Hip-Hop

Released as dead prez’s breakout single from the run-up to Let’s Get Free, the track was built around stic’s bassline and produced by Hedrush with dead prez. It was issued in 1999 on Loud Records. The song framed dead prez as a politically outspoken duo and sharply attacked commercial rap, record-label exploitation, and the values of the music industry. Critics praised it as a forceful, inventive statement, and it became the group’s best-known song. “Hip-Hop” remained a touchstone for revolutionary rap, with its instrumental later used as the opening music for Chappelle’s Show and the song remembered as a prescient critique of music-industry capitalism. It also continued to be cited in retrospectives of late-1990s conscious rap.