3 Rap Songs From 1994 You Should Totally Add to Your Rotation

Looking back, 1994 was a crucial year in music. Not only did the time boast seminal works like Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Dave Matthews Band’s Under The Table And Dreaming, but 1994 was also the year Kurt Cobain died. Outside of rock, though, the era helped to shape rap in a major way.

And that’s just what we wanted to highlight here below. We wanted to showcase three rap songs from 1994 that remain essential listening today. Indeed, these are three rap songs from 1994 that you should totally add to your rotation.

“Juicy” by The Notorious B.I.G. from ‘Ready To Die’ (1994)

With five words, The Notorious B.I.G. began a song that will be played at parties and at dance clubs for eternity. Indeed, Biggie’s song “Juicy” remains a classic and it opens with that famous phrase: “It was all a dream!” From there, the rapper tells us about growing up poor and having fantasies of doing more with his life. Indeed, this is essential listening.

“N.Y. State of Mind” by Nas from ‘Illmatic’ (1994)

If you were to distill down what it means to be a rapper in a laboratory, what you would get is the New York City-born rapper Nas. No frills, no pomp and circumstance, Nas represents the essential qualities of the genre, of the sound. And his debut LP, Illmatic, proved that in spades. One of the standout songs from that 1994 record was “N.Y. State of Mind”. It’s a song that, like its creator, will never go out of style.

“Player’s Ball” by Outkast from ‘Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik’ (1994)

The debut single for the Atlanta-born rap duo Outkast, this is the song that got it started for Andre 3000 and Big Boi. In a way, it’s also the song that got things started for rap music in the South. Prior to that, many fans thought the only authentic music was from New York City. Then Los Angeles gets into the fold. But it was thanks to Outkast that music fans began looking to places like Atlanta or New Orleans for new tunes and that brought in voices like Killer Mike and Lil Wayne. Big ups!

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