Old School

Old school, variously spelled old skool, oldschool or oldskool, is a slang term referring to an older school of thinking or acting and to old objects in general, within the context of newer, more modern times. more...

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Rather than carrying the negative connotation of obsolete, it may be used to refer to a time of perceived higher standards or level of craft. The term "old school" may be effectively equivalent to "They just don't make 'em like this anymore".

Old school is often interchangeable with the word nostalgic, but practitioners of semantics often define old school as simply something of an earlier period but not necessarily inferior or hopelessly dated. Nostalgia, on the other hand, is often given a negative connotation. For example, as a sentimental attachment to dated works many of which are now considered embarrassingly 'corny' or 'cheesy' in their execution, yet retaining a place in one's sentiments as a guilty pleasure or relic of one's youth. Old school items or concepts, in contrast, are shown to have residual real-world functionality.

History

The term came originally from religion--in the 19th century the Presbyterians split into "Old School" and "New School" denominations, based on theology. This usage, however, had no impact on popular culture and the term did not approach mainstream use until around 1986, when it was popularized by rap musicians.

"Old School", in early hip hop culture, simply referred to the originators of any particular area. Thus a modern spoken word poet might reference beat poets as "old school". In rap music, old school originally meant the earliest period of rap, from its inception in the 1970s, until that time. The original "old school" of rap was considered the likes of "Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambataa, Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC. Sometimes, the period of 1984 to 1986, with rappers such as LL Cool J was called "Mid-School". "The New School" comprised the new crop of rappers rising up after that period, such as Public Enemy and Eric B & Rakim. But as another of this group of rappers, KRS-One reminds us in his 1988 rap "Still Number One":

Rap is still an art, and no-one's from the Old School

cuz Rap is still a brand-new tool

I say No one's from the old school, cuz rap as a whole

Isn't even 20 years old

50 years down the line we can start this

cuz we'll be the 'old school' artists...

Sure enough, by the mid 1990s, late 80s and early 90s rap acts were being called "old school". It was at this point that the term then spread to R & B, (for instance, a series of Warner Brothers Records CD re-releases were dubbed "Black Music Ol' Skool"). From there, it spread to the other forms of music and finally, the rest of the modern uses.

Read more at Wikipedia.org