Hip Hop smart playlist organization help?

[rdej47]

Hey guys recently I started a new iTunes library from scratch and i'm struggling with how to label my hip hop for smart playlists. There's stuff that I consider timeless/golden era (Tribe Called Quest, Gang Starr, De La Soul) then there's the radio stuff (Jay-Z, Kanye West, Wiz Khalifa) and the G-Funk stuff. Just wondering if anyone could weigh in on how they organize hip hop music. In my previous library I had over 1000 tracks in my club, hip hop playlist and it just ended up taking a long time to navigate.

[Patch]

I need to do this too - I think I'm gonna go the way of using sub-genre tags for each track...

[ToOntown]

About a year ago I started to use iTunes playlists on my DJ laptop as a method of crating. So when I'm in Traktor, I can pull those playlists up and have everything grouped.

For Hip Hop, I have my Old School group, then West Coast-East Coast grouped (separately of course) through the 90s, then late 90s to mid 2000s with subgenres like underground, g-funk, dirty south, top 40.... then carried that through to today's hip hop in similar groupings for crunk, underground, top 40, hardcore, and stuff like that. if it falls outside of those like Ragga or Jazz Rap, or something else i put that in a Misc. Hip Hop playlist.

I do this for all genres on my laptop and I completely ignore the genre tag, in fact I hide it in iTunes and Traktor...not because it's not important, but because I know that I've grouped it already with this method.