Often these support structures could wind up carrying an artist further than anyone expected, whether it was a one-off gem of an album or the start of a career that’s still in the midst of putting out must-own records. And if the disillusionment hinted at by the likes of Common and DJ Shadow wasn’t the dominant reaction, it was still powerful enough - and deeply rooted enough - to help build up a support structure for artists just far enough outside mainstream America’s Will Smith comfort zone. So if you wanted to work at establishing a sort of alternative, independent, distinctly underground style of hip-hop, you had to really need it. You could also make hip-hop without having a lot of money, and develop the kind of work ethic where what money you make would just go back into the music, but that increasingly seemed like a sucker’s option when the economic bubble of the late ’90s record industry could seemingly provide all the yacht rides and Moët bottles anyone’d ever want. And whatever you consider to have ended it - the coast wars, 2Pac and Biggie’s deaths, the rise of the South, the “shiny suit era,” the prevalence of R&B crossover - it was generally agreed upon by 1996 that if hip-hop sucked that year, you could just say “it’s the money” as the reason and get at least a few nods of recognition. Then again, Common released his first big signature hit in ’94, and it was about how hip-hop was starting to lose its way, so there was already a sense of fragile legitimacy being threatened from all sides by the time the Golden Era ended. Didn’t matter if your jam of the year was “ Time’s Up” or “ Regulate” or “ Sabotage” - if you lived through ’94 and thought “this is the end of an era” at the time, you were probably a pessimist. The hip-hop Golden Era is generally recognized to have started in the late ’80s and runs through the mid ’90s, which covers the massive creative stretch where album-length ambitions, advances in sampling tech, and heated competition for mixtape and airplay positioning could be found in the majors, hip-hop imprints, and indies all at once.Īnd even in the waning years, there was gold: 1994 was the year that gave us the first albums by Nas, OutKast, and The Notorious B.I.G., career-prime material from Gang Starr, Redman, and Scarface, and cult classics from Organized Konfusion, Artifacts, and Gravediggaz. The catch about Golden Eras is that we don’t always know when we’re living in one - we only know when it’s already over.
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