Rap conversations can be so combative when one attempts to cross certain stylistic waters. There's rarely a fan who appreciates 90s East Coast boom bap with the same fervor as the zoned-out trap stylings of many post-2010 hits. How many people are as immersed in the sounds of West Coast G-Funk as they are those loose disco-fied grooves of Sugar Hill and Enjoy Records? That's not to say there absolutely aren't heads who travel through all of the various corners of this vast rap landscape; but it's okay if there aren't. As we get close to Hip-Hop's 50th anniversary, is it okay to acknowledge and celebrate the fact that rap music has it's own stylistic, regional and perhaps even philosophical subgenres?

The idea of subgenres is somewhat controversial in Hip-Hop. It’s not that no one recognizes rap’s subcategories; it’s that so often there’s a tendency to view categorization as an attempt to divvy up and further commodify the genre. But Hip-Hop is a commercial genre inasmuch as it’s a culture; and as a genre of music, there is no denying that rap has a plethora of stylistic and sonic distinctions. Just lumping it all together as “Hip-Hop” may be doing it a disservice, especially after almost 50 years.

The high energy early 80s party tracks of artists like the Jonzun Crew and Soulsonic Force permeated the club scene across the East Coast and beyond; and out West, electro took root via hitmaking producers like pre-N.W.A. Arabian Prince. It would sow the seeds for a southern phenomenon known as bass music. Another rap subgenre that would emerge in the mid 80s and gain national exposure via groups like 2 Live Crew a few years later, bass music was one of the most consistently commercial viable styles of rap to come out of the south; and it would go mainstream in the 1990s after songs like "Whoot! There It Is," "Da Dip" and inescapable Luke hits like "Scarred" and "It's Ya Birthday" hit mainstream radio and dancefloors.

The Native Tongues rose to fame in the late 1980s with a style that was boho and unapologetically quirky, while also embracing Afrocentricity and cultural awareness. Acts like the Jungle Brothers, De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest seemed to revel in their idiosyncrasies, offering hit singles about lost wallets and wearing everything from dashikis to African medallions to kimonos.

"Alternative Hip-Hop" has never become as widely marketed a term as "alternative rock," but as other artists like Del The Funky Homosapien and Pharcyde and others broke big in the 1990s, it became clear that there was a viable market for more left-leaning rap acts. Songs like U.M.C.'s "Blue Cheese" and Del's hits like "Mistadobalina" and "Dr. Bombay" became fixtures on Yo! MTV Raps and BET.

Since the early 1990s wave of rock bands that flew in the face of then-standard commercial trappings, the music industry has tried to find a way to effectively market the branches of popular music that seem more devoted to the eclectic than the commercial. That distinction has always been more or less superficial, if you were buying that R.E.M. CD at the same Sam Goody where you purchased Mariah Carey’s last album, and both projects are selling in the multi-millions, just how “alternative” is it, really? 

"Pop rap" is another term that sits uneasily in Hip-Hop's oeuvre. For some music fans, "pop" is treated like a dirty word. "Pop" means manufactured and inauthentic, soulless and by-the-numbers. "Pop" means safe. In a lot of ways, "pop" often means white—or, at the very least, created for the interests of white audiences. It's typically not that cool to be thought of as the "pop" version of anything, let alone a genre and culture born of an outsider's spirit. But what about "pop" as in "infectious and accessible?" 

In the late 80s, Hip-Hop was crashing the mainstream. Run-D.M.C. and the Def Jam acts like LL COOL J and the Beastie Boys had kicked down the commercial door, and rap was now selling big. But with that commercial success came some handwringing about where the genre was headed and whether or not it could survive mainstreaming. That conversation would linger for decades, but at the time, it manifest as some criticism of certain rap acts with major crossover audiences. 

The first real "wave" of pop-rappers arrived around the late 80s dawn of Yo! MTV Raps and Rap City; as artists like Heavy D & The Boyz, Salt-N-Pepa, MC Hammer, Kid 'n Play, DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, Tone Loc and Young MC enjoyed major chart success with a style of Hip-Hop built around infectious hooks, slick production and dance-friendly beats. As N.W.A. turned "gangsta rap" into a household term, and as Public Enemy became icons for politicized Hip-Hop; these were the acts who seemed "safe" for middle America.

There are rap subgenres that are nowhere near as hotly contested, however. Crunk is, more or less, recognized as a specific stylistic offshoot, a rowdy branch on the tree of southern rap that emerged in the late 1990s to tremendous commercial success, and in the case of so many Hip-Hop “purists,” permanent scorn. A decade before crunk made rowdiness radio-friendly, West Coast gangsta rap was becoming the most notorious sound in America. While artists like Schoolly D and Boogie Down Productions came to the fore rapping about gritty street life and project reality, Compton's N.W.A. stormed their way into infamy with their debut album Straight Outta Compton, with lyrics that told harrowing tales about gang life on the streets of Los Angeles. Over the next decade, gangsta rap would go from Hip-Hop's redheaded stepchild to it's most influential variation.

Trap music is like gangsta rap's flashy younger brother. In the early 2000s, Atlanta became a Hip-Hop hotbed. In the 1990s, ATL products like Jermaine Dupri and the Dungeon Family put Georgia's capital city squarely on the national map; it set the stage for a commercial takeover post-Y2K that was led by chart-toppers like Ludacris and T.I. The latter rap star especially popularized slick-but-street Bankhead street rap, and trap music suddenly became the sound of the decade. Artists like Jeezy, Gucci Mane and others picked up the city as crunk faded and pushed the sound of Atlanta forward, cementing it's place as center of rap's orbit in the new millennium. By the 2010s, as the first generation of trap artists became rap elders, a second wave emerged. Armed with AutoTune and angst, these second wave trap artists would become international rap superstars. Today, you're likely to see Future or 21 Savage on the cover of GQ or Forbes. 2nd wave trap has influenced everything from R&B to dance to pop music. It's omnipresent over the past decade.

Black art is often treated as one monolithic style or sound at any given time, when it's obvious that so many disparate approaches can exist even under the umbrella of the same overarching genre. Because white music and white culture are rarely presented without some type of stylistic specificity ("classic rock radio," or "outlaw country," etc.) it's almost taken for granted that genres dominated by white artists and presented via mainstream platforms are rarely limited the most general category. It's not to say that Black art must follow any example set by white commodification of white pop culture; but there is power in recognizing the scope of that Black art. Hip-Hop is turning 50, and over the course of those decades, the culture and the genre of music it spawned has branched into so many different permutations.