Musically, what is different between popular late 80’s / early 90’s hip hop and today’s hip hop?
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The technology and instruments have changed over time. 80’s hip hop started with using vinyl records and finding loops to repeat for someone to rap over. This is called sampling. They take old music and turn it into something a little different to make a hip hop beat. Fairly quickly, people made new technology that could sample and change the music in new ways. They could take just one hit of a drum and use that rather than a 10 second loop. New keyboards and synthesizers were made, and new machines to make drum sounds. All these different equipment and techiniques have been changing the sound of hip hop from sampling a James Brown [“funky drummer”](https://youtu.be/NKB2N_Fyyh8) all the way to the very computer based music that is today’s popular hip hop. And as time moves forward, the music of the past that you can sample moves forward too. Now hip hop songs sample other hip hop songs that were sampling soul music [(Aretha Franklin to Mos Def to JID)](https://youtu.be/Pp8jF3-Fu98)! Now some rappers sing a bunch and many use autotune and other vocal effects.
Also, on top of all that, the lyrics are a giant part of the music, and the lyrics reflect the time period. Early hip hop was made for parties and dancing, and plenty of it is still that but the struggles of life get discussed differently as time passes. From poverty to parties to violence to story telling to love to political messages. And depending on the era people talk about those things differently. The way people’s stresses and feelings have changed over time and the genre of hip hop has grown from something that was a lot of male shows of strength and popularity to a wider range where there is still that part but now more women and more people being vulnerable and somber/sad too.
Rhyming schemes have gotten much more complex amongst some people, but there are people with simple rhymes still too, especially in the most popular music.
See [Big Daddy Kane in 1988](https://youtu.be/eeRj3uShR9w) vs [MF Doom in 2004](https://youtu.be/LnJs0TdVWLQ) rhymes highligted
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