Really How Hard Were You?

By Ta-Nehisi Coates
The general consensus among hip-hop twenty years ago (yes it's been that long) was that the music was a rebellion against soft, over-synthesized, mushy R&B. De La called it Rhythm and Bullshit. PMD said, "Hardcore, no R&B singer." This is simplistic, I know, but I definitely saw myself as part of some sort of hardcore music movement. And yet when I look back at what I was actually playing back then, and what's endured, a lot of it is joints like "Jamaica Funk," "Never Too Much" or even "Candy Girl." Or Starpoint...

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