These sounds had incredible power if you grew up with hip-hop: There was the summer I spent trying to match the mix to “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” note for note, on two Fisher-Price turntables. Some of the most powerful hip-hop songs are tracks with elements so simple your brain would explode trying to explain their logic: Take the unstoppable two-note guitar stab in Craig Mack’s “Flava in Ya Ear.” (I hounded the producer, Easy Mo Bee, for 17 years for the secret behind it – then wanted to throw someone out the window when I heard how basic it was.) Or the huge sound of the Roland 909 on Schoolly D’s “PSK” – an echo that seemed like it came from a church cathedral eight city blocks wide. “Rapper’s Delight” turned this future high school band geek into a superstar for the month of October 1979. My boy Aantar became my agent that week, scheduling performances of the song in exchange for snacks or hand-holding with girls in gym class. The next night, I was prepared, with a prehistoric tape recorder in hand and a black-and-white composition notebook. I said a hip, hop, the hippy to the hippy/To the hip hip hop, you don’t stop. . . . Me and my sister, Donn, were sneaking a listen of the local soul station while washing dishes when an army of percussion and a syncopated Latin piano line came out of my grandma’s JVC clock radio – what appeared to be Chic’s “Good Times.” How was I to know that my world would come crashing down in a matter of 5, 4, 3, 2 . . . on a Thursday, after a dinner of porgies, string beans and creamed corn.
I was eight years old when “Rapper’s Delight” made its world premiere on Philadelphia radio.
#When was dear.mama recordee full#
Click to read the full list of voters.Īn Introduction by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson
The children shout from the streets as they see police cars coming to raid their homes for one thing of another.Looking for the full list of the 100 greatest hip-hop songs of all time? Check it out right here.Įditor’s note: To make this list, Rolling Stone asked 33 artists and experts – from Rick Rubin to Busta Rhymes – to choose their favorite hip-hop tracks, then crunched the numbers. In the video above, the legendary singer explains that “Khawuleza" is a “South African song, it comes from the townships… where all the black South Africans live. Who better than Mama Africa herself to kick off this list. Scroll through our Mother's Day playlist below. With that in mind, we asked the office to select some of the sweeter songs for moms that they'd come across. The bittersweet “Dear Mama" is probably hip-hop's most popular ode to a mother and has served as a template for songs about mothers on and off the continent. When thinking of this list, a mother figure that immediately came to mind for her sad passing almost exactly a year ago is Afeni Shakur, the lifelong political activist, Black Panther and mother to Tupac. In honor of Mother's Day, we're sharing some of our favorite tributes to mothers around the world from some of our favorite musical acts.
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