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.
Before we announce the #1 Top Ten-est Rap Album of All Time next week I wanted to focus on albums that just missed the top ten. These are all excellent albums that sadly had a fatal flaw I could not over look.
I have been pretty much actively avoiding this write up since last week. Partly because by brain isn’t functioning that well due to lack of sleep and partly because I just didn’t know how to attack it. How many ways can you say “hey this thing here is great†without sounding redundant? With this album we are now 9 albums deep into our little Top Ten-est list, and like most top ten lists it seems like everything that needs to be said about an album has been said. Finding a new angle is increasingly difficult and at times pointless, but regardless I need to pull something out of my ass to finish strong.
When today’s album dropped, friends kept telling me I needed to check it, The Source gave it 5 mics, the world seemed geeked on it, but I just could not give it the respect it deserved because I my east coast bias was so strong. Their accents threw me as did their style. I loved SouthernPlaylisticCadillacMusic, when it dropped but there was still something decidedly familiar about that album, even the videos had a whole DPG meets Souls of Mischief vibe to them. Granted neither of those groups were east coast but they were familiar enough that I could get my head around it.
Atliens on the other hand turned me off completely, I hated the whole aesthetic. Of course now I can look back and see that there was some genuinely brilliant rap music on that album, but it was still an uneven effort and sounds incredibly dated. You can tell that they were on to something but it wasn’t fully clicking.
After a few months of non-stop brow beating Aquemini finally clicked with me thanks to my friend Big Ben who played the album endless when we were driving around Manhattan and Brooklyn in his Nissan Pathfinder doing things we probably shouldn’t have been while driving and messing with girls that could best be describe as “if she was your daughter you would feel ashamed of yourselfâ€.
It was in that car and in that altered state of mind that I really started to appreciate the album. The production was original, thick and layered. The drums patterns were unique and amorphous, and the lyrical performances were tremendous. Big Boi is easily the best second fiddle not named Prince Po and Andre is just brilliant. His patterns are some of the best ever and continue to amaze even today. His content managed to remain entertaining even when being, for lack of a better term, conscious. He draws you in where others come across as pretentious (see Mos Def) or semi retarded (see Dead Prez). He is also the only MC right now that if feel has a chance to make an honest and entertaining album well into his late 30s and 40s.
Outkast has 4 albums that you can claim as their best, however the only one they would be correct about would be Aquemini.
On IllmaticNas shows a level of self awareness that may have never before or since been matched on a rap record. It is the ghost that Nas himself and rap as a whole have been chasing since it dropped. It may have been the last really important album in rap. Sure there have been plenty of great albums, some that may even be better since illmatic was released, but none have captured its depth or resonated in the same way.
For years I have wondered what set this album apart from all the others. What was it about the 10 songs so perfectly crafted that made this record so special. We have certainly seen better records before and since, but they tend to be over the top sonic productions. Illmatic in its entirety is understated. It is an every-man approach to rap music. The music oozes with the time and place it was constructed and Nas delivers a performance often saved for the greatest authors. It helps that he is a technically proficient rapper but what was most important about this album is that he told his story, in the simplest terms that when combined with the music was nothing less than elegant.
Elegant isn’t a word usually associated with rap music, especially rap music that matters. Illmatic contains none of the bombast of say an NWA or PE; it doesn’t go the arty conscious route that so many critics and college age white kids seem to cream over. It is simply the inner workings of a young man defining his place in a world that is often alienating, cruel and dark. In many ways it is the most mature rap album ever made, and could be a perfect companion piece with the number 7 entryBuhloone Mindstate in that they are deeply personal albums that deal with internal issues and emotions without being maudlin. Where Buhloone Mindstate presents this for the artist in their later 20s, Illmatic does so for the artist in their late teens, early 20s. The sad thing is that we still haven’t found an artist that can take this dynamic and make a good album for the 30 or 40 year old set the way say a Tom Waits or Will Oldham can.
I originally had this album at number six. I have played it so much over the years that it is just completely played out to me. I needed to step outside of myself and take in the album for what it was, as well as ignore what Nas has become. There was so much potential for Nas after this album, sadly he has never lived up to any of it.
If I were to ask you “Where’s my killer tape at?†you would undoubtbly know that “Shameek from 212 got bust in his head two times and he was laying there like a new born fucking baby god with all types of fucking blood coming outâ€
Or if in passing I said “torture muthafucker torture†you might inform me that you would indeed “stab my tongue with a rusty screwdriverâ€
Let’s say you were hungry and wanted to get some food that was best described as “some marvelous shit to get your mouth watering†you would know who to see.
How is it that we would all know this?
Well from our number four album Enter the 36 Chambers by The Wu Tang Clan.
Released in 1993 it revolutionized production and offered up a bevy of styles from GZA’s traditional rhythms and cadence to ODB’s madman with a mic style, it was unlike anything that any of us have heard at the time and since then artists have been trying to replicate it with expectedly boring and lackluster results….I’m looking at you white people.
My first experience with the Wu was at the Wiz on Central Avenue in Yonkers. I spent my summers working on a Coors truck and every Tuesday I would go to the Wiz and by all the new releases whether I heard them or not. Towards the end of that summer I bought the cassette single for Protect Ya Neck b/w Method Man. The art work could best be described as non-descript, basically plain white cover with a logo. I never heard them, but I read about them and people suggested I check them out. I went back to my car, at the time a Colt Vista Wagon, aka a piece of American shit that Detroit has become famous for, and played the single for a good 45 minutes before pulling out of the parking lot. It was that good and different. Even U-God came off, which is usually the case when he limited to 8 bars or less.
Needless to say I was stuck. I waited and waited until the album came out that fall. The wait was worth every second. The album dropped and it felt like everything changed, at least it did for me. Production now had to be moody and cinematic, lyrics had to be strong and layered and flows had to be insane. The album feature 3 of the greatest songs in the history of rap (Protect Ya Neck, CREAM, and Can It Be All So Simple) and I guess you can argue for a fourth with Method Man, which for my money was a great song for the 90s but not all time.
Everything about the album (with the exception of the song Tearz) is perfect, even the skits are enjoyable to this day. What other album has had skits that spawned hours of conversations and inside jokery, t-shirts, Youtube clips, etc. There are none.
I can’t believe I considered leaving this album off the list.
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.
So today we go back to our weekly series dedicated to naming the top ten-est rap albums of all time. I picked the ten albums I wanted to feature in advance. Since then I have been listening to them pretty non-stop which has lead to many of them being second guessed, removed, and shuffled around. Today’s record was originally slated in the number two spot, but the more I listened there was just no way I could justify putting it above the albums to follow.Â
A Tribe Called Quest was one of the best groups of the 90s. THey have also become one of the groups that annoying white people that want to discuss hip hop but have no real grasp of the culture cling to. They are like Cypress Hill minus the weed or the Beastie Boys minus the nasally NY jewish voices. Additionally Tribe reached a creative zenith that neither of these groups came close too….fuck anyone who says Paul’s Boutique was this or that. The MCing sucked so the album isnt good. It would have been better suited as an instrumental album, but sadly that trend didnt really take off till years later.Â
Midnight Marauders was the high water mark of creativity and artistry for the group from Queens. It also marked the first time that Phife Dawg wasnt a complete liability. That said Phife is also the reason for the albums drop from number two to number 5. There was just no way i could put an album that he shared lead vocal duties above say, Illmatic, which was originally in this slot.Â
Midnight Marauders is the most complete work from the group, it was the moment all the key elements came into their own, with the exception of Jarobi who came into his own by no longer appearing after the groups first album. The scope of their content moved from very hip hop centric concepts like Buggin Out and having The Jazz to more universal topics like romance, the experience of a young man in the city and even just everyday problems one faces in their life. Ali Shaheed Muhammad’s production was cohesive throughout and wasnt limited to just the obscure jazz samples that made Low End Theory a landmark album that has ultimately aged poorly. The production is thick and lavish and creates a mood that ties the album together from start to finish. Q-Tip while not displaying the same level of craftmanship in Low End Theory offers a more complete performance combining content, flow, voice and lyrics to help him reach even greater heights as an mc. The guest appearances are not frivolous and include a top notch performance from Large Professor, getting booth guest vocal and guest production credits on Keep It Rollin and chorus appearances from Trugoy and Busta Rhymes on Award Tour and Oh My God respectively. The album also spawned two undeniable hip hop classics the aforementioned Award Tour and Electric Relaxation which ended up on every mixtape I made for my lady friend that year.Â
I think most would agree that Midnight Marauders is the magnum opus for one of the genre’s most creative acts and remains as poigient and fresh sounding today as it did back in 1993.
Personal note: I went to SUNY New Paltz and this album circulated the campus for about two months before its actual release. Albums that also leaked that school year and made the rounds were Black Moon’s debut and Nas’ Illmatic. So I guess leaked records were not just a symptom of the internet age.Â
At number 7 we have an entry from De La Soul, Buhloone Mindstate. It is the best De La record to date, and considering how bad their recent output has been, it is probably the best De La album period. Artsy types will often gravitate towards their first two records 3 Feet High and Rising and De La Soul is Dead, one of which is good and one of which is kind of a cluster fuck. Ill let you figure out which is which. Purists will often go with Stakes is High which is an average effort at best, and the worst of the 4 De La albums that matter, it also signified the beginning of the end for De La as an important entity.
Bulhoone Mind State is the high water mark of their artistic creativity and maturity. Marking the first time in the groups history that all three major contributors were on the same playing feild. Dave aka Trugoy was always a capable MC but was carried by the greatness of Posdnous and Prince Paul. This was the first time it felt like Dave could hang. It is also the only rap record that ever made it into the category of grown folk music that wasnt a Jay-Z post Black Album-esque snooze fest or some crotchety old folks telling the kids to pull their pants up.
The Lyrics are intense, layered, and personal. Posdnous delivers one of the greatest lyrical performances in the history of the genre. His lyrics are brilliant, revealing, and easy to grasp, while still holding true to his abstract style. His patterns are absolutely absurd. The high point being his verse on I Am I Be. Prince Paul’s The production is a cleaned up and more to the point version of 3 Feet High and Rising. They are soulful and not in a shitty Common post Resurrection vibe.
Outside of the weird asian guys rapping (which luckily isnt too long) the album is flawless. Truth be told I have recently become reacquanted with this album and it is the inspiration for this bizarre quest to change the way we look at rap albums, moving from an impact, historical significance and sales number model to one of artistry. Buhloone Mindstate is definitely one of the artistic high points in the history of the genre.
I spent a lot of time trying to fill this slot. I was torn between two albums that I absolutely love, Breaking Atoms by Main Source and Whut? Tha Album by Redman, but the more I listened to those albums the less I could justify including them in the top ten-est rap albums of all time based on the criteria laid out in this space two weeks ago. So I pondered, and tried to figure out what I could put in this slot.  I already had every album I wanted to include on this list plotted out and ready to go. Then it hit me I needed to move Ghostface Killah’sIron Man from its previous position which was so high because it was going to be the de facto Wu album to the number 8 slot and move Enter the 36 Chambers into the slot held by Ghostface. After all Enter the 36 Chambers is a monster that has earned its right to represent itself.Â
So here we are at number 8 with what I consider to be the best of the Wu Tang solo records and one of my favorite records of all time. One could argue that any of the first round of Wu Tang solo records could claim a top spot on this list, but you would be wrong. Tical was very good for its time, but Meth’s style on the record has become dated; Liquid Swords aged horribly mostly due to Gza’s anti-personality; and Return to the 36 Chambers while fantastic was just a little too uneven. That leaves Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Linx and Ghostface Killah’sIron Man. I feel like you can make an argument for either of these albums being the high point of mid 90s NYC street rap perhaps only being matched by Mobb Deep’sThe Infamous and Hell on Earth, but I can’t give any credence to an album where Havoc is prominently featured on the mic. So I went with my personal favorite of the two. Iron Man.
There is something special about this record, I wouldn’t say it is the high point creatively for Ghostface and the Rza, that would be Supreme Clientele, and it isn’t even the high point for ghost as a lyricist. But there is something about this album that makes me revisit it for weeks at a time. It has a cohesiveness that the others lack, still holds to the signature Wu sound which you could easily argue was the last sound out of New York that really mattered. Sorry Jay-z’sThe Blueprint was cool and all but it was not redefining shit.  Where Supreme Clientele and Bulletproof Wallets highlight the verbal ability of Ghost they are lacking in a constant that tethers you to the music, causing the albums to lose urgency as time goes on. Pretty Toney, while enjoyable was the start of the downfall of Ghost as a creative entity eventually leading horrifically boring projects like Fish scale and More Fish. Sure they had moments but they were few and far between. I think what makes Iron Man so special is the emotional core and the rawness of the sound.  It resonates through time and the music throughout the record is phenomenal, with a perfect mix of Wu Tang battle raps, street revelry and introspective genius that I think I will still be revisiting well into my latter years. Â
To recap last week we started our Top Ten-est Best Rap Albums of All Time with our number ten selection Kanye West’s Late Registration. Today we will take a look at #9. I was torn between two albums from the same artist for my #9 spot. Hard to Earn and Step in the Arena by Gang Starr, the first being the classic album everyone seems to hold as their go to and the second the classic album where they first made the leap from run of the mill to great. I have since been sitting with both albums and comparing and contrasting to see which one deserves this slot. To figure this out I think we need steal an idea from Bill Simmons and break them down Dr. Jack style to see who wins.
Beats – It’s hard to argue that during this period there was nobody better than primo. His work from Step in the Arena through Hard to Earn stand out as one of the strongest three album periods for any producer, and that is not even including his production with other artists. For me it was a matter of what worked better through the entire album. Both albums have a cohesive feel and where Step in the Arena is more consistent throughout, it can’t match the high points that are featured on Hard to Earn. Songs like Code of the Streets, Mass Appeal and Dwyck feature some of the greatest beats ever dropped. On top of that he dropped beats that made the two Group Home appearances listenable. I would take away points because there are beats that lack and show the early signs of Primo’s movement towards a one dimensional sound that would hound later Gangstarr efforts. It is hard to point out a weak production moment on Step in the Arena which for my dollar is the high point in jazz inspired production. I really can’t call it here; I wouldn’t kick the production from either of these albums out of bed but if I had to pick at gun point…
