beedle wrote: i do like hip hop but i'm pretty ignorant of it...
It's never too late to get into it a bit, it just means you have REAMS and reams of amazing stuff to listen to that will be new to you. Although that can put some people who are new to the music off it quite easily, especially as there is also a ton or crap hip hop that needs to be filtered out too.
You like some De la, right? So I'd say the most obvious album to get you onto next would probably be Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest, if you haven't already checked that. It's a bonafide classic and always seems to go down well with most people just getting into the music.
Another album I often recommend as an intro to Hip Hop is Illmatic by Nas. The lyrical content is different from stuff like Tribe and De La as it's more "hardcore" or whatever, but the main reason I recommend Illmatic is because of the beats. you have a load of the best producers on that album, so it makes it a perfect springboard. For example you have some DJ Premier and so can go on to Gang Starr albums like Daily Operation or Hard to Earn, you have Q tip on there too and so can go on to some of the ATCQ stuff I mentioned earlier, there Pete Rock on there too, so you can get into Mecca and the Soul Brother from there, or you might try Breaking Atoms (which I think you might like beeds) from the Large Pro connection. And after all that you also might want to move onto some darker Boombap like Wu Tang or Boot Camp Clik or whatever. So it's like the key link into all different strains of brilliant 90's east coast Hip Hop. And if your feeling like a bit of old school flavour you can check out some classic Cold Chillin stuff from Juice Crew, G Rap, Masta Ace and so on.
Of course there's a chance you might not into any of that stuff and might prefer to jump into some more recent whimsical kind of stuff from the likes of Doom, Quisimoto or Edan or whatever. But that stuff can also really put off new comers, and chances are you'll find something you love in that first paragraph. Or you might also like checking out some of the more funky alternative types hip hop from the 90's like Pharcyde and stuff, actually I think you'd really like Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde, beeds.
I just mostly listen to old Jazz, like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, etc.
I love Jazz too. But that's the great thing, much like how an album can be a springboard to different albums and artists of the same genre (in the way I've described to beeds), Hip Hop can also work as a springboard into other genres. I actually initially got into Jazz from hip hop when I was about 12 years old, and then I got into soul music and so on.
Hip-Hop is Dead indeed
Nonsense. There might be more rubbish to filter out, and less variety in the mainstream but hip hop never died. Your just like many a generation of Hip Hop fan who grow to see their favourite rappers fall off and become irrelevant (hip hop artists tend to have some of the shortest shelf lives of musicians, unfortunately) and decide that the music died and stop listening or just listen to the stuff they grew up with. But you just gotta keep it moving man.