Top 25 Rap

Now, here is where I belong making lists. I know enough about rap to make a list like this more easily and more informedly than the metal one, but that doesn’t mean that I would constitute an expert as much as a heavy enthusiast. (Like a smoker.)

I know enough to head off any comments of “It’s not rap, it’s hip hop.” As far as my understanding goes, hip hop is the broader culture and rap is one of the things that’s in it, so it is rap. And rap is hip hop. At least, according to them. So, yeah. But people who listen to rap will often say, or did, back in the 2000s, “I don’t listen to rap, I listen to hip hop,” and call artists like Nas or Kendrick Lamar, maybe, in today’s world, hip hop, rather than rap.

Okay, lesson and proof of expertise or researching done.

Only Built 4 Cuban Linx 2, Raekwon

There is no lusher album or more spot-proof window into the world of a mafia type of character in the inner city, with all the elegance and glamour and all of the dirty, gritty street crimes and homes left hopeless. This is just the most beautiful night at the symphony that they ever put into rap. And the verses by Raekwon, never more gravity in his delivery, and Ghostface Killah, who’s on his later-career clarity in his delivery and words, where the minute he opens his mouth, you fall into his world, they join with those by others on haunting tracks like “New Wu” and “Cold Outside,” and then on “Black Mozart,” and then things just dive into an inferno with the penultimate track, the sweltering “Mean Streets,” which sounds about as hot at any high-point Dre beat but with an air of meanness that will knock you back and have you looking, for the door, before a relatively gorgeous and calm closer. “‘Cause you crossed the line, like Miller’s Crossing / Off with your dome, I walked you through the woods, / We both smoked a bone.” Chilling, haunting stuff. You’ll feel relieved to “Kiss the Ring,” at the end of it, and the hero must be relieved to have it.

Liquid Swords, Gza

Here’s another Wu-Tang classic, an album with enough weight in some circles that my friend bought me a deluxe edition with a chess board inside, and chess pieces, for Christmas, or perhaps, I think it was for my birthday, one time, and it was not only an epic gift with the lights in the room themselves dimming as it was opened up, but also something that I was sort of in awe at. It’s just a certified ‘hood classic, if there ever was one, but one need not know the recognition to sink into the sounds of this seeming trip through the underground parts of the city, or at least underground when you’re waiting for a subway, but you watch your back. The darkest, murkiest production Rza ever did in that time period that also came out like strange fruits in the darkness goes over Gza and basically everyone who stopped by from the Wu-Tang Clan. “Under the subway, waitin’ for the train to make noise, / So I could ***** a *****, and his boys, for what?” Just incredible Stuff.

The Slim Shady LP, Eminem

Eminem is one of those rappers who are heavy on quality but somehow somewhat incohesive or just not perfect on albums. However, he’s so good that even though none of his albums sound like they have their own distinct identity sonically and conceptually except perhaps Kamikaze and, interestingly enough, Encore, which just barely seemed to not make this list, because it is a joy. Anyway, this one has at least, as do really the first four main studio ones, a good collection of beats, over which Eminem just transforms before your eyes into a lightning storm that brings you into these sick, queasy scenes where he is rapping like you’ve never heard anyone do while saying things that guide you through the pictures as if they were a painting. “Hypochondriac, hanging out at the laundry-mat. / Where all the raunchy, fat, white, trashy blondes be at. / Dressed like a sailor, standin’ by a pail of garbage.” Eminem gets his reputation from more than just his skin color. He’s revelatory. Even now he is, with his increasingly roller-coaster flows, but back then, he was just a soul floating on the ether. Or, according to him, “I don’t speak, I float in the air wrapped in a sheet, / I’m not a real person, I’m a ghost, trapped in a beat.” And, if you can imagine, Royce Da 5’9″ comes in, and almost outmatches him.

Kamikaze, Eminem

For my money and that of many, this is the best Eminem album in fifteen years. Actually, more like twenty. He raps his ass off on this one, and if ever there was a rapper who sounded like a grinding machine of a thousand parts all going at once, and going perfectly, then Eminem was it, in this album. It’s not as easy to get into this era of Eminem, but that’s not because it’s not worth it, it’s just a more subtle set of features included in the package that otherwise seems kind of to have lost its emotional connection with the customer, and to itself. But then you realize that the device was designed by a genius who carried a box of treasure maps, with him. Plus, it ends on a song that goes totally the other way (actually, now that I think about it, this one is Eminem’s Supreme Clientele, with the same odd couple of songs that sound kind of misplaced, stylistically) and not only is a movie tie-in song with a Marvel supervillain spin-off of sorts, but it is also the best, most infectious chorus Eminem ever did (his voice usually sounds unpleasant, or at least often does, now, but this time, it sounds like strawberry jam) and three verses basically reversing the “White America” origin story to become the story of how he hijacked your consciousness through his music, and made you bad. Or, I guess like the character he’s talking about, tragic. “‘Cause they’re chasin’ me, but I’m part of you, / So escapin’ me is impossible. I latch onto you like a parasite, / And I probably ruined your parents’ life, and your childhood, too.“

The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Eminem

But, there are two better. And, oh, boy, does The Marshall Mathers LP 2 feel like a Saturday morning watching cartoons, for Eminem fans. Yes, it is still in the strain and sickle of his newer style, perhaps his . . . robot style? (Hey, he says this in the damn album I’m talking about: “Call me rap-bot.”) But whatever it loses in the vitality of Eminem’s earlier work, which I think has to do, maybe, with the connectedness to his emotions, probably the problem with all of those artists who have fallen off, it makes up for with just throwing everything at the wall, whether you’ve got your dark, revealing life stories (“Legacy”), the incredible humor in “Evil Twin” boasting (“And next time, I show up To court, / I’ll be naked, and just wear a law suit”), or the fun songs he had been pretty much doing all along, since “My Name Is,” anyway, but even with “Murder, Murder,” to some extent . . . well, no, maybe . . . okay, I don’t know. Anyway, the fun songs have become less organic and more formulaic, from the great purity of “Without Me” to the sort of tired sample or soundalike work in “Remind Me,” but he doesn’t do too much of that, here. What he mainly dabbles in is doing things like a convincing, sort of soaring and psychedelic 70s chorus to the tune of “Time of the Season,” or tag-teaming with Kendrick Lamar in what is the most blazing thing I’ve seen since Sonic and Tails, or Knuckles, or whatever. As I’ve written elsewhere, it felt like Recovery was Eminem as Neo realizing his powers and then The Marshall Mathers LP 2 as him flying away. It’s an album where “Rap God” feels like the sixth most interesting experiment in sound and about the third best vocal performances, and, it’s like, “Whoa.”

Recovery, Eminem

Oh, three latter-era Eminem albums, at all, and one album from his glory days? Well, yeah. The first three albums were perfect, in their own ways, and Encore was incredible on its own merits (and their cartoonish colors), too, but there is something I latch onto in Eminem’s later career. And this album was one of more than one, I guess maybe just two, but others in a more subtle and less voiced way, that I didn’t really like at first, and would argue with people about its goodness, saying no, it’s not good! but that I ended up liking a lot as I stepped back from the lyrics seeming kind of emotionally thin, which they kind of do, or even just abrasive and unpleasant, in a just general way, and let myself notice how great Eminem was with his flows. Like, not just great, but truly exceptional. Songs like “Space Bound” have Eminem wind up throughout every verse, constricting and constricting until he says, in one of them, “You’re a supernova, and I’m a—” and then the song jumps back to a soaring, sort of galactic chorus. But even in stuff like “Seduction,” Eminem manages to make a song where he’s essentially just trying to use somebody’s girlfriend (or, worse) as a sexual object and doing it I think maybe by talking to the guy, in the song’s lyrics? “There’s a seven-disc CD changer, in the car, / And I’m in every single slot, and you’re not. Ughh.” He manages to make that song hypnotic and just a worthy subject for discussion about the technique of his metrics and poetry, I guess to some extent, in general. It’s a hypnotic listen, when you let yourself get into it.

WaterWorld, Leak Bros.

All you need is ten dollars (or however much it is on iTunes, or Amazon, where I [think I] got it) for a ticket to one of those R. L. Stine amusement parks from Hell. This is at once one of the most interesting and fun albums you’ll ever find in rap music and by far one of the darkest. There’s a line in “See Thru” where Tame One, formerly of the Artifacts and easily a highlight of rap history just for his work here (similar to how good Jus Allah was on Violent by Design), talks about a drug-addicted woman whom he described, simply, as being so out of joint with the world around her that she “don’t know how to act / Like Vin Diesel.” This comes off perhaps to some like a little laugh line about a guy people don’t consider a very good actor, but really hits home for me as a powerful representation of someone who’s so out of it that their very performance in life is like someone who is on a movie, trying to look Real. Tame One’s performance throughout this album is weightless, with him floating across each of the tracks like a ping-pong ball on a river of shit. Cage, the other rapper in this tag team, is also incredible, and where he showed promise on songs from his own work such as “Agent Orange,” his (apparent) underground hit, and “Among the Sleep,” which would make it into my top ten, and probably top five, story songs in Rap music, list. Well, where he showed promise for Imagery and Surrealism in his work prior, he just jumps into it totally, here, with (just like Tame One) a slice of humor with each of his dissections. “My eyes are two planets of maggots that all stare / And whoever’s Speaking to me, I am not There.” The album is basically just Eleven songs about drug addiction emphasizing the horror of being on or being hooked into these Drugs. But with the production, especially on songs like “Dead,” being so hypnotic that it might literally feel like you’re drunk, listening to it, for most of the tracks, here, with a couple odd beats like “Druggie Fresh” and “G.O.D.” feeling like they kind of poop the party, it’s like you’re taken by the hand, into the reaper.

None Shall Pass, Aesop Rock

This, like Float, below, is a synthesis of the Aesop Rocks before and after, and it is the In Rainbows of Aesop Rock. Just very, very high-quality, incredibly enjoyable, with songs like the title track being bouncy and fun enough that literally blasting it out of his windows was a kid at my high school, around the time, when it came out. These songs take more investigation to get into, generally, than do the songs on the albums that would come after this, but his rapping had gotten to a level of polished where you could probably listen to this and not speak English and just start bobbing your head to the point of head banging. It’s a great ride. “Citronella” just kicks it. It’s the perfect marriage of what came before and what came after, the latter indeed suffering more for not having been closer to this, but this still being one of the diamonds, in his discography.

Skelethon, Aesop Rock

Here is what I consider the best Aesop Rock album, but not what I consider the better one of the two of the one I have above this, lol. I mean the best for the first one in the sense that I just treasure it, and the incredible poems he puts together with basically every one of these songs, from the biker-gang redemption and destruction story in the great “Cycles to Gehenna,” the very fun song about making a mummy from a pet instead of a person “Homemade Mummy,” and the song about the dog rescuing an infant or a toddler from drowning in the pool by calling out attention, to it (“Everybody say, good dog,” perhaps the most haunting ending to any rap song, ever . . .), “Ruby ‘81,” these are songs that are often storytelling and sometimes just old school Aesop Rock rapping, possibly with a motif. But beyond the category, he just works the magic. And it doesn’t hurt that the album’s production is just haunting as well, like you’re peering through a moss-covered old tree, in the Forest.

Float, Aesop Rock

Aesop Rock had sort of a short period of being the Aesop Rock from Float. It was similar to the era that had come before it, with Appleseed and Music for Earthworms, but what came before was more scattershot and at least seemed more difficult to discern the connections between within any motifs or seeming structures to what this man was saying. What came later led almost directly out of this style into something more juicy but also less laid out in long lines, like it happens with this album. And many people hold this (which sort of coincides with “Nickel-Plated Pockets” and other things; perhaps Blockhead’s production made a difference, too, to the vibe and thus the presentation, of his rapping) as the best work Aesop Rock has ever done, whether in the sort of pastoral designs of songs like “Commencement at the Obedience Academy” or “Big Bang,” to some extent, or with some of the most mindblowing stuff he’s ever done lyrically, such as with the psychedelic “Basic Cable.” This is the Aesop Rock who would be published in written poetry. Good thing he actually put this out in the little lyrics booklet included along with Fast Cars, Danger, Fire & Knives, which is an incredible album, on its own. Great treasure, that one.

Hokey Fright, the Uncluded

Well, okay, the albums keep coming. Aesop Rock is truly a champion of the art form, as is Eminem, as are a lot of the people on this list (Ghostface Killah, to name another person [or to use his stage name, lol], produced almost nothing but magic for a good portion of his career, with later albums such as Fishscale being a classic, with some of the best storytelling and just straight-out rhyming, ever [see “Shakey Dog,” “The Champ,” respectively, the true corollary in rap to Megadeth’s “Holy Wars . . . the Punishment Due” being followed by “Hangar 18,” and neither are in my top 25s], but Supreme Clientele rising even high above that), but Aesop Rock is a champion in the way where he can team up with a neo-folk singer, or whatever, Kimya Dawson (who was apparently a part of the Moldy Peaches, or something?), and have the album sound like a James Taylor concert but much, much softer, as she sings, usually, and he raps as if he’s singing a soft folk song. That is some of the most incredible stuff I’ve ever heard, and it’s a real deep, dark shame that he and Kimya don’t seem to be on speaking terms, anymore, because this is the album that I would have wanted a sequel to more than Hail Mary Mallon’s (him and Rob Sonic) Are You Gonna Eat That? with Bestiary. I actually like Bestiary more than the former one, and that one is no effing slouch, Either, but what really makes it great, when it comes to Aesop and Kimya as the Uncluded, is that the songs have this plaintive, sing-songy weepy tone, and you don’t get that kind of vibe maybe anywhere in rap, and Aesop jumps into it, and just delivers tear-jerkers like “Organs” (both pull at the heartstrings, in that one) and “Delicate Cycle” (“The last frame, silhouetted by the sun / Was an airmail stamp on a still-warm tongue,” bam! Your drama’s over, the title has been, won!), while delving into things like the finding of a certain kind of reading material in one’s family’s house when they’re still too young to be of age to see it, yet, and just spinning these incredible images in the air, of everything he’s talking about. This is Aesop Rock at the height of his powers, in a certain way.

The Impossible Kid, Aesop Rock

“Fuck it, it’s my best album,” said Aesop Rock in a Facebook Live that I think I might have been watching live, talking about The Impossible Kid. It’s perfect. However, this is about as far away as he would get from the old, verbose and labyrinthine Aesop Rock and as close to the sort of Saturday morning cartoons version of Aesop Rock, with incredible poetry (“Antlers rise from his migraine / . . . / Peer into the eye of a primordial experience . . .”) and some really, really good ideas for songs, such as chronicling his time with his cat from adoption to “greatest of all warriors” cat his cat Kirby would become and, in one of the best story songs in all of rap, probably, Aesop Rock raps his way through a therapy session. The beats are, and the accessibility of the lyrics, which are just magic but also lack some of the sense of wanting to explore them as deeply as with the Float ones, things that keep this album from being exactly, quite what it could be, maybe, but it all does indeed generally feel like one whole organic whole. Just, maybe, one that’s designed for instant appeal (through, again, great concepts and very good language; check out the intense scenes he sets up with his brothers, separately, in the very good “Blood Sandwich,” another story song that hits it out of the water). But when you have songs this good, it takes a certain disacknowledgement to write them off because they have less replay value, seemingly, whether due to the beats’ somewhat similar nature and the accessibility of the lyrics (which often form stories, at that, which tend to have less replay value, themselves). No, this album is magic, and there’s something there to explore, even after you feel you’ve sort of gotten through it all. “Employed by trillionaires, with perfect teeth and pores / And people who open doors for the people who open doors. / My Medical history, is a course at SUNY Buffalo.” Just one of a thousand incredibly fun, poetic lines in this thing. All about it.

Doggystyle, Snoop Doggy Dogg

And this album is just the equivalent of, like, a warm bath. Just the most enjoyable production Dre has ever done, that I’ve heard, anyway, although 2001 was pretty interesting, if not always enjoyable, in terms of some of it being so dark in tone, or sort of aggressive, but this one, everything’s just friendly, man. And Snoop, for his part, puts in pretty much the Jerry Seinfeld role of the best album, ever. You appreciate him and like him, while he’s on, but then you kind of forget about him, but he pulls the whole damn show together. And beyond his enjoyable rapping, which actually hits some peaks itself in things like “Serial Killa” and “Murda Was the Case,” like “Lodi Dodi,” too, which I’ve still never heard the original song of, by Slick Rick, apparently (“Gotta say what up to my nigga Slick Rick, for those who don’t like it, eat a dick.” Good stuff, sincerely), and boy, did I not only memorize it but basically repeat it everywhere I went, in high school and maybe later grammar school, too. But what else is left? Your answer was: Guest performances. Like a certain Kanye album, later on this list, you get the best congregation of talented guest stars in the world, and every time someone new shows up, they blow your mind. It’s a phenomenal album. A best, One. Oh, and “Tha ShizNit.”

Tha Carter III, L’il’ Wayne

There was a girl in my high school whom I didn’t really know, but I had some sort of run-ins with at social functions, sometimes, and she said to me that she thought I would love Tha Carter III, or something like that, when I (still in my B-Boy phase of dissing L’il Wayne for being what felt sort of insincere, maybe, or kind of just mainstream goofball, which I might have been right on, about, although then we might have to look at some other people, on this list) dissed him when she brought it up. Anyway, she said it in such a glowing way, like the woman I saw, just a big, friendly woman, being interviewed I think on some New Year’s Eve special, after midnight, who was sort of like the good version of the Judge from Blood Meridian, and delivered this almost beatific statement about how everyone’s going to love Donald Trump, and come together, with it, After all. That Didn’t happen, but they shared the same sort of heavenly, harmonic nature, or AngeLic? Anyway, she was right on, about Tha Carter II. Unbelievable, relaxing, harmonizing, Harmonious work. That jump-back-In after his long, sort of captivating monologue in “DontGetIt” hits like a light-switch, every time, for me. I remember playing it for my cousin, one time, and being frustrated with her, that she didn’t sort of follow the song S like I would, listening to the whole monologue and then be alarmed, and amAzed, when he gets to the end, and just jumps in, after you almost forgot there was even a song going on, in it. “Mmm, hmm,” he says in the monologue. “I guess it’s all a misunderstanding. And, uhm, I sit back and think, ‘Well, shit, us young Motherfuckers, you know, that one in every nine. We’re probably only, selling the crack cocaine, is because we in the ‘hood. And it’s not like their Suburbs. We don’t have, the things that you have.’ Why? Huhh. I really don’t wann a, know the answer.” It’s a great speech full of colorful things to say, and then he just comes in like a Wrecking Ball. And then, even the song “Lollipop,” which I was also probably right to Hate, was an incredibly captivating song, nonetheless. And whether it’s spacey and released or incredibly tight and tense (that David Banner verse on “La La” is Magical), this album just kills you, damn near, Each and every time. It’s all Good. (“Let me take my glasses off, ’cause I wanna see the reaction on the faces, when I say this. Uhh, Mr. Al Sharpton, here’s why I don’t respect ya’, and nobody like you.”) You’re Goin’ off.

We Got It 4 Cheap Vol. 2, the Re-Up Gang

This album is just, well, these guys talk about selling crack (one of the best lines ever comes from the song “Run this Shit,” in this one: “Y’all talk before they even mention Feds, / On how I got the block lookin’ like the dawn of the dead”), and the album, the mixtape, actually, is just Like a long line of crack, or however you go about that one, and it goes for 1 hours, and 1 Minutes, and they just picked the, best Songs, ever. And then they deliver verses that usually just decimate the verses those songs originally had, really.

K. O. D., Tech Nyne

This is the most similar to Waterworld, on this list, although much more lighthearted and less queasy and sick in its explications. There’s a big smile between Each of the jump-scares, in this Movie.

So Far Gone, Drake

Drake set up a perfect mixtape, with this one. “Dropped the Mixtape / That, shit Sounded like an album,” he says, later on, in “Forever,” by Eminem. But he is not just bragging, there. It really does. And as he says in “Crew Love,” on Take Care, “The realest niggas say your lyrics do shit, for me.” That’s true, as well. This album is full of the same kind of stuff that Drake gives you elsewhere in his career, except the production and the arrangement of it all has it sound like the purest Snow, that he hasn’t walked over yet. I think someone at Pitchfork described Thank Me Later, his first actual “album,” as sad alien music, or something, but this is more like music that transports you to the snows of Ontario, in the winter, as they Walk around, in the lights. “See, what I tend to do is to think / Of today as the past,” he says in the great “Lust for Life,” and it’s just one of the many little Tony Robbins insights you get from Drake, again, here and elsewhere, that show you how he achieved his success. You imagine yourself in the place That you’re going to be, and you’re there. Most of this list is full of violence and stuff that would be really toxic to take into your Life, and it’s no wonder that I have generally stopped listening to rap. (I have even had trouble getting through Aesop Rock’s newest release, Integrated Tech Solutions. I’m still on “Aggressive Steven,” like it’s fucking Calculating Infinity‘s “Jim.” And I finished that one, that album, that, night.) But with Drake, whom now I’m thinking of getting the new albums from that I did not, which apparently there are many of, Has at least some good, Mixed in with the bad. And, By the way. Get the free one. The one you pay for doesn’t have one of the best songs, on it

DAMN., Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick made The List. Yes, he’s really good. And DAMN., the album I listened to some of before buying and thought, and even said, to my Cousin, the one whom I was disappointed in for not getting the L’il Wayne joint, that it was just another case of people putting out disappointing Stuff . DAMN. is probably his best Album. That I’ve heard, anyway, and I have (and have listened to) all of his major releases, plus the Black Panther soundtrack that he basically made his own Album, plus the Untitled Unmastered one. The rapping that didn’t impress me in the little clips on Google Music Store app, or whatever, ended up needed some time to stretch out, for me. Yes, it is slower and more angular than his previous, Incredible Stuff on good kid, m.A.A.d city (which I got word of, that album, by reading an Aziz Ansari Tweet, I think, or X-out, now, or Something, that said, it Wasn’t that good), but the album is just a solid, slow beast, literally a concept album about (spoilers) Kendrick’s last thoughts that go through his Head as he dies of a gunshot, as far as I Get it, exploring basically the deepest topics in his life, from the incredible portrait of how child abuse (or at least shitty haranging, of the Child, of the Children) was carried through his younger years, into his teenage years, and then into his adulthood as a successful Star, with the first verse being his mother saying “Beat yo’ ass” for about a thousand things, like “Beat yo’ ass for this, beat yo’ ass for that,” and then him taking that kind of conditioning, on with Him. He talks about even deeper stuff, Supposedly, with “DNA.,” where he drops some sick lines about what’s inside him, sort of charting out what makes him him in an essential Way, not necessarily scientific so much as just Elemental, “I got dark, / I got evil that rot, inside my DNA” (this song gets a little into Kendrick’s anti-white racism, which comes in on Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers in a Big way, [that I Talk about here], or potentially does, with his assertions of “I’d rather die than to listen, to you / My DNA not for imitation / Your DNA an Abomination,” and since he seems to be talking about his DNA specifically as a black guy, one could think that he was talking to a white guy, Saying that [and I have taken it that way, myself], as well as Since it follows some kind of Fox News clipping or something that seems to be critiCizing the Woke, culture [and Kendrick is sort of OG Woke]) and “I got millions / I got riches buildin‘ in my DNA.” He just kills everything he touches, here, making it sound like a Holy experience to be Rich (“This What / God feel Like”), making a duet with Nicki Minaj (in “LOYALTY.”) actually work like Bonkers, and ending with one of the Twistiest and, if it’s True, one of the most Blank-facing story songs, in rap History.

Yeezus, Kanye West

This is probably the most concentrated package of energy on this list. There is no Kanye album that feels faster (as his albums are generally baggy, it may be even more precise to say “half as fast”) than (“as”) this one. Whoo, boy, do those percussive sounds of what either people were or he was describing as “minimalism,” when it came out, hit you hard, while Kanye’s rapping kind of goes in an a-rhythmic Supreme Clientele direction, a little, for a second. Or, really, for the whole album. This is rapping like a drill sergeant or somebody holding an airhorn and a bullhorn. And it just fits, it works. It’s the other gem that he worked up to with My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, and whereas that one was the epic, this one is the fast-paced thriller.

My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West

Pitchfork had an all-time great metaphor for Kanye making this album, calling people over to his James Bond villain lair on an island or something as he brought them in to help build the parts of what would become one of the greatest rap albums of all time, and pretty easily. This thing’s got the whole fuckin’ Justice League. Well, okay, only a few, but they are big: Jay-Z (twice), Pusha-T (twice, also), Nicki Minaj in what was I think her star-making verse, on “Monster,” Rick Ross on another one of his Rumpelstiltskin gold verses, and someone named Cyhi the Prince who does something really special on “So Appalled.” I will not include Rza, because he does not have a verse, but the fact that he’s there . . . well, it’s disappointing, anyway, that he just says, “Fuckin’ ridiculous,” a bunch of Times. And then you have Kanye himself, who shows himself as the underrated rapper he’s always been. People know Kanye as a producer, but any man who can make the store Borders a demilitarized zone between two people in a custody situation in seven words is a Menace. (“Public visitation / We met at Borders,” a really, really concentrated line of banal humor and crushing hopelessness. They met at the borders, of their own respective countries. And, also, at Borders Books Music Movies & Cafe. Not long before it Closed down, forever.) Kanye somehow makes the repetitive nature that rap got into work wonders in the song “All of the Lights,” where behind a beat that is just flashing lights, he names a thousand different kind of lights, and it actually is interesting. He opens up the album with a song featuring one of the most threatening lines ever that ends in one of the easiest and nicest releases I’ve ever seen: “Don’t make me pull the toys out, huh? Don’t make me pull the toys / And fire up the engines, hahhh, and then they make noisssse.” Ending on a kind of childlike melody, with the word noise.

Violent by Design, Jedi Mind Tricks

This album is like the textbook for battle rap. You’ve got Vinnie Paz, fresh off having sort of been Ikon the Hologram, before he realized or it came out that someone else had that name (jeez, it’s really not even that good of a name, lol), and fresh off one of the weirdest and most underground-sounding albums, ever, The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness, these guys, all.

The Cold Vein, Cannibal Ox

This album lost some of its street cred (and also solidified it, which sort of Works, that way) when it showed up on Timothy Chalomet’s wall in Lady Bird as the cool sort of Hipster fan item, but aside from that, this Def Jux (probably, the Best rap label of all Time, ever) album by El-P, on the boards, and Vordul Mega and Vast Aire, is like a better version of Deltron 3030, the fascinating but unpleasant, and sort of long, futuristic sci-fi album by Del, the Funky Homosapien (or Deltron 3030). It’s got the same kind of bizarre, sour Humor as that one, but is also has a lot of depth and Heart. The former is usually provided by the sort of Majin Buu of this world, Vast Aire, while the latter is provided by the closest Thing to a, cool Cell. Those are Dragon Ball characters. And, this album is certainly Super. There was a cool sort of dystopian vibe to most of Def Jux’s output, back then (see I Phantom and None Shall Pass, also from that label, at that time), and “Iron Galaxy” brings you into it with the most mind-bendingly bleak verse, by Vordul Mega. EvEr. Then Vast Aire brings in some, breathing room. Rinse, repeat. El-P’s on the boards.

I Phantom, Mr. Lif

Watch a guy go from low-paid office worker to some kind of success, financially, and disaster personally, and, ultimately, atmospherically. This album is a monster, and Def Jux just delivers a killer of a story album, the only I think of its kind, a guy growing up and moving to different stages of life, and then things get haywire with “Earthcrusher.” Mr. Lif, who raps with a nasal voice that has really become more of a detriment to me in enjoying this album, by concept, but in execution, it works, and his flow, though slow as if he’s reading out a PBS presentation for kids, sometimes, moves along exactly as, he needs it. He has the same kind of sound as Q-Tip, from A Tribe Called Quest, in the kind of didactic emphasis he puts on each word, but he still delivers nothing but good stuff, here: “‘Cause the function of our life is just to work and consume / Fuck reaching out to help the next, there ain’t any room / Just, close your eyes and block your ears and march to your, Doom.” A few guest verses, really all near the end, are welcome additions because as a character himself, the main speaker is surrounded by other characters, who each speak, when they feel the need to, which makes this feel more like a play. And the beats, navigating from just fun rhythms and energy, almost Looney Tunes–like, at times, “Live from the Plantation,” and it’s preceding track feeling like the first scene of the movie that’s meant to scare you, before the good guys, come in

Fantastic Damage, El-P

I still hesitate to go to this album, or I would, if I was listening to rap as much, now. That said, writing this list, I have popped back in here and there, and it has been good. Anyway, this album is just an assault of cacophony, really mechanized, ugly, slimy industrial energy coming right at you through the sounds. El-P nevertheless makes it sound more like Paul’s Boutique in terms of complexity than just an annoying and punishing stew. And his rapping over it is just, well, it’s just like the beats: Ugly voice, a-rhythmic rapping, at times, sometimes, and lyrics that are dense and cryptic enough without closer listening that you might just throw the whole thing off like a bad dream. But when you actually listen to these songs and to what he’s saying, the lyrics come through like real, powerful poetry: “I’ll send a postcard from Da Nang / If I can get onto the roof in time to hang / From the leg of this last chopper.” Probably some of the best rhymes of this whole list.

Supreme Clientele, Ghostface Killah

This is the album where Ghostface Killah turned into a Super Saiyan. While he has been good in other Albums, such as Only Built for Cuban Linx, and of course showed up (but not in his final form, not nearly) in Wu-Tang group albums, and other solo albums, which act as sort of semi-Group albums, anyway, this album marked not a turning point, for him, but sort of a breaking point, where for one album, apparently preceded by him writing its lyrics on a spiritual trip to Africa, or something, Ghostface Killah transcended to another Realm, and brought his friends, with him. He and almost all the the guest rappers (aside from a Gza, here and there, or maybe a Redman) take on this sort of blank-verse (even though it rhymes, it feels like it doesn’t, Somehow) “talking-really-fast” rapping style that kind of takes the criticisms about rap music that you’d hear from your father or friend down the Street, in the 6th grade, and say, “Yeah? You think this is just talking really fast?” And then they show you both (A) What talking really fast actually looks like (which makes you appreciate the rhythm and other stuff that goes into the rapping on albums like, for example, Doggystyle and The Marshall Mathers LP 2, along with basically every other one) and then how (B) even If they are Just talking really fast, on this record, as opposed to most other rap ones (let’s leave Kool Keith out of this, okay? And some of that older-School stuff, maybe, along with some of the guest features on The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological & Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness), they are Actually doing it in a, way that is high-Art.

Paul’s Boutique, Beastie Boys

And we have the most jumbled mess of Brilliance, here. The Dust Brothers, who made a Hell of a Malcolm in the Middle quote-jumble, which is Where I knew them from, apparently spent some time working with Samples to give the Beastie Boys their best Dish, in what would become The best album.