50th Anniversary
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Hip-Hop celebrates 50 years of existence on August 11, and the genre continues to expand far beyond its origins in the Bronx into what is now a global phenomenon. To honor the evolution and existence of Hip-Hop, Hip-Hop Wired compiled a 50-song playlist that we hope captures the best the music and culture has to offer.
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We’ve been creating playlists for a while now but nothing was as difficult as this one. For starters, we agonized over how to group together 50 songs from over the decades and were frustrated with the fact we had to omit songs from the 1970s. The reason is, the music truly took hold of the world in the early 1980s, as we open up our playlist with one of the greatest songs created in any genre, “The Message” released in 1982.
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Most historians point to The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” as Hip-Hop’s first music single, while others would say The Fatback Band’s “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” gets the nod. Both tracks were released within months of each other in 1979, laying down the foundation for the MCs that emerged in the following decade.
All throughout the playlist, there will be glaring omissions, regions that didn’t get love, and other points of contention. Trust us, we’re just as upset but we wanted to include 10 songs that we feel captured each decade from the ’80s until now. If we had more time, we probably could have included 50 songs per era but who is willing to sit through that?
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To all of those acts who feel like we missed them, accept our apology and understand this was difficult to compile. We are also at the mercy of the DSP we used to host the playlist as some artists and their catalogs are not available in the digital realm
That said, we’re always honoring the veterans on our site and we pledge to return with a sequel to this playlist later in the month to get to those tracks we surely missed.
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For now, check out our Hip-Hop @ 50 selection of tracks below. If you’re enjoying what you hear, sound off in the comments or via our social media channels.
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Musician, producer, author, filmmaker and founding member of The Legendary Roots Crew, Questlove, is set to gift the world with another book featuring his vast musical knowledge and unique insight. In honor of Hip-Hop’s 50th anniversary, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is following up the all-star tribute to Hip-Hop he led at the Grammys with a new book titled, Hip-Hop Is History.
According to Variety, the book will be released under Questlove’s publisher, Auwa Books, and is slated to drop during the first quarter of 2024.
From Variety:
“No one is else is writing it,” Questlove tells Variety from an unusually quiet NBC Studios in New York, where he and the Roots would normally busy themselves rehearsing for their nightly gig with “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” but are currently on hiatus due to the strike.
Like his previous titles — most notable “Mo’ Meta Blues” and “Music Is History” — the book will benefit from his near-total recall of music history: things he heard, read about or witnessed first-hand. Co-written again with Ben Greenman, the book will be the second title from AUWA, Questlove’s book line through MCD (formerly called Farrar, Straus and Giroux), following the Sly Stone memoir “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” which is due in October.
Between Questlove’s growing book catalog, his Hip-Hop tribute and his Summer of Soul documentary, (not to mention The Root’s entire discography), it’s safe to say Questlove is an authority on music and Hip-Hop culture the masses could only benefit from hearing from. A real-life documentarian he is indeed. And as far as musical knowledge and expertise go, Questlove is an apple that didn’t fall far from the tree or its roots. (See what I did there?)
More from Variety:
“I’m in the legacy business,” he tells Variety, noting that he’s the son of (and former drummer for) doo-wop legend Lee Andrews. “There was no nostalgia culture before the 1970s, so, my dad was the first generation of the oldies-doo wop crowd. I know everything about curating these types of events, working with everyone from Bowser from Sha Na Ha to Dick Clark.”
Still, being in the legacy business is stressful for Questlove, a man who is consciously changing his life “from having 19 jobs a year” to “maybe” four.
“I’m doing all this because somewhere out there, in 2031 or 2041, there will be a new Ahmir Thompson, or Ahmira Thompson – maybe my kids when I start having them – and all of my hard work won’t be for naught. Perhaps, I will have reached somebody the same way that I was reached.”
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And the world will be better for it. Hip-Hop, like all music created through Black culture, has a legacy that should be preserved and protected for future generations to learn from and be inspired by. Salute to Questlove for continuing to be one of the culture’s most prolific messengers.
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