Career suicide albums fall into two camps: those that were released ahead of their time, and those that set new standards in awful. The best thing that could be said about the later category is that these albums are oftentimes just as fascinating as an artist's best work.
In this second installment of the retrospective of music videos from the 1980s, we focus on 20 promos that have, remarkably, stood the test of time.
Unlikely purveyors of comfort music, Public Enemy offer a balm for an ominous future on What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?.
Beyond NWA and Public Enemy: rappers have been sounding the alarm about police brutality since the birth of hip-hop. It’s time we listened to old-school hip-hop.
So much remarkable music was released in 1991 that it's difficult to choose just 20 memorable songs without a few omissions.
Hip-hop makes its debut on the Big List with Public Enemy’s meaty, beaty manifesto, and all the jealous punks can’t stop the dunk. Counterbalance’s Klinger and Mendelsohn give it a listen.
The megamix is a variegated mural, with flashes of color – neon pink, chartreuse, head-gash red – popping off chipped concrete, an amalgamation of flavor so fresh it strains the vision, so vivid it glows.
Why would the generation that covered Bob Dylan over and over get so bent out of shape of having seconds of audio copied and pasted in a new way in a rap song?
PopMatters has scoured the musical spectrum for the best examples of the protest song form, including anthems of great popularity and obscurity alike. Stay tuned all week as we unveil the top 100.
In those early, free-wheeling days of hip-hop, the artists were waaaay ahead of the lawyers.
