Conscious Hip-Hop

Conscious hip-hop (often called conscious rap) is rap whose lyrics deliberately take on social, political, historical or spiritual subjects: racism, poverty, policing, education, self-knowledge, Black history. The point of the verse is to inform the listener or change their mind, and the beat serves that. It traces back to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" (1982) and the spoken-word poets who came before it, came into focus with KRS-One and Public Enemy in the late 1980s, and continues through Black Star, Lauryn Hill and Common to Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole.

Unlike most genre labels, conscious hip-hop is defined by what is said, not by a particular beat or tempo. This guide covers its history, the musical habits it tends to share, the difference between "conscious" and "political" rap, and how it relates to alternative hip-hop and gangsta rap. Lyrics will not tell you which corner of rap a track's production belongs to; for that, try a clip in our free AI music genre detector.

Conscious hip-hop is a thematic category within hip-hop. A conscious record uses its verses to describe, analyse or protest the conditions its audience lives in, or to encourage self-knowledge and change. Typical subjects include police violence, poverty and housing, drugs and the prison system, the miseducation of young people, Black and African history, and faith.

The word "conscious" comes partly from the language of Black nationalist and religious movements, in particular the Five-Percent Nation, whose lessons about "knowledge of self" shaped the lyrics of Rakim, Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers and many others in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Over time the term widened to cover almost any socially aware rap, from Public Enemy's protest to Common's reflective storytelling.

It is useful to separate two overlapping ideas. Political hip-hop is explicitly confrontational and aimed at institutions: Public Enemy's "Fight the Power", dead prez's Let's Get Free. Conscious hip-hop in the narrower sense often looks inward and at the community: Common, Talib Kweli and Lauryn Hill write about love and self-respect as much as about the state. In practice the labels are used interchangeably, and most artists move between both modes.

The label is also not the opposite of gangsta rap in every respect. N.W.A's "Fuck tha Police" and Tupac Shakur's "Brenda's Got a Baby" and "Keep Ya Head Up" are as socially pointed as any conscious record. What usually separates the two is stance: gangsta rap reports from inside street life, often celebrating it; conscious rap stands back and asks how it came to be and how to change it.

The roots lie outside rap. In the late 1960s and early 1970s The Last Poets, formed in Harlem in 1968, and Gil Scott-Heron, whose "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" set politically charged spoken word over percussion and jazz-funk, created the model of the rhythmic, rhyming, politically urgent Black voice. Soul and funk records by Curtis Mayfield, Marvin Gaye (What's Going On, 1971) and James Brown supplied the message tradition, and later rappers sampled those same records heavily.

Early hip-hop was party music, and the first rap hits were about rhyming skill and good times. The turning point was Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five's "The Message" (Sugar Hill Records, 1982), a slow, bleak account of inner-city poverty in New York ("It's like a jungle sometimes"), rapped mainly by Melle Mel. It is usually named as the first major conscious rap record. In 2002 it became the first hip-hop recording added to the US Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.

Conscious rap's first commercial peak came in the late 1980s. KRS-One of Boogie Down Productions turned from the street narratives of Criminal Minded (1987) to the anti-violence, pro-education By All Means Necessary (1988), and in 1989 he led the Stop the Violence Movement single "Self Destruction". Public Enemy, with Chuck D's commanding voice and the dense, siren-filled productions of the Bomb Squad, released It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988) and Fear of a Black Planet (1990); "Fight the Power", written for Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989), became its best-known anthem. Around them were the Five-Percenter rap of Rakim, Brand Nubian and Poor Righteous Teachers, the Afrocentric X Clan and the gentler Native Tongues collective (De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, the Jungle Brothers).

In the 1990s commercial attention shifted toward West Coast gangsta rap and, later, the shiny-suit era, and conscious rap became associated with the independent underground. Arrested Development had major hits with a spiritual, Southern version of the idea in 1992; in New York, Mos Def and Talib Kweli released Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star (Rawkus, 1998), the defining record of the late-1990s scene. That same year Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill combined rap, soul and reggae with lyrics about love, faith and self-worth and won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1999. Common (Like Water for Chocolate, 2000; Be, 2005), The Roots and dead prez carried the style into the 2000s, with Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor (2006) one of the key records of that decade.

The 2010s brought conscious rap back to the centre of the charts. Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city (2012) and especially To Pimp a Butterfly (2015), with its jazz, funk and spoken word around race, fame and survival, made him the leading voice of the style; "Alright" was widely chanted at Black Lives Matter protests, and in 2018 his album DAMN. won the Pulitzer Prize for Music, the first non-classical, non-jazz work to do so. J. Cole, Rapsody, Noname, Run the Jewels and the UK's Dave and Little Simz have each made records in this vein since.

Because conscious hip-hop is about content, the beat under it can be almost anything. Still, the best-known records have a fair amount in common:

• Tempo: most classic records sit around 85–100 BPM, the head-nodding range of boom bap; Public Enemy's productions are faster and more frantic, and Kendrick Lamar's records move freely between slow funk and double-time passages.
• Samples: soul, funk and jazz records, often from the politically engaged soul of the early 1970s, such as Curtis Mayfield, Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers and Donny Hathaway.
• Drums: sampled breaks or swung drum programming with a hard kick and snare; live drums in band-based acts like The Roots.
• Vocals: lyric clarity is the priority, so the voice sits high in the mix and the delivery is usually clearly articulated; spoken-word passages, sermons and interview clips are common.
• Structure: verse-heavy songs with fewer and simpler hooks; concept albums and storytelling tracks; skits that frame an argument.
• Lyrics: first-person testimony, historical references, calls to action, criticism of the music industry and of rap's own clichés.

Three production lineages cover much of the canon. The Bomb Squad's chaotic, noise-collage beats defined late-1980s political rap; the warm, jazz-soul sound of DJ Premier, Pete Rock and J Dilla underpinned much of the 1990s and the Soulquarians era; and To Pimp a Butterfly was recorded with jazz players such as Kamasi Washington, Thundercat and Terrace Martin.

Fans and critics usually distinguish these currents:

• Political / protest rap: confrontational, institution-focused: Public Enemy, Paris, dead prez, Immortal Technique, Run the Jewels.
• Five-Percenter and Afrocentric rap: spiritual and nationalist lyrics, "knowledge of self": Rakim, Brand Nubian, Poor Righteous Teachers, X Clan.
• Positive / Native Tongues: community, love and Afrocentric pride with a playful sound; overlaps with alternative hip-hop and jazz rap.
• Underground backpack rap: the late-1990s independent scene around Rawkus Records: Black Star, Talib Kweli, Common, Pharoahe Monch. "Backpacker" became both a badge and an insult.
• Gospel and faith-based rap: explicitly religious lyrics, from Christian hip-hop to Islamic themes in Mos Def's and Lupe Fiasco's work.
• Introspective storytelling: the 2010s mode of Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Noname, where social commentary arrives through autobiography.

Some of these labels describe lyrics and others describe production, so a single record can fit two at once. A Tribe Called Quest is usually filed as jazz rap for its sound, while many of its lyrics fit the conscious label.

A short path through the style:

• Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message" (1982). The starting point.
• Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988). Political rap at full volume.
• Boogie Down Productions, By All Means Necessary (1988). KRS-One as "the Teacha".
• Black Star, Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star (1998). The late-1990s underground in one record.
• Lauryn Hill, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). Conscious rap fused with soul and reggae.
• Common, Be (2005). Produced mostly by Kanye West, with two tracks by J Dilla; a reflection on Chicago.
• Kendrick Lamar, To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). The modern landmark.

For the longer story of how rap moved from Bronx block parties to this kind of statement, see our brief history of hip-hop and the hub on old-school hip-hop.

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