Old southern groups straight ripped off Run DMC and Who dini. 2 Live Crew was still doing pre-rakim flows.

Brand Nubian, X-Clan, and PE were all getting radio burn nationwide, but you have to rememeber this was when most Black stations, were

1) not called urban
2) not called churban
3) weren't the #1 home for hip hop and R&B
4) weren't playing rap music outside of night time mix shows.

NYC didn't have an all hip hop all the time station then. (it doesn't now really, but that's another topic)

Nationally, Rap music existed on the video level and the album level. Less so on the radio level, cause radio was slow to add hip hop to the mix.

This is a small slice of history that immediately changed in 92/93, but prior to that Puba was a well known name for anyone that liked rap music. If you were in high school or middle school at the time, you were up on Puba.

After that, after Dre and Snoop, when black radio started to play considerably more rap music outside of the mix shows - that's when a lot of these east coast rappers became less commercially viable.

It wasn't some stylistic preference in those days, cause most of the time your local rappers sounded corny.

one
k. orr