Alternative Hip-Hop

What is alternative hip-hop? Alternative hip-hop is rap that doesn't fit the mold of its time. No gangsta posturing, no chasing the radio, but room for humor, oddball samples, jazz, rock, electronics and very personal lyrics. It's less a sound than an attitude: do it your own way.

Where it comes from. The roots are in the late '80s, when De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest and the rest of the Native Tongues brought color and playfulness to a scene that was getting harder. In the '90s OutKast proved the South could be weird and brilliant. In the 2000s Kanye West, N.E.R.D. and Missy Elliott pushed the sound into the mainstream, and in the 2010s Odd Future, Tyler, the Creator, Frank Ocean, Childish Gambino and A$AP Rocky made "alternative" the place where new ideas come from.

The sound. Anything goes: soul and jazz samples, synths, live instruments, singing, unusual song structures. What connects the artists is curiosity and a refusal to sound like everyone else.

Key albums

• 3 Feet High and Rising, De La Soul (1989)
• Aquemini, OutKast (1998)
• The College Dropout, Kanye West (2004)
• Channel Orange, Frank Ocean (2012)
• "Awaken, My Love!", Childish Gambino (2016)
• Igor, Tyler, the Creator (2019)