what was the golden era of hip hop?

Ask any rap fan and they will tell you (probably unprompted) that 1996 falls within the “Golden Age” of hip-hop. The exact dates are malleable, but the consensus is that rap hit its stride in the early-to-mid-1990s. By about 1992, the genre was mature enough for artists to feel comfortable developing personal styles and for regional sounds to flourish. Hip-hop managed to hold off full-on major label colonization and corporate marginalization of creativity until around 1998. It’s not a perfect argument, but the logic is solid, and it’s hard to deny that the era produced a disproportionate number of iconic albums that remain impactful to this day.