Early 90’s Hip-Hop Album Advertisements

With various print magazines folding nearly every week, I realized yesterday that I miss one important thing about these magazines.  The album advertisements.  There’s nothing like flipping through an old magazine to see what new album and group was being promoted at that time.  Back in the early nineties, it seemed that every label bought at least a half page ad for their artists.  I went through a few ads yesterday and saw Common Sense’s Resurrection album ad.  Because of some legal issue, he was forced to shorten his name but my CD from 1994 says Common Sense on it and that’s how I’ll always refer to him.  My younger cousin didn’t even realize that his name used to be Common Sense and the fact that he had a full page ad back then sort of bothered him (he’s not a fan).  As if he shouldn’t have had that much promotion in the first place.  The other part of advertising I miss is the promo item gimmick.  Jeru’s ad for a bar of soap (he was a dirty rotten scoundrel, remember?) was the best example of this to me.  And did Heavy D’s label really give away chocolate bars as a promo item?  Anyway, take a moment to stroll down memory lane here.  There are tons of old ads below that you may not have ever seen before.