Lots of older people still into late 90s early 00’s boom bap era hip hop. Younger gen I don’t think really into it except maybe the most popular shit. If you like heavy mental though you should check out Aceyalone - Book of human language. That is probably in my top 3 for me personally same vibe as heavy mental.
I LOVE Book of Human Language. It's pure poetry over amazing beats.
As for late 90's-early 2000's boom bap, you're absolutely right. That's the real golden era of hip-hop, imo. That's when the production and sampling leveled up past the samey sounding heavy but basic drum beats and into more complex longer samples from all sorts of genres. Also, the lyricists reached peak talent at that time and had this sort of "too cool for school" vibe that didn't feel forced. It was like a competition to see who could sound the illest on every track.
The problem was, most of the good stuff never reached any sort of large audience. A bunch of stuff was only pressed on 12" in short runs. I went through discogs.com and looked at every hip-hop vinyl from 97-03 and made a youtube playlist of all the best stuff I could find. It's a rather large playlist at this point (almost 1000 tracks) but I feel like each one is at least an 8 out of 10. So, just check it out, maybe put it on random and jump around. I'm sure you'll hear some gems that you've never heard before, as well as some that you remember but might not have heard for 20+ years. It's quite a trip.
@AREZ God of War
