40. Nas – The Lost Tapes (2002)
When Illmatic dropped, it was like the rap world stopped. It was a moment when every person that was into real hip hop paused their schedules to fully ingest, process and comprehend the dopeness that was the birth of one our greatest emcess to ever touch the mike. As Nas progressed with his career, still dope, but mad inconsistent with each subsequent release, I lost more and more interest in him as the rap world resumed its hectic pace. I damn near forgot how dope he was, how dope he could be, until Lost Tapes dropped.
It was after “Ether” and it was so cohesive and complete that it reminded me how brilliant Nas was—is. He should have dropped that right after “Illmatic.” No frills, just great understated production and twelve songs that fit together as a complete CD.
39. UGK – Underground Kingz (2007)
Take the contrast between Bun B’s composed smoothness and Pimp C’s dagger-stab sneer, and lay those voices over the apotheosis of ‘70s-soul throwback, Southern-style g-funk—a mood perspiring simultaneously with menace, celebration, confidence and anxiety. That’s the immediate musical appeal of UGK, and by the time Underground Kingz came out they’d expanded their post-Tupac haunted gangsta narratives to the extent where carrying a double CD sounded deceptively easy. The guest spots help—an ’88 vintage Too $hort, a triumphantly defiant Z-Ro, Kweli spitting double-time (!), Scarface as the proud godfather, and, most famously, the best performance OutKast’s contributed to rap since Stankonia. But it’s always clear who runs the show on this record, and UGK’s presence—deconstructing the drug and sex trades, defending their home turf, representing the anti-shit-taking ethos of the streets, and coming through it all still sounding like men with consciences—makes this one of rap’s finest antihero statements. 105-degree noir behind the wheel of an Eldorado.
MP3: UGK ft. Outkast-“Intl. Player’s Anthem”
38. The Streets – A Grand Don’t Come for Free (2004)
In theory, it’s the worst sort of album. The self-absorbed, grandiose, convoluted concept record. Mike Skinner is a smart lad, and knew the stakes–alienating his audience and squandering the goodwill built up from his first album was a probability. Then the world got a listen of A Grand Don’t Come for Free, and all was forgiven.
Skinner took a rather mundane storyline, and turned it into one of the edgiest, most contemplative, and striking listening experiences of the decade. Carefully utilizing his casual yet captivating flow—his greatest strength—Skinner keeps his storyline grounded in a way that makes his characters come alive, as if they could be any one of your friends—or even yourself. Considering the ambitiousness of the lyrical content, the most remarkable thing about the record is its deft and sometimes graceful soundtrack. From the hopeless romantic love story of “Could Well Be In” to the paranoia and blurry vision conveyed by “Blinded by the Lights” to the populist-reflective “Empty Cans,” Skinner alleviates his story’s more melodramatic moments by endearing them with the most human of concerns, but stays away from pure sermonizing. And even when Skinner does approach the limits of self-pity and cliché on “Dry Your Eyes,” he embeds it with a chorus so strong you’d have to be born with frostbite not to feel anything.
It’s arguable that the music gets lost among the overall concept, which would be a valid complaint, especially when you consider that Skinner’s career post-Grand seems to center around entirely self-absorbed propositions. But it’s hard to complain about a record so illuminating and special as this, which, over 5 years after its release, still sounds like nothing else out on the market.
MP3: The Streets-“Dry Your Eyes”
37. El-P – Fantastic Damage (2002)
Like El-P’s heroes the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy’s ear mashing production team, your girlfriend should rightfully hate almost every track on his debut album, 2002’s Fantastic Damage. At least the Bomb Squad produced BBD’s “Poison”.
Dance with the land sharks clutching meat, ugly!
Fantastic Damage could’ve been released during Rawkus’ heyday and still garnered fanfare and critical praise. But it just wouldn’t feel right handing in the most accurate and apocalyptic take on life post-9/11 to a bunch of guys buying used Benzes with “Simon Says” money.
Walking with a bag full of kittens, take me to the river then throw yourself in.
FanDam is Def Jux through and through, and Def Jux has opened the floodgates for successful paranoid rap that’s more Philip K. Dick than Bushwick Bill. It all started with an album about a squeegee man getting killed, a factory crafting class A type 1 parental units fueled by booze, and postcards dispatched from Dead Disnee.
Why do things we define beautiful undermine power?
FanDam’s beats are un-ringtone-able. The lyrics will never be chanted at clubs filled with drunken coeds on a Thursday night. Conceptually, FanDam is David Lynch doing shrooms with Kool Keith. Moments of carnage mutate into snapshots of metal jawed vulnerability. Lead single “Deep Space 9mm” bangs with layers of dusty digital samples almost 2 minutes before El spits a bar. “T.O.J.” is emo-rap aboard the Nebuchadnezzar. “Constellation Funk” is beautiful like the mushroom cloud in Watchmen.
Signed to Rawkus?!?
If the answer to that question isn’t “I’d rather be mouthfucked by Nazis unconscious!”, the proper response could be: “I’d rather be crafting the most blistering mission statement for myself and my new upstart indie label where upon my friends and I nearly dominant the 2000’s with shit like this!”
36. Little Brother – The Listening (2003)
Although Little Brother’s auspicious debut album The Listening might lack the populist high notes (hits!) to kick it into Great territory, it’d be difficult to find a hip hop fan who finds it disagreeable. But its contextual relevancy has come to outrank its, uh, audio “Listening” impact.
The Listening dropped in 2003. First generation Eminem still ruled the world; Dre had actually recently released an album; The Roots and Dave Chappelle and Mos Def and that whole east coast Generation: Next crowd seemed to be on the cusp of tightening up America’s cultural underbelly. Hip Hop was about to be the ideal American Alpha-male; brains, style, dollars, and a six-pack to boot. Soulja Boy was an unknown 13-year old at the time.
This was how great rap groups emerged out of the primordial ooze, the classic three man stage crew: You got your Producer/DJ, 9th Wonder, who was the next/new Dilla. Immediately recruited to play ball with the big boys on The Black Album. You had Phonte, a front man with the skills, voice, and charisma to keep haters at bay. And Rapper Big Pooh, the archetypal sidekick, pushing his skills to the limit, earning respect for his earnest effort if not for his imagination or creative substance.
You couldn’t sketch the blueprint any better. This was the tried and true model. The new wave of Golden Era. Contemporary Classic: The new De La, the new Tribe, but not encumbered by retro-nostalgia. They were among the first using new media with old grassroots traditions. They had the co-signs from everyone — artists, media, fans. This was what we thought everyone was waiting for.
And then they sold maybe 30K units. And that was it: the breakup, disenchantment, innocence lost was inevitable. Not just them, the whole culture. People were listening, but they just didn’t seem to care anymore.
MP3: Little Brother-“The Listening”
35. Lil’ Wayne – Tha Carter III (2008)
No individual embodies the wilderness hip hop has wandered off to like Dwayne Michael Carter Jr. Fuck the contrarian bullshit; Wayne began the 21st century a boy, an also-ran regional rapper in the Nawlins shadows of Juvenile, B.G. and the Fresh bounce. Post his forced emancipation, Wayne developed a partnership with Philly weirdo Gillie Da Kid and interned with a Diplomat camp that spent the early half of the decade jabbing the traditional punchline/metaphor with a cattle prod. Wayne focused on the pop ephemera of his childhood. He sharpened and refined an ability to deconstruct words at an alchemical level as he farted around with delivery on his Sqad Up mixtapes. You can point to
his steam-building major label records and attention garnering MP3s like tracing a constellation, but the coronation waited until the summer of 2008, when Wayne emerged a Hunter S. Thompson styled man/beast.
Tha Carter III was innovative not just in style but form, eschewing all conception of narrative or semblance of cohesion, yet faithfully steeped in Wayne’s willful strangeness. (See: Song skits like “Dr. Carter”, the self-aware “Let the Beat Build,” absurd concepts like “Mrs. Officer” turned mainstream grabs, the playful wink in the recurring Macho Man references). For the album in a song look no further than “A Milli”, ubiquitous last summer with every rapper/weed carrier/R&B schmoe trying their hand at rapping over an obscure, screwed Phife snippet ping-ponging around choppy snares, none approaching the original’s deranged aggression.
This is Lil’ Wayne’s Ficciones. A bright, shining realization of style certified on the biggest stage with a platinum plaque at a moment in which numbers that gaudy had become a distant memory. It’s crazy and courageous, absurd in a way only this generation’s Hip Hop can be. Hate it or love it, it’s an album whose impact will be felt for decades to come.
MP3: Lil Wayne-“Let the Beat Build”
34. MF Doom (as Viktor Vaughn) – Vaudeville Villain (2003)
In 2003, to use the parlance of the times, MF Doom was a known unknown. After resurrecting his career in the late 90’s with the stunning Operation Doomsday, Doom continued to work under the radar, dropping baffling side projects featuring deranged alter egos. Of these, none could compete with Viktor Vaughn and the time traveling 90’s hard rock of Vaudeville Villain. Conceived as a younger alternative to Doom, Vaughn gave Daniel Dumile an outlet to combine the hardcore rhymes of his Black Bastard Days with an updated multi-syllabic storytelling style. Imagine if Biggie never signed with Puff, was homeless for a few years and then began to write in the 3rd person and you’re halfway there.
Though ostensibly a concept album, the plot is shaky and Vaudeville Villain works best as a collection of short stories. Whether he’s robbing the elderly, going back in time to save his Donkey Kong game-watch or shooting up a wack open mic night, Viktor does it with style, humor and an eye for detail matching the best period pieces. A love letter to old school New York, the album is filled to the brim with purposefully outdated slang, dark post-Wu boom-bap and a love of language that makes V “the emcee who’s as nasty as nose hair”.
Upstaged by the stoned delirium of Madvillainy, Vaudeville Villain pointed towards another direction for Doom. Putting the premium on storytelling and gun talk instead of blunted philosophy, the Viktor Vaughn character is a singular achievement in emceeing, an album delivering a totally new style at a time when few rappers took the time to flesh out even a single persona.
—Sach O
33. Q-Tip – The Renaissance (2008)
Imagine that, whether by choice or not, you had the opportunity to create some piece of art. (For the purposes of this argument, we’ll assume you’re already a talented artist of some sort. A daring assumption, I know.) Given these 100+ months, would you not do everything you can to ensure that said piece of art is both successful and fulfilling? Of course you would. And wouldn’t that long time period give you the chance to perfect and distill everything you hoped to accomplish with your art? (Incidentally, this is why debut albums are generally better than the follow-up. You have 25 years to make your debut and two tops for the second.) Q-Tip is quite familiar with this proposition.
Following 1999’s vastly underrated Amplified, the Tribe frontman took those nine years to make his proper follow-up (Kamaal/The Abstract doesn’t count), and it’s all the better for the wait. Pop and boom-bap mix in proper doses. His rhymes are tight. His confidence lazily engulfs each and every track, and we’re left with Q’s best performance since Midnight Marauders. Sure, it’s maybe sacrilege to prefer this to any Tribe, but when it’s this good, that’s the truth.
MP3: Q-Tip-“Move/Renaissance Rap”
32. Masta Ace – Disposable Arts (2001)
If you could have laid odds in Vegas that forgotten Juice Crew legend Masta Ace, would have enjoyed one of the most improbable career renaissances nearly a decade after his first record, then you would be undoubtedly be a very rich man. Masta Ace was a forgotten footnote of the Golden Age when he dropped his career re-defining underground classic, Disposable Arts, a record best described as The Blueprint of post-millennial indie rap.
Disposable Arts is a concept record dealing with Ace’s return to rap after being dormant for nearly five years and discovering the art form that he had left behind had become “disposable.” Explicitly dealing with his own re-education at a fictional hip hop-based community college, “IDA”, the record traverses many of the archetypal underground rap material that became staples of the movement during the decade. Confessional rap (“Dear Diary”), braggadocio sex rap (“I Like Dat”), battle rap (“Acknowledge”), Common-esque love songs (“Hold U”), crime rap (“Block Episode”) and strict lyrical exercise (“Alphabet Soup”) all sit next to each other on a thoroughly cohesive and entertaining record that turned Ace into indie rap royalty. It also features the only known, semi-tolerable appearance of MC Paul Barman in the history of rap music.
You can call this record a comeback. Hell, call it a resurrection.
MP3: Masta Ace ft. Young Zee-“Something’s Wrong”
—B. J. “The Good Doctor Zeus” Steiner
31. The Streets — Original Pirate Material (2002)
With the release of Original Pirate Material in 2002, The Streets managed to pull off the rare feat of putting out an authentically hip hop album despite its representation of a culture so very foreign to hip hop’s American origins. Delivered with an accent and slang that is one hundred per cent Cockney, in a tempo as much spoken word as it is rap, Original Pirate Material is easy to dismiss as something other than hip hop. Yet perhaps more so than any other album released this decade, Original Pirate Material demonstrates the true essence of emceeing, filled with tales that any hip hop head can relate to, from girl troubles to run-ins with the Bobbies. It’s a testament to how good Skinner is at the art of storytelling that an American listener can come away from this album with an understanding that we all go through the same trials and tribulations, no matter where in the world we might be living.
MP3: The Streets-“Weak Become Heroes”
