These albums belong together. I’m not saying Digable Planets sound like Jurassic 5 or Jazzy Jeff leads straight to a Tribe Called Quest, but they have several things in common. I’d play all of them for my one and a half year old daughter, and will continue to play them when she understands the words. These are albums by people I’d want to have over for dinner and talk music. They make me think. The artists enjoy their gifts and they use rap as a way to connect with people — not by going all “kumbaya,” but by speaking honestly and forcefully. And the albums are all essential listening for anyone who claims to love hip hop.
Hip hop is closing in on 30 years old. This list could have been much longer, but for the sake of charting a line from the beginning of commercially available hip hop to at least one act that’s still performing — and only using albums that made a real impact on me when they came out — I’m going with these five.
Hip Hop Heritage
As Michaelangelo’s picks prove, there’s a gold mine in the four year period between Radio and Paul’s Boutique. The range of rap exploded right then, as did the idea of the rap “album” versus collections of possible singles padded with filler. There was no going back.
Before 1985, there was no old school because even up to Radio, the idiom hadn’t changed enough to deserve a name for what came before. That’s not to say there wasn’t variety pre-1985. There were battle rhymes, story rhymes, party rhymes and message rhymes, but everyone was mostly playing by the same rules. By 1987, just two years later, it was necessary to have an album like Hip Hop Heritage to show the world where the starting point was.
As a kid growing up in White Plains, New York, I remember sitting in a friend’s room as he played a new single called “Rapper’s Delight.” I was nine. I can’t say I felt a revolution coming, but I still remember the day clearly. Even then, I was a music junkie and I was pissed that this kid knew something before me, even if he had to play it on his Fisher Price Record Player. When Hip Hop Heritage came out, it was like a cheat sheet for people like me who followed rap from a distance between the Sugarhill Gang and Follow the Leader.
There is no perfect summation of the first several years of hip hop — despite many, many attempts, usually by labels trying to sell old product (and this set is Jive heavy) — but this is the only collection that includes ex-Funky Four Jazzy Jeff’s “We Just Want To Have Fun” which is worth the price of admission. Other essentials include “Jazzy Sensation” by Afrika Bambaataa and the Jazzy 5, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five’s “Freedom,” Spoonie Gee and Treacherous Three’s “New Rap Language” and (of course) “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugarhill Gang.
Disclosure: I don’t think this one’s in print anymore, so write to Jive Records and ask them if they have a copy lying around. Otherwise, I encourage you to find a similar collection of the best from this era. Be warned: there’s a lot of bad product so look for full 12″ versions of the best songs rather than the disk with the best cover. Several editions came out last month while this feature was in the works, and some look very promising.
Digital Underground – Sex Packets
That guy with the fake nose? The album cover with the glowing rubber? A group called “Digital Underground?” From California? Northern California?!? I was sure people were kidding when they said I had to check this disk out. I was wrong. After this disk, all the rules were in play, including the ones that said rap had to look a certain way and come from a certain place to be legitimate. Cut out the Sex Packet five-track suite, even leave off “Doowutchyalike” and you are left with an eight track tour de force that stands above most other rap product by miles.
You remember the Humpty Dance? That’s only about a quarter of the story. The leader here is Shock G, and he’s got enough power to make Humpty Hump a side character despite the clever jokes and consistent shtick. The Underground also has styles for any occasion. From surreal to jazzy to old-school party jams, this album (a debut, remember) showed incredible range without spreading too thin. I’m not saying it all stood the test of time or that each song is the best in its class, but the range and the ambition to reinvent rap music is enough to make this a must listen.
This album wrote the rules for legitimate biting, sampling P-Funk and bringing characters to life by stressing the differences between the group’s members. Put the Sex Packet suite back on and you’ve got an album you’ll never forget. Put “Doowutchyalike” back in and you’ve got an album that changed the direction of hip hop.
If you dismissed this album because of any of the factors in the first paragraph, please go back and find it. This album will never be duplicated because this unique set of talents will never all be in one place at one time again.
Tribe Called Quest – Low End Theory
I take a Tribe Called Quest way too seriously. My disclosure here is that at least four key moments in my development as a young man in New York City involve purchasing Tribe albums. They only put out five. So I’m going to try to give you a fair assessment of the weaknesses of this album. “SkyPager” and “What” are filler. “Date Rape” isn’t a great song.
It also gets too much credit in one respect: the popular misconception that this was the first album to be built on jazz samples. The first full album I heard based primarily on jazz textures was Dream Warriors’ and Now the Legacy Begins just a few months before this came out. The Digital Underground had a jazz keyboardist on staff (one of the many ways the Underground was just plain different) and a track called “The New Jazz” a full year and a half before this came out. Others were first, but no one was better.
Track after track on the Low End Theory passes without a beat or note out of place. It’s a study in mood and tempo. Other rap acts would have been choked by the jazz or used it as a gimmick, but bop is the foundation here and the Tribe has the weight to pull it off.
And this was a real risk. The Tribe had a well-received album and several hit songs under its belt. Unlike Digital Underground, the Questers could have made a career out of playing by the rules. Not only did they completely change people’s expectations for rap, but they weren’t afraid to entertain with goofy lyrics like “go get yourself some toilet paper ’cause your lyrics is butt” because they know they didn’t compromise their intelligence or integrity by enjoying the ride. They moved the party and proved rap’s legitimacy to a whole new audience at the same time.
Plus, there is “Scenario” which was a defining moment in itself. Without “Scenario,” this album is essential. With that track, it’s butter, baby, strictly butter.
Digable Planets – Reachin’ (A New Refutation of Time and Space)
Soft? Yup. Reachin’ is soft like a smoky haze — but this isn’t just a chill out album. Reachin’ is a manifesto wrapped in insect talk, space exploration and nickel bags of funk. Billed as the rebirth of slick (cool like dat), this album makes jazzy trip hop seem easy — too easy.
What imitators missed was the power under the surface. The combination of 50-era cool jazz and beat poetry is the perfect vehicle for the themes staked out in the lyrics, but underneath, this album is about faith — not escaping to the past, but building a better future. In that sense the sound is subversive, showing that these issues haven’t been solved since cool jazz was first in vogue.
There are more than enough signs that the Planets wanted to expand the scope of rap — from lines touting a jazz revolution and abortion rights, to the visual pun on the cover showing the group uprooted — but like a Tribe Called Quest, they succeed because what is different about the Planets goes to the core. The liberalism and beat attitude are fully incorporated and serve as a launching pad for everything else rather than serving as a side show or source of lyrical tricks when writer’s block sets in. Metaphysics was a gimmick to PM Dawn and Arrested Development couldn’t get beyond the universal love. (They couldn’t sustain it, either — listen to “People Everyday” again.)
Digable Planets talked about the troubles in their world, but it’s clear they believe we’re all going to make it with vigilance and care for one another. It’s intoxicating because it’s heartfelt and it’s hopeful.
The depth of the themes, the word play, the skilled instrumentation and the clarity of its message sets this album apart from others that tried and failed as well as those that took this sound and turned it into a brief pop phenomenon.
Jurassic 5 – Quality Control
From the near doo wop intro on “the Influence” to the closing turntablist track “Swing Set” it’s clear Jurassic 5 was on a different path than their LA brethren, and that path is interesting enough to warrant some curiosity. The joy and the raw talent they show in the execution is what makes this a must have.
On Quality Control Jurassic 5 sounds like they are genuinely excited to have found a formula that works this well and rather than blow it on tricks, they are going to use their sound to say something important. They give credit to the pioneers, warn people about life in L.A. and denounce the pursuit of fame and fortune. It’s an introduction to a mind set — one that’s progressive musically and socially. But at the same time, the sound is rooted squarely in hip hop’s big bang. Like with every album on this list, the message is in the music as as much as it’s in the lyrics.
Where the pioneers set out to express themselves in a musical context that reflected their world, the Digital Underground tore everything down to dismiss the false taboos, a Tribe Called Quest incorporated bop-era jazz to connect rap to what came before, and Digable Planets leapt into uncharted waters to free themselves from expectations, Jurassic 5 (as the name implies) tried to make something completely fresh while playing by the old rap rules. The visual pun on the cover of this album is the band surrounding a tree stump branded with a J5 logo — they are claiming the roots for themselves and leaving the rest behind.
Quality Control could have been released any time between “Rapper’s Delight” and now without sounding either out of place or obvious, making it an “instant classic” in more ways than one.
And let’s not forget hip hop started with the DJ. Jurassic 5 is not shy in letting you know they sport two of the best DJs on the planet with DJ Nu-Mark and the Cut Chemist. This is the album, so far as I know, that put turntablism (the renewed interest in advancing and recognizing brilliance in the art of cutting records) into the mainstream. It’s just one more way Jurassic 5 returned to the roots of hip hop and pushed it forward at the same time.
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That’s all on these albums, but there’s a post-script. I encourage you to check out the rest of the catalogue for all of these artists. While maybe not quite essential, you cold go far more wrong than to pick up Blowout Comb or Power in Numbers. The Underground’s EP release has one of my favorite all time rap tracks in “Nothing This Funky” and there is nothing wrong with getting the entire Tribe discography. But maybe you should see what others in the series have to say first.
