Home Music Music Lists

The 100 Best East Coast Hip-Hop Songs of All Time

Biggie, Cardi, Bobby, Nicki, and many more — from Eighties classics to Brooklyn drill

East Coast hip-hop songs list

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MARIA-JULIANA ROJAS. PHOTOGRAPHS USED IN ILLUSTRATION BY TETRA IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES; AL PEREIRA/GETTY IMAGES/MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES; JEFFREY MAYER/WIREIMAGE; MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES; RAYMOND BOYD/GETTY IMAGES; ANTHONY BARBOZA/GETTY IMAGES; SCOTT DUDELSON/GETTY IMAGES; GRIFFIN LOTZ; KEVIN MAZUR/WIREIMAGE; FOTOATA/GETTY IMAGES; ADOBE STOCK, 3; FELIX LIPOV/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; CLARENCE DAVIS/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE/ GETTY IMAGES

HIP-HOP WAS BORN IN the Bronx in the summer of 1973. To celebrate the music’s 50th anniversary, “Rolling Stone” will be publishing a series of features, historical pieces, op-eds, and lists throughout this year.

In the early days of hip-hop, no one really talked about the East Coast. That’s because there wasn’t any other coast to compare it to. Hip-hop was born in the Bronx, and though rap’s other regions percolated throughout the Eighties, nearly every major hip-hop artist in the music’s first decade came out of New York — from old-school pioneers like Kurtis Blow and Funky Four +1 More to street-rap progenitors like Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J, and sonic and political agitators like De La Soul and Public Enemy. When the West Coast scene threatened that hegemony in the early Nineties, the Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Wu-Tang Clan, and other hard-edged, lyrically brilliant titans helped swing the pendulum back. After Southern rap rose to dominance in the 2000s, a new generation of stars like Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Bobby Shmurda, Pop Smoke, and Ice Spice reminded the world that rap’s birthplace could still be its vital center.

“East Coast” grew to cover artists like Beanie Sigel and Meek Mill in Philadelphia, Wale and Nonchalant in Washington, D.C., New Jersey favorite son Redman, and Maryland’s own Rico Nasty, among others. What defines East Coast rap? For artists like Eric B. and Rakim, Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth, or ELUCID, it means innovative samples emboldened by a curative dose of boom-bap. In the case of classics like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” Lil Uzi Vert’s “XO Tour Llif3,” and Young M.A’s “OOOUUU,” it means a stripped-down sound driven home by ice-cold bravado and prickly bars. It has encompassed hip-hop at its most pop (Who’s down with O.P.P.?), and its most challenging and arty (Gang Starr, Company Flow). While complex lyrics are synonymous with East Coast rap, some of the region’s finest songs contain verses even your parents could recite word for word. Beastie Boys’ “Paul Revere,” Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend,” and Salt-N-Pepa’s “Push It” might not dazzle you with state-of-the-art wordplay, but they’re still all bona fide classics. The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” incorporates a rhyme about soggy macaroni, but the song still changed the face of music forever.

Our 100 Best East Coast Hip-Hop Songs list touches on all that and much more. We convened a group of RS staffers and critics to compile the list. We focused on impact, relevance, originality, and ingenuity. Some songs have been staples for decades; a few came out in the past couple of years; some were huge hits; others are obscure gems. Of course, with a musical style as vast as this, we had to make some tough choices. Some legendary artists aren’t represented, and some landmark records didn’t make it. Our goal wasn’t to hit every historical signpost, but to end up with a list of influential records that still sound fresh, and great new songs that move the tradition forward.

After we had the list set, we wanted an expert opinion on the results from someone deeply involved with the music. We contacted rapper-producer Roc Marciano, who appears on the list as both a rapper and producer and has collaborated with Busta Rhymes and others. “I think it’s in a good space,” he says of East Coast rap. “I think we got that back to where it’s nice and healthy.” While known for popularizing the neo-boom-bap sound in the past decade, Marciano is also encouraged by the rise of drill. “Rest in peace, Pop Smoke,” he says. “Before he passed, he was probably about to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest artist in the rap game.” These 100 songs celebrate the East Coast’s storied past while offering a crucial glimpse at hip-hop’s ever-promising future.

From Rolling Stone US

56

The Diplomats

The towering double-disc mixtape Diplomatic Immunity was a coronation for Harlem’s Dipset crew, the moment when Cam’ron’s delirious wordplay, Juelz Santana’s elemental flow, and the Heatmakerz’s soulful, pitched-up beats coalesced into a creative wellspring. Full of jingoistic imagery and still-raw references to 9/11, the 2003 tape serves as a coming-out party in particular for Santana, who wrote the immortal “Dipset Anthem” in a few hours while the rest of the crew was at a club. Egged on by reggae horns sliced into instigating stabs, Santana flips weight on the verses and plays his own hype man on the hook, that simple “Ay!” ad-lib getting more insistent every time he chirps it. —C.P.

55

Foxy Brown feat. Jay-Z

Foxy Brown enraptured the hip-hop world in the mid-’90s: The Brooklyn native could be aggressive, sultry, provocative, or contemplative at will, leveraging raunchy lyrics with the precision of a scalpel. The commanding beauty immediately appealed to young girls and the fashion world and, on her biggest hit, “I’ll Be,” she overshadows a Jay-Z feature with pure lyricism and charisma — a Lola Falana, dripped in Gabbana. Producer Tone of Trackmasters said they wanted Brown to be “the hard, uptempo bitch,” but she ended up being so much more. “I do things to keep people talking. To bring issues that the average female MC ain’t raising. To talk about things average females talk about,” she told Vibe. “[Women have] been fighting for respect; we’ve been fighting for equality since back in the Bessie Smith days. Millie Jackson, all that.” —S.I.

54

Fabolous

A self-described “Young OG,” Fabolous is a Brooklyn icon known for making lavish club hits as easily as he deploys mixtape-annihilating freestyles. On this 2013 slap, Fabolous was like a human AI conjurer, cooking up meme after hilarious meme. He references shallow bottle waitresses, fake-deep IG captions, and gold diggers willing to “commit sins for Chipotle,” kicking lines that still feel as current as a trending topic. But there’s nothing generic or artificial here: Every bar feels sui generis. Suavely, he spits, “Every rapper in a cypher, every player in a huddle/You really wanna fuck, but you say you want to cuddle.” Fab’s foresight and wit make “Cuffin’ Season” bang all year round. —W.D.

53

Rob Base and DJ E-Z Rock

“It Takes Two” made absolute dance-floor magic utilizing and popularizing what the Spin Alternative Record Guide called “the best definition of a break”: drums and two errant shouts from Lyn Collins’ “Think (About It),” a loop that would ultimately dominate Chicago house, U.K. drum-and-bass, and Baltimore club. “A lot of people said, ‘Oh, too much “woo, yeah,” you need to take it out at some point,’” Rob Base told Rolling Stone about its famous loop. “I had to fight and say, ‘Nah, we got to keep that in the whole record. That’s got to stay in there.’ And people didn’t understand where I was coming from.” —C.W.

52

N.O.R.E. feat. Tammy Lucas

Long before dominating hip-hop media with Drink Champs, this podcasting power player built his credibility as an MC. A product of Queens’ LeFrak City and the Green Haven Correctional Facility, Noreaga fully transitioned from spitting urban war-zone bars in a duo with Capone to a solo career with the semi-eponymous N.O.R.E. album. Dropping amid the so-called Shiny Suit Era, this single exemplified the period’s lyrically luxe excesses and forward-thinking production. Over a frenetic, rubbery beat by then up-and-comers The Neptunes and backed by seasoned R&B singer Tammy Lucas, he lives up to the song’s titular grandeur, jet-setting while on the run with braggadocio for days. —G.S.

51

Slick Rick

London-born, Bronx-raised rapper Slick Rick named his fourth album The Art of Storytelling because of his enviable reputation for spooling out incredibly crystal-clear narratives, like this classic from The Great Adventures of Slick Rick. Framed as a bedtime story (complete with kids’ voices assuring they’re all tucked in), Rick weaves a winding morality tale of a 17-year-old on the run from police for various gun-toting activities until he finally gets his comeuppance. Montell Jordan’s everlasting “This Is How We Do It” has kept Rick’s backing track alive for nearly 30 years. But it’s hard to find more well-known, instantly quotable lyrics from hip-hop’s golden age than these. —M.M.L.