The 1980s will forever be known to some as the Golden Age of Hip Hop. The period was marked by intense creativity in the genre; a Cambrian explosion of art, where every new artist appeared to create a sub-genre of their own. It was the decade where the music came to its own and rose from the obscurity of the neighborhood block parties to global domination of the music industry, helped in part by the popularity of MTV (shout out to Yo MTV Raps).

First, a bit of history for the incognoscenti: Hip-hop, the music, grew out of the house parties of DJ Kool Herc in 1972, who would loop together the break-beats of James Brown songs. This morphed into a culture of break-dancing and tagging (graffiti). But the culture wouldn’t be complete until hype-men and MCs at parties started to get creative — and competitive — with their initially short gimmicky chants. And so, rap was born, and would remain the feature most associated with the music.

The sheer number of artists to come out at the time was staggering, but what gives the ‘80s its “golden” moniker is the extent of the diversity. For those who love the lyrical brilliance of Notorious BIG and Nas, then the ‘80s was the decade of Rakim, who truly was the wordsmith of the era. Political rap first went mainstream with the clever word play of KRS One and the raging rhymes and chaotic sound of Public Enemy. Feminism found its voice in the genre with women MCs including Queen Latifah, Monie Love, and MC Lyte. No one could tell a story better than Slick Rick. But if a chill night to a smooth, jazzy alternative is more your style, then we invite you to check out the magic that is a Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul. The kings of the crossover was Run DMC.

Yes, we’re running with the story that Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer never lived.

Hip hop weathered its first big controversies in the ‘80s (the first of many), when some states tried to censor 2 Live Crew’s racy debut album As Nasty As They Wanna Be (Warning: NSFW). Hip hop won its first First Amendment case, which helped the music survive to this day, but backlash from society was never as fierce until “the world’s most dangerous group” NWA took to the scene. They were rebellion personified and their music encapsulated the anger of young, disenfranchised black youth. The group gave us both the genre of gangster rap, and the legend that is Dr. Dre, arguably, the most influential person in hip hop for the 20 years that followed.