It wasn’t too long ago I used to see these dudes outside of Fat Beats (NYC) slangin’ their shit. Looks like they made some moves along the way because they’re on their Dead Prez shit now, only this is better than Dead Prez if you ask me. Check out Duo Live alongside Griff, Chucky D and Kool Herc. –Philaflava
Before we get started lets recap and see how we got here:
The other day someone on the boards, I think it was Thun, said something along the lines that I should own up to being just another 30 something boom bap dinosaur. Which of course I am, I am in my 30s and I do feel that hip hop’s best years have come and gone. I don’t long so much for a return to the sound as I do for a return the ethics and creativity of the day. I miss the spirit of originality that was brought to the table by the artists we still love and admire some 20 plus years after the fact.
I get that the music of our youth is always going to resonate more and that there will always be ebbs and flows with the quality of a genre. The problem is that we are now pushing 15 years of the same album, style, video, and albums. The music is horribly stagnant from a creative and artistic point of view.
It is a giant game of follow the follower, where everyone is hanging on to some ideal that they think the music is all about whether it is the underground artist who wants you to believe it has always been about the art and that materialism is a new phenomenon or the newest pop sensation that thinks they are paying homage to the old school ideals by being the hyper success of the week and being hot in the streets. And you know what both of those points of view are fine, they are limiting and wrong but they are fine. Hip Hop has moved to a place where the idea of fitting a prototype is more important than the idea of being unique and therefore fresh. The creative spirit, the idea that the art is a manifestation of the artist’s personality, beliefs, and experience is seriously lacking in today’s music. Where other genres got fat and hit a lull, causing a groundswell of outsiders to reclaim the music in their image and ideals, rap has remained the same entity for the past decade and a half. The saddest part is that now you got 40 year olds trying to appeal to 15 year old girls. There is something incredibly creepy and sad about it.
That was really the point of this exercise, it was not to say “Hey Paid in Full is a classic because it has some classic songs†or “Straight Outta Compton is a classic because of its impact†or even “Ready to Die matters because it changed the game†no, the goal was to look at the album as an artistic expression both in itself and of the artists.
So I guess it is no surprise that Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is our number one album. Not only is it an artistic masterpiece, but it is single most important album of the past 30 years. I don’t think I am speaking hyperbolically here. The impact it had on the culture as a whole is undeniable. But like I said I am not here to argue the impact the album had but the artistic merit.
The combination of Chuck D and Flavor Flav is a brilliant pairing that has been discussed ad nauseam and I have no desire to force that on you again. We get it, the combo worked. I want to talk about the Bomb Squad. I feel they just have not gotten their due. The production work on this album has yet to be touched by any producer or production team in the 22 years since it’s release. You can take your Premo’s, Dre’s, Large Professor’s, Pete Rock’s, Rza’s, etc and they are all production midgets when compared to the work on this album. Not only did they set the mood for the bombast that was Chuck D, they built a sonic canvas that is pure genius.
To this day, with the right set of headphones I am still picking up on things I haven’t heard, and I have been listening to this record for 22 years. It is a maddening jenga puzzle of production, if there was one false move the whole project would crumble, but they didn’t miss a beat. The Bomb Squad is the most ahead of their time visionaries in the history of hip hop. I know sample laws have changed and an album like this could never be created today, but I think that is bullshit. The samples while helpful were only tools that helped them build a wall of sound that defined Public Enemy and eventually early Ice Cube. I think they would have done it no matter the tools they had. It was in them and of them. And it is because of them that Nation of Millions is Timlaska’s Top album of all time.
So we finally cracked the top 5, and I have had this album slated as high as number 3, but with the inevitable reshuffling that comes with shit like this I had to move it down to number 5. I also had to decide between two albums by the same artist for this slot. I knew I wanted one of the first two Ice Cube solo records it was just a matter of which one. Was it the one that I romanticized as being better than it was, or the one that I never really gave a fair shake too? Either way it is hard to argue against either of these albums making it into any top 5 anywhere. I think his stretch from Straight Outta Compton through Death Certificate is one of the most dominant in the history of hip hop. If you were to take the best 3-4 year periods for rappers since the start of the genre it is hard to find someone that had a better stretch than Ice Cube during this time. In fact I might have to explore this at a later point.
Since I was torn on these albums let’s do the side-by-side comparison.
Rapping – Ice Cube was a better technical rapper on Amerikkka’s Most. It’s hard to argue against that. He hit on all cylinders – flow, voice, cadence, storytelling, battle raps, style, etc. On Death Certificate he was still quite capable and delivered a powerful performance but the technical side suffered a bit. He became a bit one dimensional running couplet after couplet. I think on Death Certificate we start to see the very early stages of what became of him on Lethal Injection and everything that followed. The fall off was small but it is there.
Advantage – Amerikkka’s Most (any truth to the rumors that Del helped him write this?)
Production – This one was a shocker for me. For my money there has never been a greater production team than the Bomb Squad, so I expected this to be a landslide win for them. However the more I listened the more I realized that the work that Sir Jinx did on Death Certificate surpasses the work they did on Amerikkka’s Most. To the point that I now have trouble listening to Amerikkka’s Most. He took everything that was great about the first album and then made it his own, giving Ice Cube a signature sound as opposed to sounding like PE light. It is an amazingly impressive work.
Advantage – Death Certificate (by a much bigger margin than you might remember)
Content – While Ice Cube does what he did best on Amerikka’s Most, the content itself is pretty one dimensional, a few battle raps, a few stories about scandals chicks and a few gang related tales; it is really a myopic world view. On Death Certificate, while still hitting on the same topics, he opens up his scope more and turns his lens on race relations, economic hardships, the realities of gang life and bagging stank broads, as well as the expansion of gangs and crack, the problems in the black community within the black community. It is a stronger effort that ultimately made Ice Cube a more rounded MC.
Advantage – Death Certificate
Guest Appearances – Death Certificate didn’t have Yo-Yo
Advantage – Death Certificate
Overall – I expected Amerikkka’s Most Wanted to run away with this. It held a special place in my heart but once I put them side by side it became more and more obvious that Death Certificate is a much better record. The production is stronger, the content and rapping is more complete, and the album seems to move much better and doesn’t suffer from being too long and stagnant portions the way Amerikkka’s Most does. Both albums are terrific but Death Certificate is a better album.
Winner – Death Certificate
Download Death Certificate Here
