THE SF STANDARD | ‘We Were Hyphy’ and the Glory of Mid-2000s Bay Area Hip-Hop

Back in the early aughts, in the predawn of Web 2.0, an up-and-coming music producer could lay down a beat in their bedroom, and an aspiring rapper could track a killer hook in a converted closet. But when it came to distributing their creations, rising hip-hop artists still hawked CDs in liquor store parking lots and in the pulpy pages of local zines. So it was with “Hyphy,” a Bay Area-born cultural movement centered around a very distinct hip-hop sound, which rose to regional prominence between the late-1990s and mid-2000s. READ MORE