The best era of Westcoast Rap was....

[ikke]

2005-2010 Ofcourse[/Troll]

[Gamestarr]

Obvious.

[JML-G]

  @ whoever voted for 05-10

[2euce 7even]

95/96 best years for hip hop (west & east)

[SAINTX111]

1980 - 1996  GOLDEN

[Detox Iz Not Active]

explain "2005-2010 (game, g malone, jay rock)" option to me


only one of those people have or ever will release an album

[Detox Is A Myth!!!]

1995 was hip hop's best year.  It was the year when everything intersected perfectly -- lyrical technique and skills, production, variety and ingenuity, artistic inspiration, big enough album budgets, radio supporting the right artistic characteristics rather than gimmicks and artists doing the same...but still hadn't quite crossed over into pop music.  That started gradually throughout 96 until Pac and Big got shot, and then hip hop went totally pop to make amends for the killings and to put hip hop's "violent" past behind it by embracing wholly mainstream approaches to everything.  And gradually, after that, hip hop got so big and so mainstream that the bubble burst and hip hop as a genre just popped (pun intended) like a balloon and fell down to earth where it is now -- dead on the ground for the most part.

1995, so I voted for 1990-1995.

[dnjp4life]

I think West hip-hop hit its peak in 1996, but then those spate of albums that followed 2001 (in 1999) brought it back again to a certain extent.  I like a lot of the 'new west' artists but they will never reach the heights of artists in the early-to-mid '90s.