I first hip hop I heard was all from old school stuff - De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Beastie boys etc.. I actually loved the strong emphasis on the drums and funk music from which most of the songs were made. The catchy, syncopted rhyming just seemed so differtn to other genres and most artists of that era had quite a lot to say too. At the same time I was getting into all the hiphop that ws constabtly being bombared at me through advertising...I brought eminem first LP, then a Wu-Tang LP...I found myself buying older and older stuff as the material in the charts started seeming even more unimaginative to me.
I met a guy called Andrew, through skateboarding, he was a bit older than me and was into so many artists which I hadn't heard before and just kept borrowing stuff off him..we'd talk about older artists too, but he'd always tell me about all these underground groups and just introduced me into a whole new side of hiphop - instrumental stuff like Dj Shadow, Krush, Dj Vadim....and lots of trip hop stuff too. I think I had always really appreciated the instrumental side of hiphop so it was just a natural progression to get into that sort of stuff too.
And then through hiphop I got into the music that influenced it...primarily Funk and Jazz. Its amazing how much I was introduced to through one genre of music - I do listen to other genres but they never have the same history or ability to incorporate so many sounds and aren't influenced by so many different other genres.