Nothing exposes the relativity of preference more than an essential hip-hop album list.
Unlike Jazz, Classical, Soul, or even Rock and Roll, Hip-hop (being in its early twenties) hasn’t existed long enough to yield albums that are universally recognized as classic. The genre is too young and its audience too fickle to agree on a rubric that all records could be evaluated against. That’s why just about everyone who contributes to this feature will have a completely different list. It’s also why everyone, from the angriest back packer to the happiest club hopper, will express the same passion for their choices.
From my experience, hip-hop preference is based almost completely on two factors: age and lifestyle. My list is that of a 25 year old black man that spent his formative years in a gated high rise community surrounded on three sides by housing projects. It’s the soundtrack of an introvert. The product of a sheltered adolescence that led to a sub-culture self-identity.
My social isolation and immersion in books created an intense self-awareness that needed by soothed by equally intense melodies and sophisticated language. If not for the albums on this list, I may have become severely socio-pathic, maybe even a little schizo…
That said, please understand that by no means do I expect that you or anyone else should feel as I do about these choices. These are reflections of a personal universe as relative as Einstein’s. If you are part of the small population of listeners for whom these choices could also be therapeutic, I can only hope that you have already found them, or some other help.
In no particular order, these are my essentials…
De La Soul – Stakes Is High 1996
Some prefer the divine inaccessibility of Buhloone Mindstate, “purists” (read as: fans over 30) prefer the bohemian rebellion of Three Feet High. But this is the record that speaks to me. On this album, the plugs seemed to be less concerned with creating a reactionary statement to the industry as they were with relaxing and making a record that dared to be fun at the dawn of the age of materialism. It was 1996, and while the Cash Money Millionaries wouldn’t coin the term “bling” until two years later, the industry had already chosen cash, cars and clothes as the standard aesthetic for mainstream fare. Since I spent most of my time breakdancing and scratching my name into bus windows, those worldly themes didn’t necessarily turn me on. Imagine my delight when I see the video for the title track featuring Trugoy washing dishes while delivering the following lines:
“I’m sick of bitches shakin’ asses
I’m sick of talkin’ about blunts
Sick of Versace glasses
Sick of slang
Sick of half-ass awards shows
Sick of name brand clothes
Sick of R&B bitches over bullshit tracks
Cocaine and crack
Which brings sickness to blacks
Sick of swoll’ head rappers
With their sicker-than raps
Clappers and gats
Makin’ the whole sick world collapse
The facts are gettin’ sick
Even sicker perhaps”
It was as if he were reading my troubled mind.
Add that to the fact that Pos proclaims mid-way through the video that “…the Native Tongues have officially been re-instated” and my affection was already signed sealed, and delivered. The Native Tongues was a rap collective consisting of De La Soul, The Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, and Black Sheep. In other words it was everyone that I cared about in the world. They moved as a unit from 1988-1992 but by ’93 they were barely recording together. The thought of them reconvening in 1996 was enough to make me forget to breathe for a few weeks. Unfortunately, the re-grouping only yielded a few photo-ops and the video for the second single “Itsoweezee” which featured cameos by all of the original tongues plus Lords of the Underground, Nice and Smooth and many other middle-school artists in a hip-hop high school theme (complete with lunch ladies and hall monitors…)
Aside from the theme, the beats made this record beautiful. It featured production from the plugs themselves, Prince Paul, Jay Dee, and Skeff Anslem. In my mind, this era in my fandom was marked by songs that I would play over and over again all night long in repeated sequence. From this album, there were three of those songs: Long Island Degrees, Pony Ride and Dinninit. Those joints got the gold star. Itsoweezee, The Bizness featuring Common, and Big Brother Beat (the song that introduced the Mighty Mos Def to the world) got a very respectable honorable mention…which means that I may have played them 2,000 times a day instead of 4,000…
This is one of the records that created my foundation as an emcee. It had an aesthetic that seemed very genuine and trustworthy. I sometimes wonder if they realized that they were teaching some awkward erudite teenagers how to be confident intellectuals, rather than marginalized recluses. It was an invitation for me to emerge from my shell and find the comfort that comes along with discovering that I was not alone. The fact that they still hold it down ten years later is further inspiration and a testament to the effectiveness of this release.
*Fun Factoid: This was De La’s last album recorded with Prince Paul
Album in One Song: Long Island Degrees
If Stakes is High was a “social” security blanket, the next album went one further. It gave me the confidence to start rhyming, in public no less…
Common Sense – Resurrection (1994)
In a genre governed and ruled by the five fearsome boroughs of the Big Apple, us second citiers needed this record. After years of memorizing and reciting raps that described intersections in such distant-seeming locales as Flatbush, Brooklyn and Jamaica, Queens, hearing rhymes that told of life on 87th street was validating in a way that is difficult to express. For a denizen of the South Side of the Chi this is the quintessence of a personal experience. While the De La record might have spoke to me philosophically, this record knew where I lived and how I got to school every morning. It whispered the names of the street signs that I read while riding the train. And it showed me that someone with a life astonishingly similar to mine could make incredible music.
In fact, the parallels that I drew between Common and myself led me to pattern myself after him lyrically when I began rapping. Fortunately, no one will ever hear my first few written rhymes, so you’ll have to take my word for it when I tell you that I bit ComSense pretty hard.
You only need to peep the album art to imagine the style of beats on the album. It looks like the jacket to a jazz record from the be-bop era. It’s the perfect visual representation of the album’s sound. Lush melodies, bright chords, and bouncy upright bass lines, courtesy of No I.D., conceive backgrounds that allow Common to rock the party, wax introspective, and dismantle emcees on the same record.
*Fun Factoid: No I.D. is Kanye West’s mentor
Album in One Song: Communism
Gott-damn, I miss 1994.
…Allow me to stay there for a while…
BoogieMonsters – Riders of the Storm: The Underwater Album (1994)
Yeah, this is gonna be the one you never heard of. It’s not an attempt to try to be “underground”. It’s not me trying to act super-sub-cultured and elitist, though I understand why some think that I would. No, this is genuinely one of the most fantastic albums ever recorded.
If you had “The Box”, an old music video network where viewers phoned in and selected which clip would play next, you may remember the single “Recognized Thresholds of Negative Stress”. If you enjoyed it and didn’t purchase the album you should give yourself a stiff kick in the arse right now since you can’t find it anywhere. Even now I’m forced to listen to an incomplete digital version since I don’t feel like digging through my cassettes. This is THE most slept on Hip-Hop album of all time.
But I really can’t blame you or not knowing. At first glance, you might have mistaken them for The Pharcyde, Anotha Level, Questionmark Asylum, The B.U.M.S., The Cella Dwellas, or any of the other dreadlocked, fleet footed rap groups of the era. But none of those other groups, Pharcyde included, EVER came close to matching the honesty and musicianship of this album.
The personal angle for me is that I first heard at the time when I was ending my love affair with rock music and becoming obsessed with Hip-Hop. This album provided the element that I found lacking in rap: live instrumentation. I had missed the Stetsasonic era and had yet to discover The Roots, so the lull of the live bass and the screaming, but subdued guitars in the BM’s tracks were what hooked me initially, but what would keep me was the sensitivity and significance of the lyrics. These brothers had a message, not a Kweli/Dead Prez beat-you-over-the-head message, the more subtle, yet confident kind of message that emanates from an artist that has knowledge of self…
I would love to be able to show you an excerpt from “Altered States of Consciousness”, but none of the online lyric people have it, and I learned my lesson about trying to transcribe rappers lyrics in my first college English class. Ergo, dear hearts, you’ll just have to take my word for it…again.
*fun factoid: these dudes were low-key Christian rappers. And I just found out today, oh…and Scott “Lean Back” Storch played keys on this record.
The Album in One Song: Altered States of Consciousness
Next up…
The Roots – Do You Want More?!!!??! (1995)
The album that introduced me (and most of the rest of the world) to the band formerly known as the “square” roots. The album that finally found the balance between the jazz band and the hip-hop group. Of course the aforementioned outfit Stetsasonic had come before, but their sound was a little too much on the “hype” side. But this record…was cool.
To this day, I’ve yet to hear a record that has this vibe. The Roots themselves have never been able to duplicate it, but that’s probably by choice. Many disagree (read: Mathan), but for me, this is the essence of the Roots’ sound. I feel that their reinventions have filtered if not watered down the raw fusion sound that set them apart in this era. Many rap groups had a jazzy sound, but what Pete Rock, Premier, and the Large Professor had to dig for in dusty crates, the Roots Crew had organically (pun intended for the initiated only). At this point in their career they were untouchable in terms of the magic that they could make in the studio in addition to the brilliance of their live show.
And let us not forget the emcees!
Lead rhymer Black Thought has always been dynamic, but that combined with youthful energy made for an explosiveness that could not be contained. And this was definitely Malik B’s finest hour. In later recordings, there was evidence that some of his personal demons might have had an effect on his performance, fortunately we have this as evidence of how raw he once was.
My words do little justice to the warmth of this record. It may sound contradictory that it was warm and cool at the same time, but true art always creates those types of strange loops in logic. To get an accurate handle on the feel of it, just spend some time looking at the album cover. All of those dark blue hues are trapped in the tracks.
*Fun factoid: Scott Storch played keys on this record too. He was the Roots’ resident key tickler until he was booted from the group after this release. All signs point to his whiteness being the reason…
The Album in One Song: Swept Away
And in the final slot…the best hip-hop album ever.
A Tribe Called Quest – Midnight Marauders (1993)
This wasn’t just a record, this was the manifestation of a movement. And not simply the Native Tongue movement, since, as you can see, there’s a lot more people on the cover than there were members of that collective. This was a showing, maybe the final showing, of positivity in the hip-hop mainstream. And it was one hell of an album to stand behind.
Tribe had already broke new ground with its initial release
Nothing is funnier than the look on a fan’s face if you ask them what they’re favorite song on the album is. For most, the album is indivisible, it’s a sixty minute masterpiece that never makes a mis-step. Honestly, it’s the record that spoiled me. Its why I have no patience for albums with a “club” single, or a crossover song. Sure its great marketing, but it makes for poor music. And this album is void of poor music. Twelve years later, its better than anything that’s come out since. Anything. Doom, Def Jux, Rhymesayers, even Tribe’s own post-Midnight releases can’t measure up.
The funny thing is that there’s really no good reason why.
Q-tip and Phife have never been on anybody’s top five emcee’s list. But I’ll be damned if they didn’t make history with this one. Maybe it was some good weed going around in 1993, and it must have left as fast as it came.
I’ll always remember the first time I heard the lead single “Award Tour”. I was in my aunt’s car riding in the back seat. For some reason I didn’t the energy to tune out the radio as I usually did. Right when I thought the agony might never end, I heard those rolling xylophones…Then seeing the video with the picture frame around it and Trugoy in holding his right eye the entire time. Even though I really didn’t enjoy rap that much at the time, I had the distinct feeling that this was something for me, personally. I even bought the cassette single.
By now, I’ve researched and heard every song that was sampled for this album. Anyone else that has done this knows how much imagination it took to craft these beats. And in the end that may have been the deciding factor. Shaheed’s ambition wouldn’t let him settle for the same old James Brown loops and Clyde Stubblefield drums that rest of the industry was using. He brought hip-hop production to the level of a true art. The emcees only needed to relax and follow the music.
And all of hip-hop is fortunate that they did. I don’t know if I’d even care about rap as much if this album didn’t exist. It’s a monument to positivity in spite of everything else around, and rather than spending an hour describing itself as positive-in-spite-of, it relaxes and simply exists in that space, giving us license to join it.
*Fun factoid: Album cover featured the likes of Ice T, Akinyele, and a young Sean “Puffy” combs
Album in One Song: God Lives Through
