From that timeline thing:

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony break the record for fastest rising single with their hit "Tha Crossroads", the spot was previously held by The Beatles for "Can't Buy Me Love".

HAHAHAHA.

I remember "Can't Buy Me Love" - I can sing it, and cover every different harmony the Beatles threw at it.

I can't remember a note of "Tha Crossroads", although I do remember Bone Thugs, mostly because they had such a superb name.

Le sigh. This is going to be tricky.

But the timeline's emphasis on taggers and breakdancers - along with the Prophets - does reinforce my old take that it was urban performance and street art from the getgo.

I think you can more or less disregard the Grammy winners if you're interested in "keepin it real" or whatever.

But weren't they all pretty popular? Mary J Blige was surfing the New Jack (or Jill) Swing thing, but she's showed endurance--and Method Man seemed fairly authentic to me.

I'm not all up in the hip hop scene, but I was hanging out with people who were at the time, and that list seems pretty plausible to me.

But that Mary/Meth song was cheesy (and no one loves Mary more than I do!!), Naughty By Nature were past their prime, and Coolio is more or less ridiculous. I'm not saying they weren't popular, but a lot of people use "commercial" as a put down.

Deb, now I'll have "Crossroads" in my head for days. Man, that song sucks.

Edited to reiterate that you shouldn't take my word for anything in that mid-90s time period, because like I said, I wasn't really into the rap then.

Actually, I'm less worried about the whole commercial versus keepin' it real thing than I am about the club and heavy rotation thing.

Basically, if the man with the gold and diamond chain had strolled into a NYC or LA club in 1995, with his entourage behind him, what would have been getting the play? The bigger names (as in, Grammy winners), the indie stuff no one ever heard of, or both?

My memory is just a whole lot of Biggie.

Not large on the rap scene then, but yeah - Biggie, Tupac, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg....

Ancillary question that has no material benefit to the research--Is there any kind of trend nowadays that addresses the dichotomy between the bling and the "we're poor outsiders who hate the establishment"--but tell them where the good jewelers are.

I think moving beyond the dichotocmy is what much (not all) "Gangsta" thing was about - at least the version that made it bigtime. It was about "yeah we are poor outsiders and we are coming for your stuff - but not as revolutionaries; we're we are not out to overthrow the system; we are out to move to the top of it cause we're tougher, meaner and hungrier. " And there are a lot reasons that strain was more commericailly sucessful than others (including other strains of Gangsta.). It appeals more to advertisers; what better way to sell shit than with music that spends time telling you life is all about getting rich, buying fancy stuff, and buying women (cause women are all for sale). And it appeals to white kids cause all the pimp/ho/gangsta image plays to sterotypes that are out there anyway. And of course mixed in with it is other stuff. There is the party/have a good time stuff. There is still a little political stuff that creeps into even mainstream hip/hop. And it is not that any of this was inauthentic. I just think that one particular strain of Gangsta that was always there got pumped up a whole lot bigger than its natural size cause it was a good way to sell shit, and to cripple more dangerous versions.

Deb, my Black Star CD is AWOL (which annoys--I think it's in my closet somewhere), but they're one of the (later than the period you suggested) things I was thinking wouldn't make you twitch.