Twin Hype “Nothing Could Save Ya” (1991)

While writing "Supernatural Delight," (the first entry of Actual Facts) I realized that the disappearance of dancing from rap videos in 1992 was not the watershed moment I wanted it to be. Genre fanatics enshrine and sanctify the music of their adolescence. Such rituals are repeated by subsequent generations of fans, unaware that their longing for an invented prelapsarian past is linked not only to the history of the genre's discourse about its own development (see any "back in the day" rap song whether it waxes wistful about the pre-crack era, old school rap, childhood, or all of the above) but also to a  pervasive romantic tradition that precedes rap by centuries. The transition from day-glo D.A.I.S.Y. age reverie to Timberland stomping aggression was anything but tidy.