This week marks 50 years of hip-hop. What started as a party-centric neighborhood phenomenon half a century ago became a global juggernaut of culture, commerce, and celebration. It would be impossible to name every important name and movement keeping the rap world’s turntables spinning. Instead, we’re highlighting unique and vital artists, songs, scenes, and styles that have left an impact across generations but remain overlooked by some.

Today, we stop, look, and listen to the hip-hop heart of Texas. The scene was wholly independent of what was going on in hip-hop's birthplace of New York and the various influences on the West Coast. Texas has had multiple major movements and moments that show hip-hop could come from anywhere where beats and rhymes flourish.

Disco Al feat. the Barrio Sound Band - "The Bounce Rap" (1980)

The story of Texas hip-hop begins in San Antonio with Disco Al and the Barrio Sound Band's "The Bounce Rap." While there are definite nods to Sugar Hill Gang and Blowfly to be heard in the rhymes, the sonic soundscape is definitively Texas with the lush instrumentation. Also notable is its dramatically short run time, with the listener potentially able to give "The Bounce Rap" at least four rotations in the time it would take to play Grandmaster Flash's "Superrappin'." San Antonio was a momentary hotbed for Texas rap, most notably followed the next year with Leroy Franklin Star Band's "Star Bird II," but it was elsewhere in the state that Texas rap would begin making national noise a few years later.

Geto Boys - "Do It Like a G.O." (1989)

Houston's first rap song is believed to be legendary Johnny Guitar Watson's 1981 attempt at rap, "Telephone Bill,” but it wasn't until the late ’80s that Houston became the state’s rap epicenter thanks largely to the legendary Rap-A-Lot label. Car dealership owner J Prince launched the label with a group named "Ghetto Boys" and their 1987 song about cars, "Car Freak." A few lineup changes later, the soon-to-be Geto Boys struck a nerve in hip-hop with 1989's "Do It Like a G.O." A definitively Texas statement, it begins by acknowledging that hip-hop came from New York. It then goes off with an energetically brash track capturing a distinctly Southern take on pastiche-collage style sampling with lyrics that are both cheering on the independence of Black-owned businesses and confronting every angle of anti-Black prejudice of the day. They'd later catch the ear of Rick Rubin for an album on Def American and, after that, release one of the genre's finest moments in "Mind Playin Tricks On Me." This, however, was the Geto Boys song that first showed the world who they were and where Houston was going.

UGK - "It's Supposed to Bubble" (1994)

About an hour-and-a-half from Houston is Port Arthur, Texas, - the home of Bun B and Pimp C better known as UGK (The Underground Kingz). Pimp and Bun brought such a refreshing range of subject matter and grooves into the hip-hop soundscape. Pimp C's classic slick talk approach to rhyming made him the perfect pair with Bun B, a master lyricist whose seemingly effortless transitions from syllable-stacking to punchline to storytelling made him an absolute "rapper's rapper." (Due to his lush musicality Pimp C became as valuable and influential to Southern hip-hop as a producer as he was an MC.)  While they received massive mainstream elevation thanks to their JAY-Z collaboration "Big Pimpin’," their body of work prior to that and continued consistency until Pimp's untimely death in 2007 has made their catalog essential.

DJ Screw - "June 27" (1996)

What could be more hip-hop than a DJ throwing on a beat, freestyling for hours with your friends at a party, and trading it on a mixtape? At their core, DJ Screw, the legendary Screwed Up Click, and the countless tapes they sold throughout Texas in the ’90s embodied hip-hop's foundational elements. Also staying true was DJ Screw’s innovative "chopped ‘n’ screwed"-style DJ mixes, making the songs intentionally slower while abruptly "chopping" and repeating favorite lines on the beat. Released on June 27, 1996, Screw's most famous and revered song was recorded in his living room on rapper D-Mo's birthday. Despite DJ Screw's passing in 2000, his influence went worldwide in the mid-aughts when nearly every rap album had to have an accompanying "chopped and screwed" version to accompany it. DJ Screw's tapes also received worldwide attention in 2020 following the Minneapolis murder of Screwed Up Click member Big Floyd, better known today as George Floyd.

Paul Wall & Chamillionaire - "Thinkin’ Thoed" (2002)

The new millennium's Texas hip-hop explosion started in 2002. Screwed Up Click member Big Moe's "Purple Stuff" landed national video rotation, and the bursting underground scene — aided by internet file sharing -- turned Paul Wall and Chamillionaire's Get Ya Mind Correct into a must-have album. Soon, both artists linked up with Michael "5000" Watts' Swishahouse label, which shifted mainstream hip-hop's paradigm with Mike Jones’ lead track "Still Tippin" shortly after. The song originally featured fellow Houstonian Slim Thug and Chamillionaire. Slim was replaced by Paul Wall after a falling out with Jones, which led to Chamillionaire's departure from the label and one of the decade's most publicized rap rivalries. All have since made peace, and nearly two decades removed, it’s pretty impressive how Houston — not to mention the unaffiliated Lil’ Flip — dominated so much of that first decade of the 2000s.

Read More:

Hip-hop at 50: Early rap pioneers from '79-'84

Hip-hop at 50: The counter-counterculture

Hip-hop at 50: Women in Rap