When I got into my rental car at the Memphis Airport, the bass on the stereo was at +9. Last year, right around the 20th anniversary of the first of those records, Comin' Out Hard, I went to the birthplace of both Stax and Sun Records to hear the story of Premro Smith and Marlon Jermaine Goodwin, better known as Eightball and MJG. A pair of young rapper-producers from Memphis straddled the tonal shift, and you can hear, on the two albums they released between the summer of '93 and the spring of '94, the unease of an industry flooded with money just as regional markets were wolfing down less commercial, grittier records. In 1993, the wild success of cinematic albums like The Chronic and Doggystyle had shown corporate America just how large the appetite for rap was, but the next wave of musicians had something more serious in mind. Two decades ago the essence of adolescence was leaving hip-hop. MJG (left) and Eightball in an early, undated photo.
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