Random A-List for Set: Hip Hop

Hip hop.

Here are 12 A-list albums, selected at random from Set: Hip Hop. Use your Reload button to get more.

The Beastie Boys: To the 5 Boroughs [2004, Capitol]
Don't let the hipsters scare you away. "An Open Letter to NYC" is as inarticulate as most love letters, so hackneyed Mike D could be gunning for an October engagement at Yankee Stadium. But from "We've got a president we didn't elect" to "It's time we looked past all our differences," many clichés here are worth recycling, as with the black (sounding) hype man who reinforces the one about differences with a faint but unmistakable "that's fresh fresh, for a Jewboy, Jewboy, Jewboy." As much as Jay-Z, and with more jokes, the Beasties are masters of their sound, of which this is the old-school variant. Like the Catskill shticksters they honor, they crack wise as naturally as John Hurt drawled, only with a better sense of rhythm (than the shticksters). They sound sharp-witted even when they mouth homilies. They sound like the reason uppity Queens boys used to think the 7 train was bound for Jordan. A-

The Beastie Boys: Beastie Boys Anthology: The Sounds of Science [1999, Grand Royal/Capitol]
Simultaneously overconfident and generous as usual, this asynchronously omnivorous package has all the hits, only there aren't that many, so 16 of 42 tracks are "rarities." In their opinion, that doesn't include the revelating early single "She's On It" or the fine late B side "Skills To Pay the Bills." It does include Fatboy Slim's "Body Movin' " remix, which is as much fun as "Fight for Your Right," which they apologize for, although they're proud to debut "Boomin' Granny," which puts moves on a "sassy, sophisticated, sexy" 80-year-old in the checkout line (hey, that's my mama--and the song's nice in an offensive sort of way, their calling card). Of course, their rarities can be as flat as anybody else's, as can their showcases, like the Latin-funk "Sabrosa" on its third go-round. Still rappers and rockers, still wise guys seeking wisdom, they'll try anything twice and convince half their many fans to like it, usually to the benefit of said fans if not musical history. This is their claim on said history. They've earned it. A-

Buck 65: This Right Here Is Buck 65 [2005, V2]
Since four standout tracks come from one of my favorite albums of the millennium, the Canada-only Talkin' Honky Blues, I have my doubts about the best-of route taken by Richard Terfry's long-delayed U.S.-major debut. Only it's not a best-of. Listening back to such worthy alt-rap cult items as Square, Vertex, and Man Overboard, I was amazed at how willowy he once sounded--a mere stripling, with a voice macho chauvinists could call nerdy even if he was a hell of a shortstop. Everything here projects his new gruff 'n' gravelly persona, including a remake of the best song in hip-hop history about a big dick (which utilizes a John Fahey-type sample rather than the electronics he has a knack for). Three are from two 2004 Canada-only EPs; another, the striking if overwrought "Cries a Girl," is now a live staple. The collection doesn't cohere the way it should, and I still say seek out Talkin' Honky Blues. But wherever you start, he's a major rhymer, performer, storyteller, humanist visionary, and student of the DJ arts. A-

Coolio: Gangsta's Paradise [1995, Tommy Boy]
Hip hop intellectuals hype the aesthetic of the new like Harold Rosenberg gone funky, so of course they snort at this dumb loser. It's not that he was sent up for check passing rather than some manly crime like assault (I hope), but that he favors samples everyone recognizes--especially everyone who's memorized the complete works of Tom Browne, either back in the day or by ingesting every rap record in the universe. Me, I'm glad Coolio did that job for me. Nor does it hurt that his smile is friendlier than Sly Stone's. Great black music past to the present. This must be paradise. A-

Dizzee Rascal: Boy in Da Corner [2004, XL]
The first thing to understand about Dizzee is that his fundamental appeal is musical, and the second is that there's very little music there. Break down a track and often you'll find only an electro beat--at most three or four sparse elements, rarely long on sustain or tune. Yet as someone who mocked the minimal means of U.K. garage and considered the Streets barely music at all, I was captivated by Dizzee's sound the moment I heard the import. His adolescent gulps and yowls are street-Brit with a Jamaican liquidity, as lean, eccentric, and arresting as the beats. The voice also lends a comic, claustrophobic vulnerability to rhymes whose brilliance varies, though their winning youthfulness does not. Whether he can grow as a lyricist as he struggles to comprehend his success is the old conundrum. The smarts he's got. The right advice will be hard to come by. A-

Eminem: The Slim Shady LP [1999, Aftermath/Interscope]
Anybody who believes kids are naive enough to take this record literally is right to fear them, because that's the kind of adult teenagers hate. Daring moralizers to go on the attack while explicitly--but not (fuck you, dickwad) unambiguously--declaring itself a satiric, cautionary fiction, this cause célèbre runs short of ideas only toward the end, when Dre's whiteboy turns provocation into the dull sensationalism fools think is his whole story. Over an hour his cadence gets wearing, too. But he flat-out loves to rhyme--"seizure"/"T-shirt," "eyeballs"/"Lysol"/"my fault," "BM"/"GM"/"be him"/"Tylenol PM"/"coliseum," "Mike D"/"might be"--and you have to love the way he slips in sotto voce asides from innocent bystanders. Sticking nine-inch nails through his eyelids, flattening a black bully with a four-inch broom, reminding his conscience/producer about Dee Barnes, watching helplessly as an abused Valley Girl OD's on his shrooms, cajoling his baby daughter Hailey into helping him get rid of her mom's body, he shows more comic genius than any pop musician since--Loudon Wainwright III? A-

L.L. Cool J: Walking With a Panther [1989, Def Jam]
From self-centered teenager to man with a mission: "I hope to prove to the world that I can reach all materialistic goals and be young, black and legal." On the cover he and his panther wear gold while his three women sport tight dresses and Moet, with not an Africa medallion in sight, but call it part of a larger strategy: justifying conspicuous consumption with conspicuous production. His output totals 16 tracks for 68 minutes on a single vinyl LP, with three extra on CD and the superhard B-side "Jack the Ripper" completing an 85-minute, 20-track cassette. Though one of the ballads is a killer, the other two are, well, changes of pace; the (vinyl) side-closers make "Jack the Ripper" sound slow; the arrogant sense of humor comes with a snide, irritating, completely original laugh. My standard response to such overkill is to wish someone had boiled it down to the great album it contains, but with this egocentric, hedonistic, workaholic materialist, I'll take it all--definitely including the nonvinyl "Change Your Ways," which preaches compassion to the young, black, and legal competition. A-

MC Lyte: Ain't No Other [1993, First Priority]
An around-the-way girl who's always dissed the gangsta life from a street perspective, her greatest charm is the ordinariness that's also her biggest liability. In 1991, with Latifah and Monie Love passing her by, she failed to go pop with Act Like You Know; in 1993, with Latifah and Monie Love falling off, she's acting like she knew: "Never ever have I ever said I was good-lookin'/Just one bad-ass bitch from Brooklyn." But finally she's hitting her self-conceived rhymes and beats with some regularity--on the turf-proud "Brooklyn," the jilted-and-glad "Lil Paul," the bloodied-and-unbowed "I Go On," the jovial "F--k That M-----f--kin' Bulls--t." And on the boy-loving "Ruffneck," over a male chorus cheering like the studio was a football terrace, Lyte raps the praises of her hardcore boyfriend. "Fiddling with his dickhead" or sneaking away from the cops, he's always rude and not always what he pretends to be, but when she's got a problem: "He'll be there/Right by my side with his ruffneck tactics." I hope so. Because they're going to need each other. A-

Mystikal: Unpredictable [1997, Jive/No Limit]
The only No Limit rapper with a style worth talking about fires the words rough and fast, like a dancehall toaster without Jamaica, or Busta Rhymes without a sense of humor. Its boasts, doubts, and recriminations clearly audible through the gravelly buckshot of the rap, its only humanizing inflections Bernie Worrell-style hooks that hover eerily above the subwoofer boom, the CD remains unbearably intense well past the usual N.O. breaking point, leaving Mystikal one of the rare gangstas whose regrets seem powered by anything deeper than self-pity--a brush with the demonic, say. And it adds a killer emotional twist by going out on what sounds like a home-recorded vocal chorus by the dead sister whose murder he'd promised to revenge an hour before. A-

OutKast: Idlewild [2006, LaFace]
In a poetic biz snafu, the not-actually-a-soundtrack that got mixed reviews in periodicals with July deadlines was substantially revised for its Aug. 22 release. But due to the usual dumb critical systole-diastole plus the premature burial of Idlewild-the-movie, the backlash didn't stop there. Me, I liked it fine before catching the near-empty late show where I fell in love. Flick's a sepia-tone "Moulin Rouge" that makes just as much hash of musical historicity--Big Boi the bootlegger's nephew raps with a territory band, Andre the mortician's son ivory-tickles like he's studied Debussy and dreamed Monk. Record's a joyous mishmash, so light-spirited that rumors of OutKast's demise are irrelevant regardless of accuracy, which nobody can gauge anyway. The endless grindcore finale that bloats proceedings to 79 minutes is their stupidest track ever, and occasionally a forgettable song sets down and rests awhile. But from the mainstream hip-hop Big Boi articulates with so much muscle to the retro swing Andre sings just fine, they sound happy to parade their mastery. Also on parade: Janelle Monáe. A

The Real Hip-Hop: The Best of D&D, Vol. 1 [1999, Coldfront]
The main thing undergrounders mean by "real" is Hold That Tune, a/k/a/ Hook Junkies Keep Out. Though this ethos dates officially to the South Bronx's primordial ooze, its immediate forebear is these mid-'90s productions of Premier and his lessers. On choice singles from a singles music, the warm feelings hip hop heads cherish for M.O.P., the Lost Boyz, Smif-N-Wessun, and Showbiz & AG can be shared by us hook users. An excess of celebrity similes is counterbalanced by gangsta talk as unmitigated metaphor. Competitive world, hip hop. It could kill ya. A-