Blackout is hand's down, the best hip-hop team album of all time. In fact, it's in my top 5 hip hop albums of all time...
Can I pick 5? How about top 20. That's hard...
1. Dr. Dre - The Chronic
2. Ghostface - Supreme Clientelle
3. Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle
4. Method Man & Redman - Blackout
5. The Game - Doctor's Advocate
6. Xzibit - 40 Dayz & 40 Nights
8. Wu-Tang - Enter the 36 Chambers
9. Mos Def - Black on Both Sides
10. The Roots - Things Fall Apart
11. Cypress Hill - Cypress Hill
12. A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders
13. Outkast - Stankonia
14. Notorious B.I.G. - Life After Death
15. Jay-Z - The BluePrint
16. Ice Cube - AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
17. The Fugees - The Score
18. 2Pac - All Eyez On Me
19. LL Cool J - Walking With a Panther
20. 50 Cent - Get Rich or Die Trying
21. De La Soul - Buhloone Mindstate
That's just impossible - so many vital hip hops albums. And I'm not even counting turntablism, which is technically hip-hop.
From Blackout - Da Rockwilder
The video is appropriately goofy, but the tune is appropriately awesome:
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2 comments:
I think I'd move 2Pac and Biggie up on the que and where is Eminem?
I can buy that. This list was more in the order that I thought of them, and similar to order of importance, but not exactly so. 2Pac could go higher - I like Biggie right where he is. The fact that that album is on there is more that the album was seminal and important to other hip-hop I listen to; he was never my favorite rapper. I think his death's relation and proximity to 2Pac's lumps the 2 rappers together, when I personally feel Biggie may be a touch overrated.
As far as Eminem is concerned, I recognize his talents to combine words, but I can't stand most of the production, and his delivery. He's either being a juvenile shit starter, or over-earnestly serious. It's like you are getting Howard Stern, or Linkin Park. Both are styles that radically diminish replay value for me. He's definitely important - he replaced Tribe Called Quest as the lubricant that gets white kids into hip hop.
Funny story. I went to see the Up In Smoke Tour - which was Ice Cube (and Westside Connection) followed by Eminem, followed by Snoop and Dre. Ice Cube was having a hard time getting the crowd moving. Then Eminem comes on, and this veritable army of high school girls reveal themselves, shrieking hysterically. Maybe I just don't like him for feeling embarrassed about being at a show I really wanted to go see. At least those girls later had to sit through the misogynistic onslaught of Snoop's lyrics that followed.
Talib Kwali has the same rhyming skills, isn't nearly annoying, and he didn't even make the list. So many great acts and albums that could be shoe-horned in there. Where's Run DMC? EMPD? Erik B for president? Every other Ghostface album he put out?
I found after I started to list them, creating an arbitrary cut-line really pissed me off. I guess that's why real top-number lists spark so much debate. Fortunately, my circulation is about 5 people - so no blood will be shed.
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