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My Favorite Hip-Hop Albums of the Decade

Published on January 2, 2010 in Uncategorized and music. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

I won’t pretend to be a professional hip-hop journalist, let alone a general music journalist, but I love hip-hop. I think I listened to enough of it over the last decade to be able to assemble a list of what I liked the most. Of course, this is a list of some of what I listened to, and there is obviously A LOT that I didn’t listen to. I don’t really believe in required reading or required listening, and I don’t read music magazines or music blogs. I mean, just because Lil’ Wayne gets nominated for a grammy doesn’t mean I’m going to go listen to his album. I do subscribe to Indiefeed Hip-Hop, which introduces a track, and plays it. Other than that, I stumble around on emusic.com, amazon.com’s mp3 store, get recommendations from friends, and sift through B Jizzle’s gigabytes. Now, let me pretend to be a hip-hop journalist and share my favorite hip-hop albums of the decade.

This isn’t a straightforward Top Ten list, but rather a favorite and runners-up for each specific year. If you want to download a specific track, click the song link, and that will take you to the download for that specific track.

I started off the decade by attending a show in Iowa City at the Union Bar. Opening up were the Beat Junkies, Supernatural, and Dilated Peoples. For the main event: Jurassic 5.  Quality Control by Jurassic 5 was by far my favorite album that year.

2000 Favorite Album:

Quality Control by Jurassic 5

j5

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Jurass Finish First

2nd Place: Both Sides of the Brain by Del the Funky Homosapien- The track If You Must was beaten over my head repetitively in one of those Tony Hawk games, so I always skip that track, but otherwise this is jaw gymnastics of the tallest order.

3rd Place: Reflection Eternal by Talib Kweli & Hi Tek- Talib’s rhymes aren’t bad, although I like the sound of his voice more than I like his actual lyrics. What I like the most about this album is Hi-Tek’s beats.

This next album is probably my favorite for the whole decade as well. Its like a sci-fi hip-hop opera, a Scihopera. The rare instance where the beats and rhymes are of equal excellence. “I apply the flow cannon, the combo so slammin’, atomically reconstruct the whole canvas.”

2001 Favorite Album:

Deltron 3030 by Deltron(a.k.a. Del the Funky Homosapien)

deltron

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Mastermind

2nd Place: Life’s a Bitch and I’m Her Pimp by MC Chris-He’s not a ten-year old, and not a chick, but his voice sounds like it. This album has the awesome Fett’s Vette.

3rd Place: AOI: Bionix by De La Soul-

2002 Favorite Album:

In Search Of… by N.E.R.D.

nerd

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Truth Or Dare (feat. Kelis & Pusha T)

2nd Place: Parallel Universe #1 by DJ Broken Window-Some early decade mashup fun. This stuff was pretty low-tech, as far as the actual approach goes. The liner notes instruct you how to recreate the mash-ups with two vinyl records. The mash-ups aren’t perfect by any means…like the sound of rough but persistent experimentation. Pretty random results.

3rd Place: Never is Now by DJ Swamp-Over-the-top violent brags about his skills, his swamp cuts! But his beats do indeed bump, and ladies do indeed move up to the front.

2003 Favorite Album:

Hope by Non Prophets

nonprophets

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That Ain’t Right

2nd Place: Revolutionary Vol. 2 by Immortal Technique-Pretty raw stuff. Not for easily offended listeners.

3rd Place: Later That Day… by Lyrics Born

For 2003, this album technically should have been Art Official Intelligence part three, but for some reason(Tommy Boy Records?) De La Soul abandoned their A.O.I trilogy and came out with this instead. Makes no difference to me, because this album was great. It was nice having Flavor Flav visit as well.

2004 Favorite Album:

The Grind Date by De La Soul

delasoul

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Verbal Clap

2nd Place: RBG: Revolutionary But Gangsta by Dead Prez

3rd Place: Shadows on the Sun by Brother Ali

Sage Franics likes being in PETA ads, but, at least he’s an excellent MC/spoken word poet. Makes up for it in my book.

2005 Favorite Album:

A Healthy Distrust by Sage Francis

sagehealth

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escape artist

2nd Place: The Mouse & The Mask by DANGERDOOM-The rare occasion where I loved all the skits.

3rd Place: Tales of the Forgotten… by Wax Tailor

Its hard imagining The Coup being any funkier, but see them live and you’ll see just that.

2006 Favorite Album:

Pick a Bigger Weapon by The Coup

coup

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Get That Monkey Off Your Back

2nd Place: Public Warning by Lady Sovereign-She’s like little girl Beastie Boy or something.

3rd Place: 20/20 by Dilated Peoples-Babu’s beats are bumpin’! Ev and Rakaa’s faux nuglets of wisdom are entertaining, but the poetry seems real.

Listening to Tone Tank rap about domestic or personal situations like on “It Is What It Is”, makes the music easy to identify with. It’s not because I have the same problems as he does, but he comes off as being a dude who really wants to just be a hip-hop artist. He doesn’t want to win American Idol.

2007 Favorite Album:

Iller Than Theirs by Iller Than Theirs

iller

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Wash, Rinse, Repeat

2nd Place: How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul? by Public Enemy- It’s nice to hear Chuck D still at it.

3rd Place: Gutterfly by Lifesavas

In 2008 Del doesn’t bring as many jaw gymnastics as he did in 2000, but his slick groovy naked fonk is in full effect!

2008 Favorite Album:

Eleventh Hour by Del the Funky Homosapien

delfunky11

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Foot Down

2nd Place: Feed the Animals by Girl Talk

3rd Place: MC Chris is Dead by MC Chris

As the decade progressed, I got more into mash-ups. In 2009 two of my most favorite things (Legend of Zelda and Hip-Hop) collided. Honestly, not all the artists that are mashed-up in this are my favorite, but the results are great. Jay-Z, Busta, Dre, Snoop, Aesop Rock, and MF Doom are cool, but I can identify the Ocarina of Time tracks more readily than I can identify where those hip-hop tracks came from. I also LOVE the name of this artist. This album is not to be mistaken with another album of the same name, by an artist named Sleaze. If you stumble across that somewhere, run the other way.

2009 Favorite Album:

Ocarina of Rhyme by Team Teamwork

rhyme

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Jay-Z – No Hook (Meeting the Owl)

2nd Place: Man on the Moon: End of Day by Kid Cudi

3rd Place: Uzi Does It by Get Busy Committee

So thats it. See you at the end of the next decade…hopefully.

Girl Talk: More Slammin’

Published on June 27, 2008 in music. 4 Comments Tags: , , .

I think the cool thing about Girl Talk’s micromix exxxtravaganzas is that they are not only genre-hopping, but generation-hopping.

Its been mentioned many times by others in my generation (high school graduating classes in the mid-90′s) that our high school soundtracks are now creeping into “oldies station” territory. It seems more or less that this is the central chronology that the generations in Girl Talk’s albums are sandwiched around. The “oldies” when we were in high school are featured here on the oldest end, followed by our high school soundtrack, and then the confusing hollars of what I guess are today’s many different subtle variations on crunk/party rap music. Stuff like Crank That by Soulja Boy, a track I had almost memorized months before I actually heard a recording of it, due to an excitable elementary school boy I drove last school year. I guess a brief way of putting it, is calling it an audio collage of the history of memorable pop music.

Of course, I would really only use those words to describe his most recent three albums: Feed the Animals, Night Ripper, and Unstoppable. I first heard about him when reading Wired magazine, here is a link to that article. So I went straight to emusic.com and looked him up. I went there looking for Night Ripper, but only found 2002′s Secret Diary. The reviews there on emusic for that sounded interesting: “Sounds broken” and “Artistic wankery”. I’m always down for artistic wankery, so I listened to it and I really liked it. It definitely wasn’t a celebration of pop music like I would describe his recent albums. It seemed more like some kind of commentary or critique on pop music, not a celebration. It was glitchy and experimental, but I still really like it. I wouldn’t mind him exploring more of that at some point, or maybe his starting off with 2 Unlimited on that album biased me, being the 2 Unlimited fanboy that I am.

That being said, ALL of his shit is slammin’, including his new one.

I guess I spend too much time online checking for firmware updates to my iAUDIO 7 mp3 player, because the way I found out that Feed the Animals was even available was via an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. I don’t frequent many music sites. They had a funny quote from Mike Patton in it though, “It is an honor to collaborate with Busta Rhymes.”. So I went straight to emusic.com and it wasn’t there. I’ve purchased some stuff from amazon.com’s mp3 store, so I went there. No luck.

I found out he went all “In Rainbows” with the distribution! Except unlike the bizarre moving rainbow confusion I confronted through Radiohead’s site, Girl Talk’s was super simple. From the site: “any price grants the download of the entire album as high-quality 320kbps mp3s.$5 or more adds the options of FLAC files, plus a one-file seamless mix of the album. $10 or more includes all of the above + a packaged CD (when it becomes available)”
Sweet! FLAC! And a seamless single track to boot! The “any price” option actually instructs you to “name your price”. I paid 5 bucks and downloaded the individual FLACs and also the seamless FLAC. Thing is, you are given the download links and the ability to download before you’ve actually entered ANY information whatsoever. I think five bucks is fair for the options offered, so I paid.

Highlights for me on the album:
Rich Boy Throw Some D’s/Aphex Twin Girl/Boy Song mashup
The Cranberries Dreams/M.I.A. Boys mashup
Deee-Lite Groove is in the Heart/Salt n’ Pepa Push It/Nirvana Lithium mashup