New School Hip Hop

New School Hip Hop

The new school of hip hop was a movement in hip hop music starting 1983–84 with the early records of Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J. Like the hip hop preceding it, it came predominately from New York City. The new school was initially characterized in form by drum machine led minimalism, often tinged with elements of rock. It was notable for taunts and boasts about rapping, and socio-political commentary, both delivered in an aggressive, self-assertive style. In image as in song its artists projected a tough, cool, street b-boy attitude. These elements contrasted sharply with the funk and disco influenced outfits, novelty hits, live bands, synthesizers and party rhymes of artists prevalent in 1984, and rendered them old school. New school artists made shorter songs that could more easily gain radio play, and more cohesive LPs than their old school counterparts. By 1986 their releases began to establish the hip hop album as a fixture of the mainstream.

More inclusively, golden age hip hop is a phrase usually framing the late 1980s in mainstream hip hop, said to be characterized by its diversity, quality, innovation and influence, and associated with Public Enemy, KRS-One and his Boogie Down Productions, Eric B. & Rakim, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, and the Jungle Brothers due to their themes of Afrocentricity and political militancy, their experimental music, and their eclectic sampling. This same period is sometimes referred to as "mid-school" or a "middle school" in hip hop, the phrase covering acts like Gang Starr, The UMC's, Main Source, Lord Finesse, EPMD, Just Ice, Stetsasonic, True Mathematics, and Mantronix.

The innovations of Run-D.M.C., LL Cool J, and new school producers such Larry Smith, and Rick Rubin of Def Jam, were quickly advanced on by the Beastie Boys, Marley Marl and his Juice Crew MCs, Boogie Down Productions, Public Enemy, and Eric B. & Rakim. Hip-hop production became denser, rhymes and beats faster, as the drum machine was augmented with the sampler technology. Rakim took lyrics about the art of rapping to new heights, while KRS-One and Chuck D pushed "message rap" towards black activism. Native Tongues artists' inclusive, sample-crowded music accompanied their positivity, Afrocentricity and playful energy. With the eventual commercial dominance of West Coast gangsta rap, particularly the emergence of the relaxed sounds of G-funk by the early nineties, the East Coast new school/golden age can be said to have ended, with hardcore rappers such as the Wu-Tang Clan and gangsta rappers such as Nas and The Notorious B.I.G coming to dominate the East Coast scene.

The terms "old school" and "new school" have fallen more and more into the common vernacular as synonyms for "old" and "new" (witness the 2003 Urban Dictionary entry for new school which reads, "Anything contemporary") and are often applied in this conversational way to hip hop, to the confusion and occasional exasperation of writers who use the terms historically. The phrase "leader of the new school", coined in hip hop by Chuck D in 1988, and presumably given further currency by the group with the exact name Leaders of the New School (who were named by Chuck D prior to signing with Elektra in 1989), remains popular. It has been applied to artists ranging from Jay-Z to Lupe Fiasco.