One of the longest shadows in hip-hop is cast by a 14-month stretch from September ’93 through November ’94. Arguably the last and finest run of hip-hop’s golden age, this period is bookended by the releases of De La Soul‘s alt-rap classic Buhloone Mindstate and Redman’s surreal, grimy *Dare Iz a Darkside—*and encompasses so many distinctly earth-shaking individual statements it’s almost beyond belief.
Midnight Marauders, Enter the Wu-Tang, Illmatic, Ready to Die, Doggystyle, The Diary, Hard to Earn, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, *Resurrection—*even the stuff that hasn’t crossed over to the same extent, like Black Moon’s Enta da Stage or O.C.’s *Word…Life *or Del the Funky Homosapien‘s No Need for Alarm, reign as certified classics, each with their own stories to tell and unique elements that made them stand out in rap’s busiest creative flourish of the coming-of-age ’90s.
