Silver Anniversary Series - 1986 - The Wrap Up (Part I)

As 2011 draws to a close, so does my series of reviews focusing on records and artists from 1986.  Instead, I'll soon be focusing on 1987, which was another hugely important year in hip hop's evolution.  Anyway, let's get back to 1986 whilst there is still time to review it.

When I came up with the concept for this series, I did some homework to make sure that there was plenty of significant and meaningful material to review, and I was surprised by just how much history there was that was either being forgotten or had passed many of us by (myself included).  I drew up a hit list of the main artists I thought should be mentioned, and I'd hoped to do many more articles in this series than my time has permitted me to do (but that's the life of an ageing b-boy juggling work, family, blogging etc). 

One of the biggest difficulties has been verifying my facts.  I've got a pretty good memory and my knowledge of the old school and golden era is pretty good, but being certain that something was released in a particular year, or on a certain label all needs verifying when 25 years have passed me by.  It's surprising just how many records were released in one year, and then rereleased on a different label the following year (maybe only a couple of months apart), especially when comparing US and European releases.  Many of the artists from this era don't appear on wikipedia, there aren't any Amazon reviews etc, so it's taken some considerable time to pull this stuff together. 

So here I am at the end of the year with a short list of artists that I'd hoped to shine a spotlight on, but never got the time to.  It seems a shame to let them fall by the wayside, so what I'm going to do is give a brief summary of each of these as they all deserve recognition for their work and contribution to the evolution of hip hop music and culture.

As there's so much to cover, I've decide to split this edition into 3 parts.  The first two will focus on the artists and the music, and part 3 will be a little Christmas bonus (download) for you in keeping with this series. 

Ice-T

First up is the Ice Man.  1986 was a key year in Ice-T's career, it's when everything started to take shape and ultimately in 1987 he would sign with Sire records who he would release his debut album with.  But in '86, it was his 12" single Dog N The Wax that was