A Hipster Hip Hop Timeline

Recently, there’s been a lot of talk about hipster rap artists and hipsters’ influence on hip hop music. I’ll admit, I’ve been very critical of hipsters, but I want to make amends. So, to kick off Hip Hop week here at We Are Respectable Negroes, I am giving hipsters a chance to contribute to the important project of constructing hip hop’s meaning—as we Social Scientists know, all meaning is tenuous, and just because hip hop is a new pursuit to hipsters, doesn’t mean that their views on the music aren’t valid. I’ve asked several of my hipster friends (though none of these people would ever refer to themselves as “hipsters”) to collaborate on a timeline of the most important events in hip hop. Their Hip Hop Timeline follows:

1982

Lil Wayne Born

1983-1987

Nothing of consequence happens

1988

NWA brings a new level of authenticity and danger to rap, and pisses off white parents;

Public Enemy move into the realm of sonic genius due to their innovative approach to dissonance; piss off even more white parents with their militant, anti-white politics

1989

Beastie Boys drop Paul’s Boutique; hip hop officially becomes art music

1990

Vanilla Ice exhibits the depths of inauthentic white rap

1991-1992

Nothing of consequence happens

1993

Wu Tang begins to make cool music, t shirts

1994-1995

Nothing of consequence happens

1996

DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing raises the Beasties’ bar and becomes the first example of hip hop as “true” art music; hip hop production now respectable in indie rock circles

1997-1998

Nothing of consequence happens

1999

Eminem immediately becomes the greatest rap lyricist ever: he is the first rapper to be ironic, funny, and self-deprecating, and he acknowledges that poor whites are just as marginalized and oppressed as their black counterparts;

MF Doom releases Operation: Doomsday, a creative masterwork blending 80s easy listening R& B, monster movies, and cartoons. And he does it all while donning a metal mask as part of his character’s back story. He’s essentially doing ghetto performance art!

Jay-Z declares himself the greatest rapper alive; draws parallels between the corner drug dealer and the corporate maven; transcends the ghetto niche with witty lyrics and pop beats.

2000

Wu Tang falls off: their fans are all suburban wiggers and old “keep it real” types

Outkast channels Funkadelic and broadens hip hop’s palette: they’re from the South, one of them dresses funny, they experiment with electronic music

Record labels Def Jux, Anticon move hip hop out of the ghetto, expanding boundaries by making cerebral hip hop that’s more like indie rock in its approach

2001

Missy Elliott breaks through hip hop’s glass ceiling with her electronic beats, girl-power lyrics, colorful videos, robust figure, and lack of a Y chromosome.

Buzz builds around 50 Cent, a NY rapper who embodies primal black aggression and sexuality; plus, he was really shot 9 times. How authentic!

2002

Eminem’s music becomes stale when he starts to hang around with 50 Cent and pretends to be all “gangsta;” Plus, he won an Oscar and white suburban teens love him a little too much.

Caushun, the first openly gay rapper, starts getting national publicity

2003

Mashups, an entirely new thing in which vocals from song are placed over the music of a song from an entirely different genre, are all the rage

Def Jux, Anticon become too white and corny; not in touch with what’s going on with real people

2004

Outkast falls off: their songs start showing up on Kidzbop records

For the first time in hip hop’s history, Kanye West presents a complex black persona--no longer do rappers have to be either thugs or preachy conscious artists.

Critics in the know realize that Camron and Dipset are Dadaist geniuses.

Dangermouse hits the postmodern critical jackpot by blending the music from The Beatles’ White Album with the vocals from Jay Z’s Black Album to make The Grey Album

Lil Wayne drops The Carter, which is really fucking great!

Wu Tang is back! Well, Ghostface is, at least

Common is the antichrist: he dresses strangely and panders to a pseudo-intellectual, racially insecure fan base

The Streets, MIA, Dizzee Rascal wow music fans. The UK is the future of hip hop

2005

Advances in Cool Edit Pro and FruityLoops empower anyone to DJ and make hip hop music!

MF Doom, Dangermouse become corporate shills and drop a shitty album for Cartoon Network

Lil Wayne, The Clipse deliver the 2 greatest mixtapes ever (of the 3 we’ve heard)

Lil Wayne drops The Carter II, which instantly becomes the greatest rap album ever

UGK puts Texas rap on the map

Several great rappers emerge from New Orleans, Miami, Houston, Memphis. The American South is the new UK!

It’s officially OK for white people to say “nigga” as long as they’re ironic and not really racist

2006

fratboys, white indie rock critics, teenage high school dropouts, and Lil Wayne agree: Lil Wayne is the greatest rapper alive

With Kingdom Come, Jay-Z abandons the “realness” of the hood and becomes an elitist corporate shill. He starts to suck

By declaring hip hop dead, Nas snatches the hip hop antichrist mantle from Common

2007

Lupe Fiasco strikes a blow against true school hip hop fascists who think that fans need to have knowledge of a “canon” of songs that came out prior to 2000.

A record number of black people (5) show up to the Pitchfork Music Festival. They are cordial and honor most people’s requests to take pictures with them.

The Cool Kids bring a fresh, retro approach to a stagnant hip hop landscape

Unfortunately, Caushun revealed to be a hoax

2008

Lil Wayne drops The Carter III, which instantly becomes the greatest rap album ever

Race, gender, region, skill, access to equipment no longer barriers to rap success; knowledge of rap no longer a barrier to writing hip hop music criticism. Hip hop finally becomes the embodiment of the democratic ideal!