80s hip hop groups1/13/2024 ![]() ![]() The Houston scene was something to be reckoned with. The Geto Boys, as developed and produced by James Prince, would become Houston’s first nationally recognized hip-hop group, on the strength of the group’s signature song, 1991’s “Mind Playing Tricks on Me.” The album, “We Can’t Be Stopped,” was the appropriate title it also reflected the City of Houston’s own response to years of noise from haters and detractors. And as the lone station in Houston playing hip-hop, KTSU and Kidz Jamm was instrumental in shaping Houston’s hip-hop culture. Along with the proliferation of new music in Houston’s large nightclubs, Kidz Jamm was also responsible for breaking new hip-hop music. Throughout the 1980s, it was school for many DJs, radio personalities, producers and even a few rappers. Few in Houston knew much about hip-hop, but Kidz Jamm proved to be a singular resource for young listeners of the small radio station. When high school student Lester “Sir” Pace came to work for the show, that all changed. Kidz Jamm played R&B and pop music, as hip-hop music was still not widely available. The weekend show centered on youth music and culture. ![]() In 1981, Texas Southern University’s KTSU general manager Charles Porter launched a weekly radio program for his high school–aged children. It had established itself as a hip-hop city. By 1991, Houston, with its many nightclubs, was exposing thousands to hip-hop culture on a weekly basis and serving as the training ground for future rappers. There were many rappers and groups that began to record hip-hop music around 1985–86, but Rap-A-Lot and its most prominent group, the Geto Boys, kicked down doors so that outsiders could hear what was special about Houston. Rap-A-Lot broke through to the mainstream with the Geto Boys, and while they were on the road repping Houston, Rap-A-Lot signed on more acts, including Choice, The Convicts, O.G. James Smith founded Rap-A-Lot in 1986 after meeting up-and-coming teens Keith Rogers and Oscar Ceres and decided to back them financially. The so-called Third Coast found its voice in the 1980s, when Houston’s Rap-A-Lot record label was founded. If hip-hop culture is all about geography, then the East Coast and West Coast are nothing like the Gulf Coast. Beginning in the 1980s, hip-hop developed new styles, its own unique culture, and unforgettable performers - in Houston. In a city as large as Houston, multiple generations of performers and audiences built the music culture and created a laboratory for musical innovation. For decades, amateur blues and jazz musicians went to Houston to make it big, and established acts came to Bayou City studios to cut records. While Austin is the Live Music Capital of the World, its big sister, Houston, is the historic heart of Texas music. ![]()
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