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MONUMENTAL FOUR-CD RETROSPECTIVE THE HIP HOP BOX CELEBRATES THE
25TH ANNIVERSARY OF RAP'S FIRST MAJOR HIT WITH HIP HOP CLASSICS
FROM MORE THAN 50 OF ITS GREATEST ARTISTS
Twenty-five years after 1979's
"Rapper's Delight" broke open the floodgates, hip hop's
influence is everywhere--from music to movies, fashion to
vocabulary. Now, honoring the past, celebrating the present and
anticipating the future, the four-CD The Hip Hop Box (Hip-O
Records/UMe), released April 20, 2004, brings together 51 of the
genre's greatest turning points, highlights, landmarks and
breakthroughs, each digitally remastered. Starring most of hip
hop's greatest artists, from the Sugarhill Gang of 1979 to the
50 Cent of 2003, the tracks were culled from dozens of record
labels. For the first time, as journalist Tom Terrell writes in
the liner notes, The Hip Hop Box allows fans to "follow the
drumbeat from Genesis to Revelation, innocence to hedonism,
playfulness to violence, happiness to bitterness, self-hate to
self-love." Along with Terrell's historical essay, the
box set features notes by Public Enemy's Chuck D and Michael A.
Gonzales (co-author of the classic text on rap Bring The
Noise), plus an essay by one of the set's compilers, paying
tribute to hip hop's reggae heritage. The Hip Hop Box continues
the Hip-O Records tradition of genre box sets, including The
Funk Box (2000) and The Reggae Box(2001).
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