My buddy, the Commodore, formerly known in blog parlance as Sushi Bar, recently asked me a question that I figured I'd open up to the forum. Incidentally, I changed his nickname because Sushi Bar was an exceedingly stupid nickname that I came up with and the Commodore is a good nickname, so there. Anyway, he's having a party (presumably in his new South American enclave) and wants to have an old school hip hop theme. Except he spent those formative years in Texas listening to the Judds or whoever, so he doesn't know anything about it. The question, then, is if you were to have an old school hip hop party, what would you include? For the sake of argument, let's say that old school is anything more than 10 years old.
The obvious ones:
"Scenario" - A Tribe Called Quest
"This or That" - Black Sheep
"OPP" - Naughty by Nature (You could substitute "Hip Hop Hooray" if necessary)
"Rapper's Delight" - Sugar Hill Gang
"Rock Box" - Run DMC (any song by Run DMC is acceptable. This is my favorite)
"They Want EFX" - Das EFX
"Momma Said Knock You Out" - LL Cool J
"Sometimes We Rhyme Slow" - Nice and Smooth
"Fugee La" - The Fugees
"The Humpty Dance" - Digital Underground
A couple of personal favorites:
"Parents Just Don't Understand" - DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
"Basketball" - Curtis Blow
"Where I'm From" - Digable Planets
"93 'Til Infinity" - Souls of Mischief
What would you include? My list is far more old school than 10 years. I should have included some Jay Z and probably Eminem. I also left a few out intentionally, in order to elicit some comments. So comment, biotches.