His revolutionary production style – christened G-Funk – was a canny mix of deep rolling bass, P-Funk-indebted grooves, and soulful vocals that smoothed the jagged edges of gangsta rap into a more accessible format which radio stations could get behind. To make matters worse, Gilbert O’Sullivan’s successful court case against Biz Markie, in 1991 (he’d used a sample of O’Sullivan’s “Alone Again (Naturally)” without consent), threatened to change the very way the art form was constructed no longer could producers use multiple samples, for fear of litigation.įorming Death Row Records with Suge Knight and The DOC, Dre used the fledgling imprint to issue his stratospherically popular debut album, The Chronic, at the tail-end of 1992. The success of gangsta rap groups such as Los Angeles natives NWA, whose 1988 debut album, Straight Outta Compton, detailed street violence in an uncompromising and explicit style, led to many radio stations pulling effective boycotts against hip-hop’s more aggressive artists. Yet, at the dawn of the 90s, hip-hop faced something of a crisis. Listen to the best 90s hip-hop on Spotify. The huge hits of 90s hip-hop put the genre firmly at the top of the heap – a lofty position from which it’s never looked back.
For the first time, its artists became superstars in their own right. Hip-hop firmly established itself as both a cultural and commercially viable force in the 1980s, but it was still primarily an underground concern.
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