The most significant event of the early 1990s was probably the advent of Wu-Tang Clan (1), a loose affiliation of rappers, including Gary "Genius/GZA" Grice, Russell "Ol' Dirty Bastard" Jones, Clifford "Method Man" Smith and Dennis "Ghostface Killah" Coles, "conducted" (if the rap equivalent of a classical conductor exists) by Robert "RZA" Diggs, the musical genius behind Enter the Wu-Tang (1993), a diligent tribute to old-school rap. It was RZA's three-dimensional sound experience and his cerebral gutter beats (and occasional philosophical/mystical tone-poems) that gave meaning to the voices of those rappers, although the sumptuous arrangements of Wu-Tang Forever (1997) threatened to take away precisely that meaning. This "clan" (not "gang") spun off a number of successful solo careers. Both Ol' Dirty Bastard's Return to the 36 Chambers (1995), Method Man's Tical (1994), Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx (1995) and GZA/Genius' Liquid Swords (1995), the most dramatic and cinematic of the bunch, were produced by RZA. However, when the Wu-Tang Clan began a rapid artistic decline, it was Ghostface Killah who emerged as the voice of his generation with the brutal, death-obsessed cinematic storytelling of Supreme Clientele (2000) and Fishscale (2006).

The Wu-Tang clan were one of the few East Coast acts that stood up to the past standards of the city's hip-hop. A number of New Jersey acts, in particular, cast a doubt on the future of hip-hop: the duo P.M. Dawn, with Of the Heart of the Soul of the Cross (1991), Naughty By Nature, with Naughty By Nature (1991), Kris Kross (the pre-puberal duo of Chris "Daddy Mack" Smith and Chris "Mack Daddy" Kelly), produced by teenager Jermaine Dupri, with the disco energy of Totally Krossed Out (1992), and the trio of the Lords of the Underground, with Here Come the Lords (1993), produced by Marley Marl. Washington multi-instrumentalist Basehead (Michael Ivey), with Plays With Toys (1992), was also crossing over into pop and soul territory. Trevor "Busta Rhymes" Smith's The Coming (1996) was as bizarre as accessible (basically an extension of the absurdist style of Public Enemy's William "Flavor Flav" Drayton). The nonsensical dialectics of Das Efx (Andre "Dre" Weston and Willie "Skoob" Hines) on Dead Serious (1992) was only functional to creating novelty acts.

Main Source's Breaking Atoms (1991), Poor Righteous Teachers' second album Pure Poverty (1991), permeated by Islamic philosophy, Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992) by producer Pete Rock (Phillips) & rapper C.L. Smooth (Corey Penn), Reggie "Redman" Noble's Whut? Thee Album (1992), Enta Da Stage (1993) by short-lived trio Black Moon, and New Kingdom's tribal-psychedelic Heavy Load (1993) were among the few albums that dared to experiment. East Coast hip-hop was losing to the West Coast. If nothing else, Nasir "Nas" Jones' Illmatic (1994) and Kendrick "Jeru the Damaja" Davis's The Sun Rises in the East (1994) briefly brought back party-rap's original sound.

New York's duo Organized Konfusion (Larry "Prince Poetry" Bakersfield and Troy "Pharoahe Monch" Jammerson) refined the dramatic/poetic skills of rap music, from the ghetto vignettes of Organized Konfusion (1991) to the psychologial hip-hopera The Equinox (1997)

Philadelphia's The Goats (1), led by Oatie Kato (Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams), orchestrated the "hip-hopera" Tricks of the Shade (1992), a concept album built around the evils of the American way of life, with both samples and a live band, deep grooves and a canvas of jazz, funk and rock.

"Prince Paul" Huston (1), the producer of De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising and the equally psychedelic My Field Trip To Planet 9 (1993) by Justin Warfield, penned Gravediggaz's gothic 6 Feet Deep (1994) with Wu-Tang Chan's Robert "RZA" Diggs, and the solo albums Psychoanalysis: What Is It? (1997) and especially the concept album A Prince Among Thieves (1999).

Philadelphia-born Roots' collaborator Ursula Rucker was a black spoken-word artist who coined a new form of art with her single Supernatural (1994), a dance hit created by a-capella vocals. After being a mere novelty on other people's songs, she emancipated her voice and her stories of black women on Supa Sista (2001).

Alien to the street culture of much hip-hop, New York's J-Live (Justice Allah) was one of the MCs who turned rhymed storytelling into a veritable art, both on The Best Part (1996), released five years after being recorded, and All Of The Above (2002).

Gangsta-rap

On the West Coast, "gangsta-rap" was the dominant theme. Schoolly D had invented it in 1984, but, starting with Ice-T in 1986, it was in Los Angeles that the form found its natural milieu. In 1992, when racial riots erupted (following the police beating of a black gangster), Los Angeles was said to have 66 gangs of teenagers, mostly black, with daily shootings among them. They reached a temporary truce in april. It is not a coincidence that "gangsta rap" became a national phenomenon in the following twelve months. Gangsta-rap was not so much about gangster lives as about a metaphorical, solemn, doom-laden recreation of the noir/thriller atmosphere of the urban drug culture. It was more than a mere depiction of their lives, just like psychedelic music had been more than a mere reproduction of the hallucinogenic experience. Gangsta rap was about the mythology and the metaphysics of the gang life, with sexual and criminal overtones. As Greg Kot wrote, "The gangster rappers depict a world in which gangbangers and crack-heads fester in a cesspool of misogyny, homophobia and racism". Invariably dismissing women as teasers or sluts, these rappers indirectly revealed the sordid and desperate conditions of the women of the ghettos. Their justification was that they were not promoting that kind of violence, but merely documenting it: gangsta-rap was a documentary of daily life in the ghetto. Furthermore, the arrogance of these self-appointed super-heroes was often accompanied by a fatalistic mood: gangsta-rap was not about immortality, albeit about survival. N.W.A. (1), or "Niggaz With Attitude", formalized "gangsta-rap" on Straight Outta Compton (1988), and two of its former members, O'Shea "Ice Cube" Jackson with AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990), a total immersion in a nightmarish atmosphere, and Andre "Dr Dre" Young (1) with The Chronic (1992), featuring rapper Calvin "Snoop Doggy Dogg" Broadus, and later with 2001 (2000), gave it its masterpieces. The latter, heavily influenced by George Clinton's psychedelic funk, also coined a subgenre called "G Funk".

Houston's Geto Boys, featuring young rapper Brad "Scarface" Jordan, were one of the first crews from the South to become known nation-wide, thanks to the the terrifying gangsta-rap of their second album Geto Boys (1990). Robert-Earl "DJ Screw" Davis, who died at 30 of an overdose, became a Houston legend by slowing down ("screwing") rap hits into psychedelic, dilated melodies.

Gangsta-rap became mainstream via albums such as Doggystyle (1993) by Los Angeles native Calvin Broadus, better known as Snoop Doggy Dogg (1), produced by Dr Dre, and Me Against The World (1995), the third album from Oakland's 2Pac (aka Tupac Shakur, born Lesane Parish Crooks), produced by Sam Bostic, which was followed by All Eyez on Me (1996), the first double album of hip-hop music.

As gangsta-rap generated sales, rappers found it almost obligatory to spin the usual litany of hard-boiled tales of drugs, sex and murder.

One of the main sources of creativity for the Los Angeles scene was the the Freestyle Fellowship crew, responsible for the elaborate collages of To Whom It May Concern (1991) and especially Inner City Griots (1993). The second album, A Book Of Human Language (1998), by Aceyalone, a founding member of the "Freestyle Fellowship" crew, was lavishly arranged by Matthew "Mumbles" Fowler, and retained a literate approach that contrasted with the old "gansta" style. Magnificent (2006) featured beats by Jon "RJD2" Krohn.

Los Angeles was also the birthplace of Latino hip-hop, which debuted with Escape From Havana (1990) by Cuban-born Mellow Man Ace (Sergio Reyes) and Hispanic Causing Panic (1991) by Kid Frost (Arturo Molina). Kid Frost's La Raza (1990) and Mellow Man Ace's Mentirosa (1990) became the reference standards for all subsequent Latin rappers. The artistic peak of West-Coast rap was probably reached by a semi-Latino group, Cypress Hill (1), the project of producer Lawrence "Muggs" Muggerud and rapper Louis "B Real" Freeze, with their hyper-depressed trilogy of Cypress Hill (1992), Black Sunday (1993) and Temples of Boom (1995). The large Latino collective Ozomatli offered ebullient salsa-funk-rap on Ozomatli (1998), featuring wizard turntablist Cut Chemist (Lucas MacFadden).

Oakland was the headquarter of most black rappers from the San Francisco Bay Area. The main acts were the crew Digital Underground (1), the brainchild of Greg "Shock G" Jacobs and the main hip-hop purveyors of George Clinton's eccentric "funkadelia", notably on Sex Packets (1990); and rapper Del tha Funkee Homosapien (Teren Delvon Jones), also inspired by the P-funk aesthetics on I Wish My Brother George Was Here (1991). The Mystic Journeymen, formed by rappers Pushin' Suckas' Consciousness (PSC) and Vision The Brotha From Anotha Planet (BFAP), were important not so much for their 4001: The Stolen Legacy (1995), but as founders of the Oakland collective "Living Legends".

San Francisco produced some of the most virulent agit-prop rap of all times: the Beatnigs (1), with Beatnigs (1988), Consolidated (1), with The Myth Of Rock (1990), and the Disposable Heroes Of Hiphoprisy (1), with Hypocrisy Is The Greatest Luxury (1992).

Gangsta-rap reached the East Coast with Onix's Bacdafucup (1992) and The Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace)'s Ready to Die (1994), produced by Sean "Puffy" Combs and others. Fat Joe (Joseph Cartagena), the first major Latino rapper from the Bronx, also embraced the gansta-rap aesthetic, notably on his second album Jealous One's Envy (1995). Fat Joe was the most notorious member of New York's rap collective D.I.T.C. (Diggin' In The Crates), formed by Joe "DJ Diamond D" Kirkland and first tested on Diamond D's Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop (1992). The other notable member, Lamont "Big L" Coleman (shot to death in 1999), released perhaps the best of their albums, Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous (1995), produced by Anthony "Buckwild" Best.

Progressive-rap

Progressive rap of the kind pioneered by Public Enemy thrived with works such as Arrested Development (1)'s 3 Years 5 Months and 2 Days In The Life (1998), the product of Atlanta-based rapper Todd "Speech" Thomas and disc-jockey Timothy "Headliner" Barnwell; Movement Ex's Movement Ex (1990), a concentrate of stereotyped conspiracy theories from Los Angeles; Oscar "Paris" Jackson's second album Sleeping With the Enemy (1992), from the Bay Area; Public Enemy associate Sister Souljah (Lisa Williamson)'s 360 Degrees of Power (1992); Brand Nubian's One For All (1990); X-Clan's To the East Blackwards (1990) from New York, KMD's Mr Hood (1991), featuring rapper Daniel "Zen Love" Dumile (later known as MF Doom), and Return Of The Boom Bap (1993) by former Boogie Down Productions mastermind KRS-One (Lawrence Krisna Parker). These groups harked back to the radical, militant, Afro-nationalist ideology of the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam. They basically represented the "positive" alternative to gangsta-rap: instead of advocating rape and murder, they confronted issues of both local and global politics. Even feminism found its hip-hop voice: Yolanda "Yo-Yo" Whitaker, who debuted with Make Way for the Motherlode (1991) and founded the "Intelligent Black Woman's Coalition" to promote self-esteem among women.

This subgenre reached a fanatical peak with Steal This Album (1998) by Oakland's duo The Coup, that reads like Mao's "Red Book" or a Noam Chomsky pamphlet.

Jazz-hop

This was also the decade of "jazz-hop" fusion. Jazz-hop fusion had distinguished precedessors. Some consider Miles Davis' On The Corner (1972) the precursor of hip-hop. For sure, in the 1990s the Last Poet, a Harlem-based trio of former jail convicts converted to Islam (led by Jalal Mansur Nuriddin), were using "spiel" (as rap was called in those days) over a jazz background: their political sermons inspired by Malcom X relied on the arrangements of jazz producer Alan Douglas on The Last Poets (1970), which became a hit, and developed into "jazzoetry" on Chastisement (1972).

Within the rap nation, jazz-hop was pioneered by: Grandmaster Flash's remixes of jazz master Roy Ayers; scratcher Derek "D.ST" Howells's collaboration with jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Rockit (1983); the Jungle Brothers' Straight Out the Jungle (1988), possibly the first example of full-fledged jazz-hop fusion; And Now The Legacy Begins (1991), the eclectic multi-stylistic manifesto of Toronto-based duo Dream Warriors (with the prophetic My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style); A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory (1991), which featured guest musician Ron Carter; Chuck D Ridenbour's big-band tribute to Charlie Mingus (1992). Jazz returned the favor with post-bop saxophonist Greg Osby's 3D Lifestyles (1993), with Miles Davis' very last recording, Doo-Bop (1992), and with the "acid-jazz" scene of San Francisco (Broun Fellinis, Alphabet Soup).

Besides being one of the first groups to follow in the footsteps of Public Enemy's militant hip-hop, Gang Starr (1), rapper Keith "Guru" Elam and producer Christopher "DJ Premier" Martin, pioneered the mature exploitation of jazz on Step In The Arena (1990) and Daily Operation (1992), and then ventured beyond jazz-hop on Moment of Truth (1998). Martin's extensive use of jazz sampling and percussion loops revolutionized the way "raps" ought to be orchestrated.

Jazz-hop became the sensation of 1993 with Guru (1)'s own Jazzmatazz Volume 1 (1993), US3's Hand on the Torch (1993), for which British producer Geoff Wilkinson mined the Blue Note catalog, the Digable Planets' Reachin' (1993), from Boston, Pharcyde's dadaistic, carnivalesque Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1993), from Los Angeles, and Plantation Lullabies (1993) by Washington's Me'Shell Ndege' Ocello (Mary Johnson). The trend was amplified in the following years by albums such as One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994), the third album by Dallas' white rapper Mark Griffin, better known as MC900 Ft Jesus (1), the Fun Lovin' Criminals' Come Find Yourself (1996).

Philadelphia's Roots (1) approached jazz not via samples but through live instrumentation, led by the rhythm section of drummer Ahmir-Khalib "?uestlove" Thompson and bassist Leon "Hub" Hubbard and by keyboardist Scott Storch, on Do You Want More (1994), the album that introduced spoken-word artist Ursula Rucker. A quantum jump in arrangements (notably James "Kamal" Gray's electronic keyboards) made Phrenology (2002) a case in point for the marriage of technology, composition and performance, transforming hip-hop music into avantgarde architecture; and its successors Game Theory (2006) and Rising Down (2008) refined their invention (catchy, agitprop, beat-based, cross-stylistic music) by wedding those lush production values with dark, high-energy vibrations.

The horizon further expanded with Chicago's Common Sense (Lonnie Rashied Lynn), who evolved from the mellow jazz-hop of Resurrection (1994) to Electric Circus (2003), an experiment reminiscent of psychedelic and progressive-rock, and with New York's Dante "Mos Def" Smith (1), who reacted to gangsta-rap by bring back the serious-minded philosophy of the "Native Tongues" posse while at the same time accomodating rock, soul and funk on the phantasmagoric Black on Both Sides (1999).

Basically, hip-hop music had fragmented along three seismic faults of rebellion: one could vent negro anger as a gangsta, as an Afronationalist militant or... by playing jazz music.

Hip-hop domination

By the mid 1990s, hip-hop had dramatically evolved from an art of "messages" that were spoken in a conversational tone over an elementary rhythmic base to an art of cadenced speech in an emphatic and melodramatic tone over an intricate rhythmic collage. Regardless of the "message" that was now being broadcasted, the sense of black self-affirmation had moved to the forefront. The main continuity with the original form of Grandmaster Flash was in the "urban" setting of the music: except for free-jazz, no other form of black music had been so viscerally tied to the urban environment.

During the 1990s, hip-hop spread outside of its traditional bases (New York and Los Angeles), reaching the far corners of the globe.

Acid-rap, a morbid style related to Gravediggaz's horrocore, was coined by Detroit's rapper and producer Esham (Rashaam Smith), both on his solo album Boomin' Words From Hell (1990), recorded when he was 15, and on the harsh and disturbing Life After Death (1992), credited to his group NATAS ("Satan" spelled backwards).

Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik (1994) by Atlanta's Outkast (2), the duo of Andre "Dre" Benjamin and Antwan "Big Boi" Patton, was representative of the rise of southern hip-hop, with its emphasis on soul melodies and pop arrangements. Outkast turned hip-hop into a new form of space funkadelia on their sumptuous kaleidoscopes of aural ecstasy, Aquemini (1998) and Stankonia (2000) Another product of the Atlanta school was Goodie Mob's Soul Food (1995), fronted by vocalist Thomas "Cee-Lo Green" Callaway and credited with starting the "Dirty South" movement"; while Master P assembled the No Limit posse in New Orleans.

Pre-Life Crisis (1995) by Nashville's rapper, multi-instrumentalist and producer Count Bass D (Dwight Farrell) was the first rap album to feature all live instruments.

New Orleans's Master P (Percy Miller) was the leading enterpreneur of unadulterated gangsta-rap. He turned it into the hip-hop equivalent of a serial show, with releases being manufactured according to Master P's script at his studios by a crew of producers. His own albums Ice Cream Man (1996) and Ghetto D (1997) were the ultimate stereotypes of the genre. In 1998, his musical empire had six albums in the Top-100 charts.

Atlanta's producer Jonathan "Lil Jon" Smith and his East Side Boyz coined a fusion of hip-hop and synth-pop called "crunk", from the title of his debut, Get Crunk Who U Wit (1996).

The first star of East Coast's Latino rap was Christopher "Big Punisher" Rios, a second-generation Puertorican of New York who died of a heart attack shortly after climbing the charts with Capital Punishment (1998).

In Britain, Fundamental, the brainchild of Aki "Propa-ghandi" Nawaz, attempted an original and brutal fusion of hip-hop, industrial music and world-music on Seize The Time (1994), propelling his agit-prop raps with a style reminiscent of Tackhead, Consolidated and Public Enemy. And Asian Dub Foundation, a London-based sound system of ethnic Indian musicians halfway between Tackhead and Clash, concocted the militant ethnic-punk-folk-dance music of Rafi's Revenge (1998).

Not even Roots Manuva (Rodney Smith) was a true rapper, as the oneiric production of Brand New Second Hand (1999) owed to drum'n'bass and trip-hop, and his Jamaican roots creeped out on Run Come Save Me (2001).

Irish communist rappers Marxman sounded like the British version of Public Enemy on 33 Revolutions Per Minute (1992), but without the musical talent.

MC Solaar (Senegal-born Claude M'Barali) catapulted French hip-hop to the forefront of the international scene with the brilliant Qui Seme le Vent Recolte le Tempo (1991) and Prose Combat (1994).

Assalti Frontali, the leading hip-hop posse of Italy, unleashed the confrontational manifestos Terra di Nessuno (1992) and the hardcore-tinged Conflitto (1996).

In 1996 two rap singles reached the #1 spot in the pop charts. But also in the same year the Bay Area's Tupac Shakur/ 2Pac and (a few months later) The Notorious B.I.G. were murdered, two events that highlighted the violence inherent in the genre and in the industry.

A brief commercial fad was the opulent, or "jiggy", style served by producer Sean "Puffy" Combs on his own No Way Out (1997), credited to Puff Daddy, and on Money Power & Respect (1998) by rap trio LOX.

Whether it was a female response to gangsta-rap or a reaction to the new teenage idols, female rappers stepped up to the crude vocabulary of the men: New York's Kimberly "Lil' Kim" Jones, with Hard Core (1996), Philadelphia's Eve Jihan Jeffers, with Let There Be Eve (1999), Chicago's Shawntae "Da Brat" Harris, the first female rapper ever to score platinum with Funkdafied (1994), produced by Jermaine Dupri, and Miami's "Trina" (Katrina Laverne Taylor), with Da Baddest Bitch (2000), were representative of this raunch, aggressive, obscene, materialist, vulgar and profane tone.

In the second half of the decade, hip-hop artists became more conscious of the essence of hip-hop: it's the process, not the structure that makes a song a hip-hop song. Its process is a process of deconstruction, and can be applied to just about anything that has ever been recorded. The new awareness in the process resulted in a new awareness of the importance of sampling. The role of the sampling device in transforming both the sampled and the recipient material became more and more obvious to a generation of post-Malcom X African-Americans who, politically speaking, had been raised to challenge and transform stereotypes. Hip-hop artists became semiotic artists, artists who employed sonic icons to create a fantastic universe grounded in the real universe. The same process led to a rediscovery of melody (even pop crooning) and then to a rediscovery of live instruments, whose warm and humane sound linked back to the rural roots of hip-hop's urban African-Americans. The metamorphosis of hip-hop was also due to its own commercial success, which, de facto, removed it from the streets and moved it to the much more sophisticated lifestyle of Beverly Hills villas and Manhattan high-rise condos.

The obvious weakness of the entire hip-hop movement was in the lyrics, which were mostly naive, stereotyped, clumsy; and, in fact, did not age well.

Sophisticated hip-hop

The "sophisticated" age of hip-hop can be made to start with the Fugees (1), a trio from New Jersey (Lauryn Hill, Prakazrel "Pras" Michel, Wyclef "Clef" Jean) whose The Score (1996) fused hip-hop with jazz, rhythm'n'blues and reggae. Even more sophisticated was Wyclef Jean (1)'s first solo project, The Carnival (1997), a virtual tour of the black world, from Cuba to New Orleans to Jamaica to Africa, boasting eccentric arrangements.

Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter (1), the most commercially successful hip-hop artist of the era, epitomized the state of the art, from the gangsta-rap landmark Reasonable Doubt (1996) to the eclectic double album The Blueprint - The Gift & the Curse (2002), produced by Kanye West, to the post-modern concept American Gangster (2007).

New York rap was also resurrected by the success of Earl "DMX" Simmons' It's Dark and Hell Is Hot (1997).

Los Angeles' trio Abstract Tribe Unique offered a lyrical blend of soul and jazz on Mood Pieces (1998).

Ditto for Philadelphia-born Bahamadia (Antonia Reed), whose Kollage (1996) was a smooth, laid-back exercise in recasting the soul-jazz ballad into the context of rap music.

Chicago's hip-hop duo All Natural (rapper David "Capital D" Kelly and dj Tony "Tone B Nimble" Fields), members of the "Family Tree" posse, offered passionate raps on No Additives No Preservatives (1998).

At the turn of the century New York unleashed the creative geniuses of the AntiPop Consortium (1), whose Tragic Epilogue (2000) created a new genre ("digital hip-hop"?) by wedding rap with the new aesthetics of "glitch" music, and of Ian Bavitz, alias Aesop Rock (1), whose albums Float (2000) Bazooka Tooth (2003) overflowed with eccentric arrangements and haunting textures. Sensational delivered nightmarish, stoned, warped, non-linear rapping over lo-fi beats on Loaded With Power (1997).

New York-based spoken-word artist and hip-hop producer Mike Ladd (1) was more interested in sculpting a musical background to his poetry than in beats and rhymes on Easy Listening 4 Armageddon (1997) and especially Welcome to the Afterfuture (1999).

The most significat stylistic revolution of New York rap came with Dalek (3), the project of rapper Will Brooks and producer Alap "Oktopus" Momin. The five lengthy songs of Negro Necro Nekros (1998) and the electronic ethnic ambient noise hodgepodges of From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots (2002) delivered a baroque psychedelic version of Public Enemy's creative chaos. Dalek thrived halfway between the neurotic and the transcendental, the same way that industrial music did in the late 1970s. Absence (2005) was explosive like a shrapnel, dense like a lava stream and, still, elegant like a peacock's tail. But this was barely hip-hop at all. It was just layers of sounds and noises.

Instrumental hip-hop

Crucial for the development of an atmospheric pseudo-dance genre was instrumental hip-hop.

Instrumental hip-hop was largely legitimized by a Los Angeles native resident in London, DJ Shadow (1), born Josh Davis. A legendary turntablist, Davis used prominent bass lines and scratches to detonate his extended singles Entropy (1993) and In/Flux (1993), and basically bridged classical music and hip-hop on elaborate, multi-part compositions such as What Does Your Soul Look Like (1995). Endtroducing (1996) was possibly the first respectable album of all-instrumental hip-hop, entirely composed on the sampler but nonetheless lushly orchestrated.

The dub-tinged soundscapes of New York's Skiz "Spectre" Fernando (2) were best deployed on the imposing gothic, post-apocalyptic trilogy of The Illness (1995), The Second Coming (1997) and The End (1999), each of them the hip-hop equivalent of a William Blake poem.

With DJ Shadow and Spectre, instrumental, sample-based hip-hop became a genre of its own. Other instigators were Japanese dj DJ Krush, whose jazzy style shone on Strictly Turntablised (1994) and Ki-Oku (1998), featuring trumpeter Toshinori Kondo; and Herbalizer, London-based disc-jockeys Jake Wherry and Ollie "Teeba" Trattles, whose most daring experiment was Very Mercenary (1999).

San Francisco-based disc-jockey and virtuoso of the mixing board Dan "the Automator" Nakamura (1) sculpted Dr Octagon (1995), a collaboration with rapper Kool Keith and turntablist Richard "Q-Bert" Quitevis, Handsome Boy Modeling School's So How's Your Girl (1999), with Prince Paul, and the science-fiction concept album Deltron 3030 (2000), with rapper Del Tha Funkee Homosapien and turntablist Kid Koala.

DJ Shadow also helped create a new artistic figure: the turntablist. As more and more genres adopted the turntable as an instrument, it was inevitable that "virtuosi" began to appear. Atlanta's DJ Faust (1) was first to record an all-scratching album, Man Or Myth (1998). While he never realized a significant record, drum'n'bass specialist DJ Craze (Nicaraguan-born Arith Delgado) stunned the crowds of Miami with his acrobatic routines at the end of the decade.

New York's quartet of turntablists X-Ecutioners (1), featuring turntablists Robert "Swift" Aguilar and Anthony "Roc Raida" Williams, marked a nostalgic return to the era of virtuoso scratching with the elaborate performances of X-Pressions (1997), while Rob Swift (1)'s solo albums Soulful Fruit (1997) and the jazz tour de force of The Ablist (1999) were creating a new place in music for the technique.

The most influential dj collective of all times, Invisibl Skratch Piklz, consisted of turntablists from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Sacramento area of Latino and Philipino descent: Richard "Q-Bert" Quitevis (1), who also released the instrumental sci-fi concept album Wave Twisters (1998), "Mixmaster" Mike Schwartz, who also released Anti-Theft Device (1998) with producer Naut Humon (of Rhythm And Noise), Philippines-native Dave "D-Styles" Cuasito of the "Beat Junkies" crew, who debuted solo with Phantazmagorea (2002), a collection of songs composed entirely from scratching, Ritche "Yogafrog" Desuasido, "Mixmaster Mike" Schwartz, Jon "Shortkut Cruz, Lou "DJ Disk" Quintanilla, etc. Starting with Invasion of the Octopus People (1996), this collective of scratch virtuosi developed a separate art of DJ-ing.

Live Human (1), a San Francisco-based trio led by turntablist Carlos "DJ Quest" Aguiler, played sophisticated jams and adopted a technique of live sampling to continuously reinvents their compositions during live performances. The improvised music of Live Human Featuring DJ Quest (1997), bridged the gap between hip-hop and jazz better than any fusion or crossover project.

Canadian turntablist Kid Koala (Eric San), a spiritual disciple of Coldcut's sound collages, downplayed his virtuoso show on Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (2000) with an irriverent anarchic cartoonish humour.

Jason "DJ Logic" Kibler (1) contributed to redefine the turntablist as a jazz improviser on Project Logic (1999) and especially Anomaly (2001). DJ Logic seamlessly integrated the noise of his turntable with the instruments of his jazz combo (flute, saxophone, organ, violin, organ, trumpet).

Other notable albums of abstract instrumental hip-hop included: Peanut Butter Breaks (1994), by San Jose-based dj Chris "Peanut Butter Wolf" Manak, Soulmates (2000), by Los Angeles' Elvin "Nobody" Estela, Neutrino (2004), by Japanese duo Neutrino (Atsuhiro Murakami and Hideki Kuroda), etc.

Detroit's white producer Dabrye (Tadd Mullinix) created a new instrumental format out of hip-hop, funk, jazz and electronica on One/Three (2001).

In Los Angeles, Busdriver's white producer Alfred "Daedelus" Roberts (1) painted the disjointed murals of Invention (2002), setting collages of samples to hip-hop beats, mixing sci-fi electronica and orchestral kitsch; an art that he refined and culminated with the elegant retro parade of Exquisite Corpse (2005), where the samples of orchestral music of the 1930s came to constitute the musical equivalent of a collective stream of consciousness.

Inspired by New York's "illbient" scene, a number of djs aimed for a hip-hop that could transcend hip-hop, that is for a new (ambient, psychological, free-form) form of art founded on the marriage of poetry and sound. Ohio-born dj Boom Bip (Bryan Hollon), a self-described "anti-dj", well impersonated the sound sculptor and collage assembler of the new wave of hip-hop with the mind-boggling exercise in hip-hop counterpoint of Seed to Sun (2002).

RJD2, the project of white Ohio-based producer Ramble Jon Krohn, turned Deadringer (Def Jux, 2002) into a tour de force of cinematic collages of samples and wicked stuttering beats, dilating and deforming Sixties soundtracks, smooth jazz, soul themes, gloomy atmospheres.

Lucas "Cut Chemist" MacFadden rediscovered the joyful childish art of audio collage on The Audience's Listening (2006).

James Yancey upped the ante of instrumental samples-based (and schizophrenically fragmented) hip-hop with Donuts (2006), credited to both his nicknames J Dilla and Jay Dee.

White rap

During the 1990s, white rap acts caught up with blacks. Initially, white musicians such as Beck didn't quite get the whole point of rapping. Thus, for example, Everlast's Whitey Ford Sings The Blues (1998) merely used hip-hop as a rhythmic background for their folk-style meditations. On their debut album G. Love & Special Sauce (1994), Philadelphia's G. Love & Special Sauce, led by guitarist and vocalist Garrett Dutton, bridged vintage talking blues and contemporary rap.

Blaxpoitation of rap began in earnest with the most celebrated white rapper of the era, Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem (2), whose The Slim Shady (1999) and The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) unleashed angry rants at American society and resonated with the masses of disaffected white kids from the suburbia.

The whole model of the "singer songwriter" was revolutionized by the advent of white rappers such as Eminem: they introduced not only the syncopated rhyming but also the brutal subjects of rap music to an audience of middle-class white kids.

One of the most influential figures at the turn of the millennium was white producer El-P, aka El Producto, born Jaime Meline in New York. He founded Company Flow (1), whose Funcrusher Plus (1997) and especially the instrumental Little Johnny From The Hospital (1999) were the most were the most bombastic, ebullient and explosive works of the time, and crafted the soundscape of Cannibal Ox (1)'s The Cold Vein (2001), a project risen from the ashes of Company Flow (Vast Aire and Vordul Megilah), before releasing his first solo album, the neurotic sci-fi concept Fantastic Damage (2002). Throughout his work, EL-P harked back to the anthemic, ebullient and explosive mix of Public Enemy.

El-P's influence was visible on Rjyan "Cex" Kidwell's fusion of hip-hop, pop and avantgarde electronics on Being Ridden (2003).

cLOUDDEAD (2), a trio of white hip-hop artists from the Oakland-based "Anticon" collective (producer David "Odd Nosdam" Madson and rappers Adam "Doseone" Drucker and Yoni "why?" Wolf), transcended the canon of hip-hop music on the six-movement cLOUDDEAD (2001) and Ten (2004). They offered hip-hop distorted through the lenses of a dystopian vision or through the nervous breakdown of an urban werewolf. The sound effects constituted the core, not just the periphery, of the music, at times even reminiscent of ambient music and industrial music. Doseone also fronted Subtle (1), a sextet featuring guitarist Jordan Dalrymple, keyboardist Dax Pierson, clarinetist Marty Dowers, cellist Alexander Kort and electronic percussionist Jeffrey "Jel" Logan. Despite the jazz-like line-up, A New White (2004) was devoted to progressive rap-rock fusion with a fixation for the catchy Sixties. Having mastered the technique of mixing hard beats and dense textures, Subtle interjected psychedelic, glitch, illbient, hip-hop, industrial, pop and even atonal chamber music into Doseone's frantic, demented, acrobatic rapping on the better choreographed For Hero For Fool (2006). Subtle's trilogy of concept albums, continued by the more melodic Exiting Arm (2008), chronicled the life of a rapper, Hour Hero Yes.

Tim "Sole" Holland, the main brain behind the "Anticon" collective, unfolded his erudite stream of consciousness with punk fervor over a fluctuating layer of samples and live instruments on Bottle Of Humans (2000) and Selling Live Water (2003).

Another white member of Oakland's "Anticon" posse, Brendon "Alias" Whitney wed introspective lyrics and atmospheric downtempo electronics on The Other Side of the Looking Glass (2002), and moved towards noir jazz with the instrumental album Muted (2003).

Anticon also nursed the talent of frenzied rapper Sage Francis (1), Paul Franklin, the best lyricist of his generation, whose Personal Journals (2002) and A Healthy Distrust (2005) became the classics of "emo hip-hop", his interference of political and personal discourses enhanced by a new generation of beatmakers and producers.

Canadian hip-hop producer and rapper Richard "Buck 65" Terfry was, at heart, an existential hobo whose laments relied on piano and guitar as much as on the traditional hip-hop arsenal. The 45-minute long piece Language Arts (1997) and the concept album Vertex (1999) displayed a unique art of stark storytelling and philosophizing, mixing folk into hip-hop.

The border between vocal and instrumental tracks was blurred in the wasteland sculpted by Canadian dj Robert Sixtoo Squire (2), a member of the "Anticon" collective, on the lengthy jams The Canada Project, off Songs I Hate and Other People Moments (2001), Duration Project, off Duration (2002), The Mile-End Artbike, off Antogonist Survival Kit (2003), Storm Clouds & Silver Linings and Boxcutter Emporium, off Chewing On Glass & Other Miracle Cures (2004). The guesting MCs are merely part of the murky, downtempo, post-industrial production, just like the samples, the electronics, the fractured beats and the live instrumentation.

Atlanta's white producer Prefuse 73 (1), Scott Herren, also active as post-rocker Savath & Savalas, heralded laptop-based hip-hop with Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives (2001), a tour de force of fractured, warped, incoherent stream of consciousness that mixed glitch music, deconstructed vocals and jazz patterns. Two albums later, Herren gave his project a more organic and humane face by employing a vast assortment of voices on Surrounded By Silence (2005).

Northern State is a trio of college-educated white female rappers from New York (Julie "Hesta Prynn" Potash, Correne "Guinea Love" Spero and Robyn "DJ Sprout" Goodmark) that rediscovered the Beastie Boys sound on Dying In Stereo (2003).

Party Fun Action Committee, featuring Aesop Rock's producer Tony "Blockhead" Simon, penned the goofy hip-hopera Let's Get Serious (2003).

White rapper Streets (Mike Skinner), became the English equivalent of Eminem with Original Pirate Material (2002), although his music was grounded on "garage" and his lyrics were frequently sung.

San Francisco's Gold Chains, aka Topher LaFata, mixed rock, reggae and techno on Gold Chains (2001).

Atmosphere, the project of Minneapolis-based rapper Sean "Slug" Daley and producer Anthony "Ant" Davis, coined an introspective "emo-rap" on God Loves Ugly (2002).

All in all, white hip-hop music was more influential on white popular music than on hip-hop proper: it grafted the production, rhythmic and rhyming techniques of black hip-hop music onto the old singer-songwriter genre (whether political, introspective or sociological). The political "discourse" of white hip-hop remained fundamentally different from the discourse of black hip-hop. The former was conditioned by the tradition of Euro-American political idealism, which, instead, was never truly part of the Afro-American discourse, which has been traditionally centered on civil rights. Ditto for analytic/existential introspection, which was never truly part of the black repertoire (the blues was a kind of atmospheric introspection, and, in any case, a community-wide introspection, an "inter-spection"). Even the most extreme cases (such as Eminem) displayed a psychoanalytic quality that was generally missing in black hip-hop. Ditto for the sociological analysis, which was more rational than antagonistic: white rappers displayed an analytic approach to refounding society as opposed to the cynicism and fatalism of black rappers. To summarize, white hip-hop and black hip-hop had different purposes and functions. Ultimately, it was a matter of human geography: the suburbs as opposed to the ghettos. White people had an "American Dream" that is still very much part of their subconscious (whether one succeeded or failed): black people's "dream" was still Martin Luther's dream, a wildly different kind of dream.

Urban soul

"Urban" was the nickname grafted to the smooth and sophisticated rhythm'n'blues ballad of the late 1980s, best personified by Janet Jackson (Michael's sister) and Whitney Houston. Jackson debuted with Control (1986), crafted by producers Jimmy Jam (James Harris) and Terry Lewis that offered urban soul music tinged with hip-hop beats to propel her sensual whisper. Houston exploded with Saving All My Love (1985), How Will I Know (1985), Greatest Love Of All (1985), I Wanna Dance With Somebody (1987), Didn't We Almost Have It All (1987), One Moment In Time (1988).

Urban soul came to dominate pop music as well, thanks to the stars of Shalamar's singer Jody Watley (from Los Angeles), Brandy Norwood (also from the Los Angeles area) and Macy Gray (born Natalie McIntyre in Ohio and based in Los Angeles), revealed by the moribund growl of I Try (1999), an rousing ballad composed with keyboardist Jeremy Ruzumna, bassist David Wilder and guitarist Jinsoo Lim. The fact that black female artists such as Whitney Houston and Janet Jackson came to dominate the charts and set new sale records was, if nothing else, proof that black artists and female artists had made tremendous progress in being accepted by a world that used to worship only male white idols such as the Beatles and Elvis Presley.

Urban soul became a much more rhythmic affair in 1988, after Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced Janet Jackson's Control (1986), Antonio "L.A." Reid and Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds produced the Pebbles' Pebbles and after Teddy Riley produced Keith Sweat's Make It Last Forever. Finally, Teddy Riley's own group Guy and Bobby Brown's second album, Don't Be Cruel (1988), also produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface, fused urban soul with hip-hop to create "new jack swing". Bobby Brown had beeen a member of teenage-group New Edition, whose biggest hit, Cool It Now (1984), was probably the first to use rapping in a pop-soul context. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis topped everybody else with Janet Jackson's second album, Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989). Later, the style was perfected by producer Sean "Puffy" Combs on Mary J. Blige's What's the 411? (1992), and by producers/writers Tim "Timbaland" Mosley and Melissa "Missy" Elliott on the second album by teen-idol Aaliyah (Haughton), One In A Million (1996). Timbaland pioneered the technique of custom-creating the beat via digital keyboards instead of adding a break-beat to a sample.

The most successful of the new jack swing artists were Philadelphia's Boyz II Men, who established their "hip-wop" style (new jack swing plus four-part harmonies a` la doo-wop) with Cooleyhighharmony (1991), produced by Michael Bivins of the New Edition, and churned out colossal hits such as the Babyface-penned End of the Road (1992), that broke a record held by Elvis Presley since 1956, I'll Make Love to You (1994), another Babyface creation (which even beat the previous record), On Bended Knee (1994), produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis (a hit which beat their own record), and One Sweet Day (1995), a duet with Mariah Carey (which, again, broke their own previous record). The era of new jack swing ended with Usher (Raymond)'s My Way (1997), produced by Jermaine Dupri, Babyface and Sean "Puffy" Combs, and by multi-instrumentalist Robert "R" Kelly, whose double album R (1998) marked a revival of classic soul music. Kelly later premiered his campy, cartoonish television soap hip-hopera Trapped In The Closet (2005-07) that looked like a parody of the whole scene.

The spiritual message and the Caribbean-pop-rap fusion of London-born Des'ree Weekes came to focus on I Ain't Movin' (1994).

Assembled in 1988 by Los Angeles writers/producers Denzil Foster and Thomas McElroy (both former Club Nouveau), the female quartet En Vogue rejuvinated the concept of the "girl group" for the video age with their second album Funky Divas (1992). However, the new vanguard of female rhythm'n'blues groups was represented by TLC, the brainchild of producer Dallas Austin, that debuted with Ooooooohhh... (1992). They, in turn, inspired Houston's Destiny's Child (featuring the rising star of Beyonce Knowles), who came to dominate the charts at the turn of the century.

The Minneapolis sextet Mint Condition was the most competent combo of mainstream rhythm'n'blues throughout the 1990s, from Breakin' My Heart (1991) to What Kind of Man Would I Be (1996).

A revival of soul music, updated to the technology of the hip-hop era, was heralded by D'Angelo's Brown Sugar (1995), Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite (1996), a sumptuous Marvin Gaye-style romantic concept album, and by Texas-born singer-songwriter Erykah "Badu" Wright's Baduizm (1997). In fact, it had been predated by, yet again, the influential production duo of L.A. Reid and Babyface, for example on Toni Braxton's two massive bestsellers, Toni Braxton (1993) and Secrets (1996), the latter containing one of the most famous ballads of all times (Un-break My Heart, composed by Diane Warren). The British equivalent of Badu was also the most talented of the batch, as far as vocals go, Amy Winehouse, who debuted with Frank (2003), a painful exhibition of a teenager's turbulent lifestyle.

Outkast's Andre 3000 (Benjamin) rediscovered Prince's erotic funk-soul music on The Love Below (2003).

The Fugees' vocalist Lauryn Hill (1) delivered in a versatile, booming voice the elegant and sincere allegories of The Miseducation Of (1998), across a broad stylistic range.

Virginia's singer-rapper-songwriter Melissa "Missy" Elliott (1) and Virginia's producer Tim "Timbaland" Mosley (members of the hip-hop production crew "Da Bassment") proved to be a lethal combination: Elliott's sultry vocals, gymnastic raps and female-centric lyrics coupled with Timbaland's stuttering, digital grooves created a mood that was simultaneously sensitive, confrontational, hedonistic, stark and futuristic on Supa Dupa Fly (1997). The duo veered towards a format that mixed freely intimate ballads, dancefloor tracks and angry raps on So Addictive (2001).

At the turn of the century, Kelis Rogers inherited the crown of Queen Latifah and Missy Elliott with her feminist-tinged fusion of hip-hop and rhythm'n'blues on Kaleidoscope (1999), aggressively produced by The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams).

Missouri's laid-back pop-rapper Nelly (Cornell Haynes) became the genre's biggest seller with Country Grammar (2000), Nellyville (2002) and the double album Sweatsuit (2004).

Songwriter and pianist Alicia "Keys" Cook dramatically increased the level of musicianship with her Songs in A Minor (2001).

This was the age of superproducers The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams) and Tim "Timbaland" Mosley, both based in Virginia Beach, both masters of the new digital technology based on the "Pro Tools" software introduced in 1991. The former were emblematic of the cold and thin sound of the digital age (as opposed to the warm and thick sound of classic pop, soul and rock music), while the latter introduced the sound of drum'n'bass into pop and soul music. Both could work on just about any kind of material, as proven by their co-production of white teenage idol Justin Timberlake's Justified (2002). Both owed a lot to Teddy Riley, the Harlem producer who had made Virginia Beach the Mecca of the new sound in the first place, when he opened his "Future Recording Studios" there in 1991.

Hip-hop 2000

As white hip-hop became more competitive, black hip-hop reached a creative crisis that forced the new generations to focus on sound manipulation rather than on messages. At the turn of the century, hip-hop music was borrowing from other musical genres as well as recycling its own vocabulary of breaks, samples, and themes. New technology allowed producers to wrap everything into an original art of atmosphere/ambience sculpting. The "message" was becoming less and less important. The sociopolitical landscape was also radically changed by the 2001 terrorist attacks against New York and Washington: the debate shifted from class conflict to religious conflict, which contributed to neutralize the original sociopolitical fuel of hip-hop music.

Virginia-based production team The Neptunes (Chad Hugo and Pharrell Williams), already among the most successful hip-hop producers, formed N.E.R.D. with rapper Sheldon "Shay" Haley. In Search Of (2001), remixed the following year with live instrumentation, and especially Fly or Die (2004) indulged in a neurotic melange of sonic stereotypes and production techniques of metal, funk, soul and pop. They also produced the albums by Clipse (1), the duo of Virginia brothers Gene "Malice" and Terrence "Pusha" Thornton, two of the sonic jewels of the decade: Lord Willin' (2002) and Hell Hath No Fury (2006).

Northern Californian duo Blackalicious (rapper Tim "Gift of Gab" Parker and producer Xavier "Chief Xcel" Mosley) crafted a lyrical and nostalgic style with Nia (2000).

London's Dylan Mills, better known as Dizzee Rascal (1), a member of the "Roll Deep Crew", promoted a new genre ("grime"), an abrasive version of "garage" (itself a variant of drum'n'bass), with Boy in Da Corner (2003). The other British "next big thing" of the era was Sri Lankan-born agit-prop chanteuse Maya Arulpragasam, or M.I.A. for short, whose Arular (2005) simply mixed hip-hop, reggae and pop, while fostering a hard-line ideology that embraced both the political and the sexual, part Jello Biafra and part Madonna. Kala (2007) was less immediate but more visceral, a giant cauldron of artificial, natural, social and musical sounds.

The decadence of West-Coast rap was well represented by the groups that were supposed to rejuvinate it, and that, in fact, failed to: Dilated Peoples and Jurassic 5, whose enthusiastic and amusing Quality Control (2000) and especially Power in Numbers (2002) amounted de facto to a revival of old-fashioned rap (despite Cut Chemist's presence). Even Madvillain (1)'s Madvillainy (Stones Throw, 2004), the much publicized collaboration between New York-based rapper Daniel "MF Doom" Dumile (the former "Zen Love" of KMD) and Los Angeles-based producer Otis "Madlib" Jackson, was mostly an impressive tour de force of production techniques; the same skills that Jackson had already displayed on several of his own recordings, notably Quasimoto's The Unseen (2000) and Yesterdays New Quintet's Angles Without Edges (2001), frequently blurring the border between psychedelic, jazz and hip-hop music. MF Doom, on the other hand, lent his rapping skills also to Dangerdoom's The Mouse And The Mask (2005), a collaboration with Danger Mouse.

New York's producer Brian "Danger Mouse" Burton, better known for mixing together vocals and beats from Jay Z's Black Album and snippets from the Beatles' White Album to create his Grey Album (2004), formed Gnarls Barkley with Goodie Mob's vocalist Cee-Lo Green. The soul, pop and hip-hop hybrid of their St Elsewhere (2006) signaled a shift towards a reappropriation of the past.

Other significant albums released at the turn of the century included: Seven Eyes Seven Horns (1999), by producer Phillip "Scaramanga" Collington, who worked on Kool Keith's Dr Octagon project; Walter "Killah Priest" Reed's spiritual tour de force Heavy Mental (1998), from New York; Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's Power of the Dollar (1999), from New York, a catchy product for the masses, produced by "Trackmasters" (i.e. the duo of Jean-Claude "Poke" Olivier and Samuel "Tone" Barnes), from a former crack dealer destined to become a rap superstar (Get Rich or Die Tryin' in 2003 and The Massacre in 2005 set records of sales); Supreme Clientele (2000) and The Pretty Toney Album (2004), by Wu-Tang Clan's member Dennis "Ghostface Killah" Coles; the Metabolics' M-Virus (1999), a New York duo produced by Bimos; Christopher "Ludacris" Bridges' Back For The First Time (2000), from Atlanta; Coming Forth By Day - The Book Of The Dead (2000), by New Jersey's jazz-hop crew Scienz of Life; Let's Get Ready (2000), the fifth album by New Orleans rapper Mystikal, a pupil of Master P who adopted a James Brown-ish persona; People Under the Stairs' second album Question in the Form of an Answer (2000), a collection of jams almost entirely created from funk and jazz samples, the project of Los Angeles Mike "Double K" Turner and Chris "Thes One" Portugal, bent on reappropriating the D.I.Y. aesthetics of early party-rap; Black Mamba Serums (2004), by former Company Flow rapper Justin "Bigg Jus" Ingleton; Ty Upwards' Awkward (2001), an original Afro-funk-jazz-rap fusion from Britain; The End of the Beginning (2003), by veteran Los Angeles rapper Murs, a former member of 3 Melancholy Gypsies (or 3MG) and Mystik Journeymen's "Living Legends" collective, produced by 9th Wonder; Little Brother's The Listening (2003), the North Carolina-based brainchild of 9th Wonder; Dudley Perkins' A Lil Light (2003), another oneiric production by Madlib; etc.

The new auteurs included: Kansas City's Aaron "Tech N9ne" Yates, with the horrorcore rap-rock fusion of The Calm Before The Storm (1999), Anghellic (2001) and Absolute Power (2002); New York's Terrence "Tes" Tessora, with the apocalyptic post-industrial soundscapes of the Take Home (2000) and x2 (2003); New York's Talib Kweli, with Quality (2002); Canada's K-OS (Kheaven Brereton), with Exit (2003); etc.

On the lighter side, Los Angeles' rapper Regan "Busdriver" Farquar, mixed goofy energetic scat-tinged rapping and eclectic beats on Temporary Forever (2002).

Chicago's Kanye West (2) produced Jay-Z, Talib Kweli and Alicia Keys and then fashioned one of the most personal concepts of the era, the soul-infected The College Dropout (2004). Hyper-chromatic three-dimensional arrangements turned Late Registration (2005) into a stately hip-hop fresco and a distillation of the genre's existential legacy.

The combination of Gershwin "BlackBird" Hutchinson, a versatile West Coast rapper and singer, and the quasi-psychedelic imagination of producer Paris Zax yielded Bird's Eye View (2005). In turn, Paris Zax's all-instrumental Unpath'D Waters (2005) was a solid attempt at fusing hip-hop and acid-rock.

Boston's white rapper Edan Portnoy fused acid-rock and hip-hop on Beauty And The Beat (2005), the same way Sly Stone fused acid-rock and funk music four decades earlier.

The idea of combining hip-hop and live instruments was explored in novel settings. For example, the Dakah Hip Hop Orchestra, organized in 1999 in Los Angeles by saxophonist Geoff Gallegos with up to 60 players and MCs, blended hip-hop, jazz and classical music on the 12-song cycle of the Unfinished Symphony (2004).

The master of diction and free-form rapping was New Orleans' Lil Wayne (Dwayne Carter), who had debuted with Tha Block Is Hot (1999), produced by Mannie Fresh (Byron Thomas), but reinvented himself on the trilogy of Tha Carter (2004), Tha Carter II (2005) and Tha Carter III (2008).

The new star of soul music was Raheem DeVaughn, who debuted with The Love Experience (2005) and broke through with the more traditional Love Behind the Melody (2008).