Oakland Rap Top Ten 1990

01) Too $hort / "The Ghetto"
02) Richie Rich / "Don't Do It"
03) Mhisani / "Y.O.U.T.H."
04) 415 / "Groupie"
05) Mac Mill / "Dangler"
06) D-Loc / "Ace In The Hole"
07) Digital Underground / "The Way We Swing"
08) 2 Bigg MC / "He's the King of Hype"
09) Freddy B / "Why"
10) MC Valentine, K-Cloud & Crew / "Have You Seen Her?"
Digging in the Bay Area archives today I came across this Oakland Rap Top Ten chart from eighteen years ago. The list is a subjective singles/songs based chart that I had originally tallied based on a combination of artists I was writing about at the time for my Bay Area column in Source magazine and on radio airplay on the weekly Sunday hip-hop radio show (Hip Hop Slam) I did at the time. The show, on KALX 90.7FM, was co-hosted along with G-Spot (now heard on KPFA late Saturday nights) in addition to, invariably, a ton of guests (a great many of them Bay Area) rolling through the Berkeley studios each week, including all of the artists in this top ten. Note that back circa 1990, DJs and writers generally used the word "rap" to describe these artists rather than "hip-hop," even though it was recognized as a part of hip-hop.

01) Too $hort / "The Ghetto"
02) Richie Rich / "Don't Do It"
03) Mhisani / "Y.O.U.T.H."
04) 415 / "Groupie"
05) Mac Mill / "Dangler"
06) D-Loc / "Ace In The Hole"
07) Digital Underground / "The Way We Swing"
08) 2 Bigg MC / "He's the King of Hype"
09) Freddy B / "Why"
10) MC Valentine, K-Cloud & Crew / "Have You Seen Her?"
Digging in the Bay Area archives today I came across this Oakland Rap Top Ten chart from eighteen years ago. The list is a subjective singles/songs based chart that I had originally tallied based on a combination of artists I was writing about at the time for my Bay Area column in Source magazine and on radio airplay on the weekly Sunday hip-hop radio show (Hip Hop Slam) I did at the time. The show, on KALX 90.7FM, was co-hosted along with G-Spot (now heard on KPFA late Saturday nights) in addition to, invariably, a ton of guests (a great many of them Bay Area) rolling through the Berkeley studios each week, including all of the artists in this top ten. Note that back circa 1990, DJs and writers generally used the word "rap" to describe these artists rather than "hip-hop," even though it was recognized as a part of hip-hop.





Amoeba etc. Luis in the hip-hop department at the Haight Street Amoeba, who kindly supplied this week's Hip-Hop Top Five, said that Bay Area music buyers love Lil Wayne just as much as national audiences (especially considering the historic Bay Area/Dirty South connections), but that their dedication to Bay Area rap/hip-hop, including this week's chart's number two album, is unbridled.
According to a report posted on the website
Have you noticed how many cool in-stores Amoeba has been having lately? Well add tonight (Friday Sept.ember 14th) to that list when the wonderful Kinski play for free at 6PM at Amoeba Music San Francisco in support of their recently released SubPop album "Down Below It's Chaos." For more information on tonight's show and the new album (which was recorded in their hometown of Seattle, WA)
Unfortunately the scheduled White Stripes NorCal show at the Greek Theater in Berkeley on Sept 21st has been canceled, along with several other Stripes' tour dates including San Diego and Inglewood, because drummer Meg White is reportedly suffering from acute anxiety and consequently unable to travel. "We hate to let people down and are very sorry," Meg is quoted in a statement on the White Stripes
process involved testing every track, as the new album recording session progressed, by taping it onto cassette and then bumping the tape at full volume in his ride. "Cos this is how most fans will listen to it...in their cars," he explained at the time. Traditionally many studio engineers would do a similar playback-test by listening back to tracks on a small tinny speaker (akin to an AM radio) with the assumption that this would be how many folks would listen back to the songs being recorded. But these days recording engineers/producers/mixers are gearing their music for iPods (or MP3s vs CDs) and as such are radically changing how the music sounds. On Wednesday the Wall Street Journal (of all places) ran a wonderful piece on this new trend (the compression of music files onto MP3 format) that most audiophiles find most disturbing. The article is well worth reading and can be found