Famous hip-hop hotbeds include New York, Los Angeles and Atlanta.
Here’s a vote for Jersey. The state’s hip-hop has historically been authentic, raw, smart, strong and underrecognized. Yet the state has produced more than its share of hip-hop superstars, from Naughty by Nature to Wu-Tang Clan to Fetty Wap. We won’t even get into how many people in the industry have homes in Jersey, from Sean Combs in Alpine to Russell Simmons in Saddle River.
Bulletproof Belv’s ‘Proof’ for Asbury Park hip-hop
Oh, we Jerseyans were right there at hip-hop’s beginnings. The first Top-40 rap record, “Rapper’s Delight,” was recorded by the Sugar Hill Gang at Englewood’s Sugar Hill Studios in 1979.
Here is our list of the best dozen hip-hop acts to come out of Jersey:
1. Naughty by Nature (East Orange) — Are you down with “O.P.P.”? Sure, it’s been a while since the halcyon days of ’91 when East Orange’s Naughty by Nature scored a smash with Jackson 5-sampled ode to, er, cheating, but the song still sounds as vibrant today. It was unique for its ability to be both street and pop at the same time, an important cog in the mainstreaming of hip-hop.
Naughty by Nature tops our list of Jersey’s greatest hip-hop acts because they have the hits — “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” “Hip Hop Hooray,” “Feel Me Flow” and “Jamboree” — and they haven’t veered off of the mission for the last 25 years. They are quintessential Jersey — bold, playful, musical and menacing. Just what was member Treach doing with that machete? We don’t think anyone has had the courage to ask him.
2. Fugees (South Orange) — Ready or not, here they come. The genre expanding Fugees not only expanded what hip-hop can be with their two classic mid-’90s albums, “Blunted on Reality” (1994) and the “The Score” (1996), but they broadened the political scope of the music with an insightfulness and flavor that hasn’t been matched since.
It’s a world view from Jersey, not far removed from the working man ethos of Bruce Springsteen. The group took their name from the term for a Haitian-American refugee camp and their influences were wide-ranging, from doo-wop to reggae to ’70s soul. Members Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and Pras Michel have all had successful careers after “The Score” and their legacy is secure, with everyone from Kanye West to Trey Songz sampling Fugees songs.
3. Wu-Tang Clan (Millstone Township) — With a lineup this expansive — at last count, there were nine active members — it was inevitable that legendary East Coast rap crew Wu-Tang Clan would have a Garden State connection. Leader and ringmaster RZA, born Robert Diggs, owns a home in Millstone Township, and the group has lots of love for Jersey. “Asbury Park was one of the coolest places for Wu-Tang back in our heyday,” RZA told the Asbury Park Press in 2014. “I remember a lot of fans coming from Asbury Park and supporting us.”
Starting with their game-changing 1993 debut “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)” the masterful MCs of Wu-Tang dropped rhymes that were impassioned, raw, idiosyncratic and almost gleefully nerdy, embedding references to everything from exploitation cinema to Hall and Oates. The Clan was still shining as of its most recent album, “A Better Tomorrow” (2014), with an incendiary title track built around a soulful sample of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “Wake Up Everybody.”
4. Queen Latifah (Newark) — The hip-hop world before 1989 was pretty much a men’s club. Queen Latifah, born Dana Owens in Newark, changed that with her 1989 hit, “Ladies First.” The track, which guest starred Monie Love, was an Afro-centric New Jack burner that spotlighted Latifah’s underrated rhyming skills and a new direction for ladies in hip-hop.
Latifah rolled out a strings of hits over the next few years, including “Fly Girl,” “Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here,” “How Do I Love Thee” and “U.N.I.T.Y.,” but the move to a TV sitcom, FOX’s “Living Single,” in 1993 signaled a broadening of the Latifah brand and successful talk shows, movies and Broadway followed. She’s won a Grammy, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is a member of the New Jersey Hall of Fame.
5. Parliament Funkadelic (Plainfield)— Parliament Funkdelic is not exactly a hip-hop group. Sure, some songs, like “Pumping It Up,” have parts that are half sung in a way that it could be called an example of early rap. But we include the iconic P-Funk as the group’s music was thoroughly mined for samples for all styles of hip-hop.
Case in point, the band’s “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker)” has been sampled more than 35 times by major artists, everyone from Method Man and Redman to Snoop Dogg, according to the www.whosampled.com website. Also, there would be no G-Funk without P-Funk. George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic drew the blueprint for hip-hop, and generations have traced the outlines over since.
6. Sugar Hill Gang (Englewood)— Where did hip-hop make the leap from the streets to the airwaves on its way to dominating popular culture worldwide? In Bergen County, of course. It was in Englewood, of all places, that an assembled “treacherous trio” of rappers — Michael “Wonder Mike” Wright, Guy “Master Gee” O’Brien and Henry “Big Bank Hank” Jackson — joined forces to craft “Rapper’s Delight,” a seven-minute-plus story-song built around a still-funky sample of “Good Times” by Chic that was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014. For further listening, dig the Gang’s 1981 follow-up hit “Apache,” immortalized in a 1995 episode of “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
7. Ice-T (Newark)— Thanks to unflinching lyrical singles like “6 in the Mornin’ ” (1986) and “Colors” (1988), controversial rapper Ice-T is widely regarded as one of the architects of the gangsta rap genre that came raging out of the West Coast in the mid-to-late-’80s. But while his music may be strongly associated with a California sound, Ice-T, a.k.a. Tracy Marrow, was born in Newark, grew up in Summit and currently lives in Edgewater.
8. Poor Righteous Teachers (Trenton) —“Trenton Makes the World Takes” reads the famous sign. Trenton’s Poor Righteous Teacher made pointed conscious hip-hop rhymes with an Afro-centric appeal. The early ’90s trio — Wise Intelligent, Culture Freedom and Father Shaheed — never attained mainstream success but they demonstrated that if you’re from Jersey, you go hard and you go with intellect.
9. Redman (Newark)— Newark native Redman, born Reginald Noble, has been releasing solo LPs pretty consistently for more than 20 years, most recently putting out “Mudface” last year. But for whatever reason, it’s been his collaborations, such as his longtime partnership with Method Man and his work as a member of supergroup Def Squad, that have received the most consistent attention. Redman has Grammy nominations for his appearances on Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty” in 2003 and and De La Soul’s “Ooh” in 2001.
10. Fetty Wap (Paterson)— Newcomer Fetty Wap, a.k.a. Willie Maxwell II of Paterson, scored multiple hits in 2015 and his “Trap Queen” was the club banger of the summer. In fact, “Trap Queen,” “My Way” and “679” tied a record set by The Beatles for a chart-topping debut run. His star is nova bright and his beats and rhymes have an originality and freshness that make Fetty worthy of inclusion on this list.
11. Scienz of Life (Piscataway)—The jazzy beats, Native Tongues-vibe and cerebral rhymes of Scienz of Life’s 2000 debut, “Coming Forth By Day: The Book of the Dead,” established the Central Jersey trio as one of the leading lights of new millennium underground hip-hop. Since then, member Lil Sci, aka John Robinson, with his ability to lay into multiple styles of hip-hop, has established himself as a solo artist of the first rate.
12. Miilkbone (Perth Amboy) — Miilkbone’s 1995 Capitol Records album “Da Miilkate,” thanks to the album’s gritty tales, hammer smash beats and Miilkbone’s Dr. Dre-like drawl, has become a hard-to-get cult classic. The track “Wherez the Party At” feature a guest rhyme from someone you might recognize — the Notorious B.I.G. Not bad for a guy from Perth Amboy. Miilkbone, aka Thomas Wlodarczyk, has just released a new single, “I Put in My Work,” which proves he’s still white hot.
