Genre story · Experimental
Alternative Hip-Hop
Hip-hop artists rejecting the idea that a rap record had to fit one established image or production formula.
Alternative hip-hop became a useful name during the late 1980s and early 1990s for musicians pursuing sounds and subjects beyond the most familiar commercial rap categories. De La Soul and the wider Native Tongues network brought humor, playful sampling and Afrocentric perspectives into one influential current. A Tribe Called Quest and the Jungle Brothers pursued related ideas, while the Pharcyde and other artists reached different results on the US West Coast. The term never belonged to one city or one unified musical technique.
Unusual samples, familiar pulse
The rhythm may still be based on a breakbeat, yet the sampling can draw from unexpected records or appear next to jazz instrumentation and loose vocal phrasing. Stories might be intimate, surreal or pointedly political. Some albums favor witty exchanges between several MCs; others change the beat and voice into something deliberately difficult to categorize.
An umbrella inside hip-hop
Alternative Hip-Hop is a historical and critical grouping, not a synonym for Experimental Hip-Hop. Experimental Hip-Hop often points more directly to unusual methods and form, while alternative may describe a different relationship with the commercial culture of a particular period. Both belong to hip-hop history without borrowing their origins from experimental rock.
Essential recordings
- 1989De La Soul3 Feet High and RisingPlayful sampling and ambitious group songwriting.
- 1991A Tribe Called QuestThe Low End TheoryDetailed jazz-informed rhythmic work.
- 1992The PharcydeBizarre Ride II the PharcydeA different West Coast approach with humor and melodic play.