Best Year in Hip-Hop Tournament nominations - Games

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

1. cestuneblague - 1993
2. baystateoftheart - 1994
3. Mercury - 1995
4. Streams - 1996
5. LedZep - 1997
6. RoundTheBend - 1998
7. Skinny - 1999
8. Repo - 2000
9. babyBlueSedan - 2002
10. kokkinos - 2004
11. PossiblyMichigan - 2005
12. Tha1ChiefRocka - 2006
13. Purplepash - 2015
14. travelful - 2016
15. Hayden - 2017

Wanted to see the spread... now that I know the game is changing I may have thought differently but not really.

It's tough to not select Aquemini and Skew It on the Bar-B... damn are those both 100s for me. Struggling to decide which to leave out when I can't find a single or an album I love more.

LedZep

RoundTheBend wrote:

1. cestuneblague - 1993
2. baystateoftheart - 1994
3. Mercury - 1995
4. Streams - 1996
5. LedZep - 1997
6. RoundTheBend - 1998
7. Skinny - 1999
8. Repo - 2000
9. babyBlueSedan - 2002
10. kokkinos - 2004
11. PossiblyMichigan - 2005
12. Tha1ChiefRocka - 2006
13. Purplepash - 2015
14. travelful - 2016
15. Hayden - 2017

Wanted to see the spread... now that I know the game is changing I may have thought differently but not really.

It's tough to not select Aquemini and Skew It on the Bar-B... damn are those both 100s for me. Struggling to decide which to leave out when I can't find a single or an album I love more.

Take an album. At least that's gonna be my logic. If I think an album is good/great, I'm taking it. There's enough good singles around to choose from, and it's easier to listen to additional singles than albums if you're looking to fill the quota. Also that's a good spread of years, I'm mostly familiar with 2015-2020 rap so it's nice to see a lot of earlier years. More discoveries.
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Finally updated the overall chart

2020s
90s

Hayden

Ooooone more spot people.

That 2007-2014 gap is pretty interesting. Not sure quite what to make of it yet.

travelful
BEA's Official Florida Man

Age: 27
Location: Davenport, Florida

2012 and 2014 have a ton of great shit to compete.
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Griselda, by Fashion Rebels
2020's Hip-Hop
2020's Country

Tha1ChiefRocka
Yeah, well hey, I'm really sorry.

Location: Kansas

I should really do 2012 if nobody else picks it.

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

LedZep wrote:

RoundTheBend wrote:

1. cestuneblague - 1993
2. baystateoftheart - 1994
3. Mercury - 1995
4. Streams - 1996
5. LedZep - 1997
6. RoundTheBend - 1998
7. Skinny - 1999
8. Repo - 2000
9. babyBlueSedan - 2002
10. kokkinos - 2004
11. PossiblyMichigan - 2005
12. Tha1ChiefRocka - 2006
13. Purplepash - 2015
14. travelful - 2016
15. Hayden - 2017

Wanted to see the spread... now that I know the game is changing I may have thought differently but not really.

It's tough to not select Aquemini and Skew It on the Bar-B... damn are those both 100s for me. Struggling to decide which to leave out when I can't find a single or an album I love more.

Take an album. At least that's gonna be my logic. If I think an album is good/great, I'm taking it. There's enough good singles around to choose from, and it's easier to listen to additional singles than albums if you're looking to fill the quota. Also that's a good spread of years, I'm mostly familiar with 2015-2020 rap so it's nice to see a lot of earlier years. More discoveries.

you are probs right

Skinny
birdman_handrub.gif

Hayden wrote:

Ooooone more spot people.

That 2007-2014 gap is pretty interesting. Not sure quite what to make of it yet.

Hip-hop generally just felt a little staid at that time. Major labels were still attempting to find successes by forcing artists to follow an outdated formula - I like to think of it as the 50 Cent formula - and the independent alternative scene hadn't really found its feet yet, especially in the latter part of the 2000s. Artists like Drake and Gucci Mane and Rick Ross were starting to make waves, but a cursory glance at really any list of the best rap albums of 2008, say, is filled with long-established artists making predictable records that usually fall short of their best work.

I was at (or, rather, around) university in 2010-2013, and it was very exciting that those years saw the emergence of Roc Marciano, Freddie Gibbs, the A$AP Mob, Odd Future, Action Bronson, TDE, Open Mike Eagle, Danny Brown, Curren$y, Future, Quelle Chris, Big K.R.I.T., Ka, Kevin Gates, Chance, artists or collectives who would essentially be responsible for the various directions hip-hop has taken since, as they grappled with the proliferation of streaming and free releases and the album-as-mixtape, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and the gradual decline of reliance on major labels, or even labels of any kind. In the 1990s and early 2000s, somebody like Quelle Chris would likely have had to attach himself to an established indie label in order to get distribution, maybe a label that would also house Danny Brown or Open Mike Eagle, vaguely comparable but ultimately very distinct artists, and maybe a label with its own established aesthetic and sonic trademarks that wanted its artists to rely on its own trusted stable of producers. This might stifle those artists creatively, and suddenly three very distinct artists might become three pretty indistinguishable and subsequently forgettable artists. Cutting out the middle man has given artists the freedom to carve their own lanes without fear of being told that it won't work, or it won't sell, or it's just not how things are done here.

Very quickly, the rap landscape changed as artists were able to independently release the music they wanted to without any major interference, and then actually have that music find an audience and a market that was big enough to sustain their careers without them having to make compromises. Those artists I named and their subsequent successes paved the way for period of fertile, largely unregulated creativity that hasn't yet ceased (and hopefully never will).

(EDIT: The greatest threats - as I perceive them - to this are, ironically, influential Spotify algorithms and playlists which encourage artists to make music that follows specific, on-trend sonic blueprints in order to make money. It's why woozy, soft-focus, mildly psychedelic trap beats are so prevalent.)

The early 1990s saw artists coming to grips with the tools at their disposal and exploring the various avenues hip-hop could take; the late 1990s and early 2000s saw hip-hop become America's dominant genre, forcing the pop landscape to follow its lead; the mid to late 2000s saw the genre largely stagnate as its only distribution methods were through labels who were stuck in their ways in terms of how an artist could achieve success, and even what success itself meant; the early 2010s saw distribution methods change, and artists began to realise that they didn't need to compromise in order to find an audience. It makes sense that the 2007-2011 period (in particular) has not been a popular choice in this tournament.

(That said, I gave serious consideration to 2009 as a nomination, because there were some dope releases - Gibbs, Gucci, Boosie, French Montana & Max B, Lil B, Clipse, The Jacka, Nipsey Hussle, Strong Arm Steady, Raekwon, Mos Def, Doom, Cam'ron, Jim Jones, Slim Thug, Rick Ross, Big H, P Money, Flowdan all put out albums/mixtapes which admittedly aren't the artists' best work in most cases but which have aged pretty well and certainly feel unfairly maligned or otherwise just completely forgotten, although midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik, 6 Kiss, Coke Wave, The Burrprint, Tear Gas, and Thug Passion are all top tier releases from their respective creators, and feel, to me at least, like truly era-defining classics - and I felt the period probably deserved some representation, rightly or wrongly. However, it was difficult to justify nominating it over a year filled with artists operating at or near their peaks.)
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

Repo
BeA Sunflower

Location: Forest Park

Skinny wrote:

Hayden wrote:

That 2007-2014 gap is pretty interesting. Not sure quite what to make of it yet.

Hip-hop generally just felt a little staid at that time. Major labels were still attempting to find successes by forcing artists to follow an outdated formula - I like to think of it as the 50 Cent formula - and the independent alternative scene hadn't really found its feet yet, especially in the latter part of the 2000s. Artists like Drake and Gucci Mane and Rick Ross were starting to make waves, but a cursory glance at really any list of the best rap albums of 2008, say, is filled with long-established artists making predictable records that usually fall short of their best work.

I was at (or, rather, around) university in 2010-2013, and it was very exciting that those years saw the emergence of Roc Marciano, Freddie Gibbs, the A$AP Mob, Odd Future, Action Bronson, TDE, Open Mike Eagle, Danny Brown, Curren$y, Future, Quelle Chris, Big K.R.I.T., Ka, Kevin Gates, Chance, artists or collectives who would essentially be responsible for the various directions hip-hop has taken since, as they grappled with the proliferation of streaming and free releases and the album-as-mixtape, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, and the gradual decline of reliance on major labels, or even labels of any kind. In the 1990s and early 2000s, somebody like Quelle Chris would likely have had to attach himself to an established indie label in order to get distribution, maybe a label that would also house Danny Brown or Open Mike Eagle, vaguely comparable but ultimately very distinct artists, and maybe a label with its own established aesthetic and sonic trademarks that wanted its artists to rely on its own trusted stable of producers. This might stifle those artists creatively, and suddenly three very distinct artists might become three pretty indistinguishable and subsequently forgettable artists. Cutting out the middle man has given artists the freedom to carve their own lanes without fear of being told that it won't work, or it won't sell, or it's just not how things are done here.

Very quickly, the rap landscape changed as artists were able to independently release the music they wanted to without any major interference, and then actually have that music find an audience and a market that was big enough to sustain their careers without them having to make compromises. Those artists I named and their subsequent successes paved the way for period of fertile, largely unregulated creativity that hasn't yet ceased (and hopefully never will).

(EDIT: The greatest threats - as I perceive them - to this are, ironically, influential Spotify algorithms and playlists which encourage artists to make music that follows specific, on-trend sonic blueprints in order to make money. It's why woozy, soft-focus, mildly psychedelic trap beats are so prevalent.)

The early 1990s saw artists coming to grips with the tools at their disposal and exploring the various avenues hip-hop could take; the late 1990s and early 2000s saw hip-hop become America's dominant genre, forcing the pop landscape to follow its lead; the mid to late 2000s saw the genre largely stagnate as its only distribution methods were through labels who were stuck in their ways in terms of how an artist could achieve success, and even what success itself meant; the early 2010s saw distribution methods change, and artists began to realise that they didn't need to compromise in order to find an audience. It makes sense that the 2007-2011 period (in particular) has not been a popular choice in this tournament.

(That said, I gave serious consideration to 2009 as a nomination, because there were some dope releases - Gibbs, Gucci, Boosie, French Montana & Max B, Lil B, Clipse, The Jacka, Nipsey Hussle, Strong Arm Steady, Raekwon, Mos Def, Doom, Cam'ron, Jim Jones, Slim Thug, Rick Ross, Big H, P Money, Flowdan all put out albums/mixtapes which admittedly aren't the artists' best work in most cases but which have aged pretty well and certainly feel unfairly maligned or otherwise just completely forgotten, although midwestgangstaboxframecadillacmuzik, 6 Kiss, Coke Wave, The Burrprint, Tear Gas, and Thug Passion are all top tier releases from their respective creators, and feel, to me at least, like truly era-defining classics - and I felt the period probably deserved some representation, rightly or wrongly. However, it was difficult to justify nominating it over a year filled with artists operating at or near their peaks.)

Nice! Gets me psyched we started this!

Skinny
birdman_handrub.gif

Right guys, need somebody to take the final nomination so that I can get started on setting the groups. Anybody who has yet to nominate, let yourself be known and pick a year.
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2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.

eyezayzay

Gender: Male
Age: 34

Yeesh I wanna join but I can't think of a year. I don't care which one I had.

Actually 2012 (edited)
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