Arrested Development: Hip-hop’s Lost Poets

A feel-good alternative to hard-edged gangsta rap, Arrested Development burst out of Atlanta bearing messages of peace, love, and unity. After their critically acclaimed 1992 debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…, won them a Grammy for Best New Artist, they were poised to become the next big thing in hip-hop. But if their success was massive and immediate, it was also fleeting. Their second album flopped and the band broke up in 1995, just as a fresh strain of hip-hop, G-funk, became the prevailing sound of the genre. In this episode, we examine how Arrested Development’s style and values were a celebrated musical change of pace, but how they quickly fell out of step with the trends that would dominate hip-hop for the rest of the decade. Plus, frontman Speech joins us to discuss their breakout, single, “Tennessee”; the deeply personal real-life events that inspired it; and why the group was more influential than many listeners realize.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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1992: The year of big-butt anthems, achy-breaky hearts, and Madonna’s Sex book. The year that Boyz II Men and Whitney Houston shattered chart records, while U2 and TLC confronted the AIDS crisis head-on. The year that introduced us to grunge, G-funk, and… Right Said Fred. In this podcast, journalist Jason Lamphier (Entertainment Weekly) looks back at the major hits, one-hit wonders, shocking headlines, and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest, weirdest, most controversial 12 months in music history. Featuring interviews with music video directors, MTV bigwigs, obsessive superfans, and the artists themselves, Where Were You in '92? poses the question: What was it about 1992 that made it so groundbreaking, so bonkers, and so absolutely fabulous? New episodes drop every week beginning Nov. 16.