Back in 2005, the Ohio MC Blueprint looked to 1988 as an anchor point for hip-hop culture—sampling key breaks, beats, and rhymes over the course of a boast-heavy, post-millennial rap record. "Fresh for '88, you suckas,” he declares on the album’s intro, directly quoting KRS-One; on “Boombox,” he distorts a key sequence from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” for his own tribute to the iconic portable music player. Blueprint harnessed the toughness, competitiveness, and wit of late-’80s rap to fuel his angsty critiques of modern hip-hop.