Best of the New and Old School

My favorite album of 2012 was 1999 by emerging hip-hop artist Joey Badass. The reason I enjoyed it as much as I did was because his sound blends the sound of 90's Golden Era hip-hop with a new, fresh, and young perspective. I've been waiting a while for mainstream hip-hop to go back to its roots, or at least stop being so unoriginal and poppy, and I feel guys like Joey Badass and Kendrick Lamar are helping change the new school scene for the better. I was first turned onto his music through MTV Jams (a music video channel that focuses on rap and RNB) and heard the rest of his stuff online (his mixtape is free on datpiff.com).

As for my favorite oldie, I guess I won't go far back at all, because I prefer music made after the late 60s. Sticking with hip-hop, my favorite old school album is Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) by the Wu-Tang Clan. That album got me into the genre in a major way, and their use of samples blew my mind and changed how I saw music. They also managed to not only have amazing instrumentals, but they had a crew of 9 guys that could all rap better almost anyone else in the game. I first heard of Wu-Tang when I was a little kid when I saw a music video of there's on MTV (when they still played videos) but I didn't get into them big time until I was 16 and downloaded their tracks illegally on Limewire. I have since bought their records since I actually want to support them.