete turn.
G rap had nuffin at all to do with the shiny suit era. Except tone and poke self admittedly flodge'n on their agenda to make:

G rap

Illstreet blues.

To self admittedly use as some agenda to combat the backlash for being sellout rap producers.




Art Barr

 

[WIA20XX]

This is not spoke from a culture based actualized life in a pillar of hiphop.
You are giving them a pass and just like you paraphrased here.

About people not digging in the crate.

Seems you need to do some digging before speaking out of complete turn.
G rap had nuffin at all to do with the shiny suit era. Except tone and poke self admittedly flodge'n on their agenda to make:

G rap

Illstreet blues.

To self admittedly use as some agenda to combat the backlash for being sellout rap producers.




Art Barr

Real hip hop is just playing breaks and letting people dance to the breaks, no MC involved.
No producer, no SP1200, no fruity loops, no videos, no radio play, none of that.

That's what it was. That was the only real hip hop ever.

Yet, Hip Hop grew, it evolved.

 

[BmoreGorilla]

Truth be told there was never one thing that led to the so called downfall of hip hop. Hip hop is a reflection of where we are as a people and society as a whole. Stop pointing fingers and look in the mirror

 

[Art Barr]

Real hip hop is just playing breaks and letting people dance to the breaks, no MC involved.
No producer, no SP1200, no fruity loops, no videos, no radio play, none of that.

That's what it was. That was the only real hip hop ever.

Yet, Hip Hop grew, it evolved.

You talking like a toy.
Trying to use some free thought bullshyt.

who knows nuffin about the old school or new school way of thought.
all as a cover up.
Stop.

Miss me with this toy faced ass drivel .[got two words to look up in this thread. I am nOt to old to learn and you to young. not to be trying to dig in a crate. So stop the bullshyt.]




Art Barr

 

[Art Barr]

Truth be told there was never one thing that led to the so called downfall of hip hop. Hip hop is a reflection of where we are as a people and society as a whole. Stop pointing fingers and look in the mirror

Stop.
With this toy talk.

Hiphop has mores and norms.
Of which if you publically appear to represent any pillar of hiphop.
you are supposed to know.

Stop the free thought bullshyt.

It was never allowed.


Art Barr

 

[Rekkapryde]

It signified a clear point where rap became more pop music and it became about appealing to a mass market aesthetic and sound instead of staying true to what hip-hop was at the time.

Pretty much this.

The "no sell out and deliberately crossover" commandment died and opened the floodgates.

 

[Dynamite James]

Shiny suit era has classics. Y’all exaggerating