VMP Magazine

Like any good myth, it starts with a flood.

Sometime shortly after 1993’s Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (VMP Essentials No. 105) dragged hip-hop through the muck and grime of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Staten Island, water began rushing into the basement where RZA, the group’s producer and chief visionary, did most of his alchemy. You picture it seeping in through seams, then blowing holes in the walls themselves — you see the samplers that spark, sputter and die. In a 1996 interview with Vibe, RZA estimated that more than 300 beats were lost. (Two decades later, Raekwon put the number closer to 500, but you know how legends grow.) Nascent records by almost all of the nine Wu vocalists were affected, as were those of several hangers-on; it has been well-documented that Inspectah Deck, whose harrowing second verse punctuates 36 Chambers’ “C.R.E.A.M.,” was planning to release his debut album in early 1995, but saw it pushed to the very end of the millennium.

To celebrate our 50th Hip-Hop Record of the Month this October — Three 6 Mafia's When the Smoke Clears: Sixty 6, Sixty 1 — we're inviting members and non-members to participate in a referral contest that will give away all in-stock Hip-Hop records that VMP has pressed. Read below to find out all the details! And, click here to enter with a referral.

If you sign up for VMP Hip-Hop for October, November and December 2021, you’ll be closing out the year with Records of the Month from Three 6 Mafia, Clipse and RZA. Read more below to travel from Tennessee and Virginia to New York City with these classic rap picks.

When rappers write about where they came from, there’s often a sense of loving appreciation overflowing from their work — like Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris’ “Welcome To Atlanta,” which gave listeners a play-by-play of the highlights of the city’s nightlife, or Ja Rule’s “New York,” which focused on the grittiness of the city’s streets to proclaim his love for his turf. But Clipse’s 2003 track, “Virginia,” buried deep in their debut album Lord Willin’, flipped the script completely. Delirious and depressing, the Bronx-born brothers, who relocated to the state as kids and grew up in Virginia Beach, announced that there wasn’t shit to do but cook cocaine, taking a realistic approach to establishing a narrative instead of painting broad strokes. Their years spent in the kitchen — over the stove, out of necessity — defined their music and provided the skeleton for three-albums worth of chilling observations, pensive reflections and immersive storytelling.

“How can we fathom a social life that tends toward death, that enacts a kind of being-toward-death, and which, because of such tendency and enactment, maintains a terribly beautiful vitality?”

—  Fred Moten, “The Case of Blackness”

The important thing to remember about Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet is that it almost didn’t happen.

It’s hard to imagine any group hot off the success of a Platinum-selling album — 1988’s incendiary It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back — with a live show that equally enthralled and disgusted white audiences around the globe calling it quits so quickly after their big break. A crossroads appeared abruptly, a fork in the road amplified by the haze of celebrity.

Protest songs, whether from the lips of Pete Seeger or Chuck D, often move us because they take something hyper-specific and strive to make it universal. Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” was written in response to a particular moment, but has transcended its intended NYC streets and spread as far as the Serbian capital of Belgrade to protest Milošević’s regime in 1991, which was cited as the reason it was No. 1 on Time Out’s 2011 list of the 100 Songs That Changed History.

The idea that led to the creation of “Fight the Power” — the song by Public Enemy that everyone knows — was simple: Spike Lee was making a movie (1989’s Do the Right Thing) about the racial tension, tragedy and violence in New York, and he knew he wanted Public Enemy to soundtrack it.

Photo by John Halpern

In 2014, VH1 aired a documentary titled ATL: The Untold Story of Atlanta’s Rise in the Rap Game, a 90-minute dissection of how Georgia’s capital city gradually — and inconspicuously — rose to hip-hop prominence. The special gave space for a number of artists to speak on their journeys and the hurdles they faced coming from the South, but there was one moment that each of those figures agreed gave them the inspiration to persist in their pursuit of becoming rap stars: the 1995 Source Awards.

Infographic by Stefanie Gray

Word of Mouf is not just Ludacris’ breakthrough, but the creation of several linguistic trends, from his mouth to pop culture’s ears. Luda popularized multiple phrases on the album that were relatively unknown beforehand, including “sticky icky,” “rollout” and, most notably, “I’ve got hoes in different area codes.”

Photo by Richard Martin

A victory lap is a phrase used in rap to describe a song or album that exudes triumph. More often than not, the victory lap comes after years of songs, albums, mixtapes, features and tours. This moment of celebration is earned. A well-deserved exhale. Allowing the artist to reflect on their journey and all the storms they weathered.

So Much Fun by Young Thug is both his 2019 debut album and his 19-track victory lap, a rare duality that only a few artists in this era of hip-hop newcomers have successfully combined. Released August 16, the same day as his 28th birthday, the Atlanta-born rapper made an album of anthems throughout the 62 minutes perfect for a party.

These are the albums you’ll receive if you sign up for VMP Hip-Hop in April, May and June 2021. Read below to get the scoop:

Let Gangsta Gibbs tell it, most people ain’t know not a damn thing about Gary, Indiana, until Michael Jackson passed away. And sources say, MJ — once he became MJ — ain’t know much about it, neither. Be that as it may, Gibbs knows, and he’ll remind you every chance he gets. So the story goes like this…

Read below to learn about the Hip-Hop Records of the Month you’ll receive if you sign up for July, August and September 2021. We’ve got two anniversaries from Atlanta luminaries, and the first ever 2LP reissue of an early ’90s classic.

When André 3000 strode onstage at the Source Awards in August, 1995, and said maybe the most important thing a Southern rapper has ever said into a mic — “The South got something to say!” at the height of the East Coast vs. West Coast battle — the rapper who would make Southern rap part of the very firmament of pop music was an incoming senior at suburban Atlanta’s Banneker High School. In under four years, that rapper would go from a radio DJ on the local rap station, Hot 97.5, to working with Timbaland as a guest on Tim’s solo debut to being signed by legendary Houston rapper Scarface as one of the first artists on Def Jam South. In just over six years, that rapper would top Billboard pop and rap charts, add many phrases to our collective lexicon, star in films and beef with Bill O’Reilly.

The first sounds you hear on Nappy Roots’ 2002 debut Watermelon, Chicken & Gritz aren’t the thwacks of one of their trademark warm, rich beats, nor are they the twangy syllables that immediately connect the group to the then-exploding Southern rap scene. Instead you hear crickets, the kind of nature sounds you might pick up on some relaxation-oriented white noise machine. These are punctuated by trudging steps along what is unmistakably a dirt road.

Even if most members of the rap sextet aren’t actually from towns whose populations were three digits or less, the album embraces the idea of being country almost immediately. Not in a superficial way, with cowboy hats and big trucks, but in a way that is almost spiritual: humble, simple, down-to-earth.