And with them El-P declared war on the status quo of a genre that didn't even have a status quo 10 years earlier. That line, from "Bad Touch Example," are the first words on Company Flow's debut album Funcrusher Plus. "And once again, in one verse, we have proven, we can rip all these signed, big-budget motherfuckers," said El-P.
The album pulsed with delirium, but as its crazed follow-up Nigga Please would bear out, it was actually a mannered delirium. RZA blesses Return with some of his grittiest production, from the guttural low-end rumble of "Raw Hide" to slight, bassy vamps like "The Stomp." But the true magic of Return to the 36 Chambers is that no matter how dark RZA took it, Dirt's larger-than-life character and comedic timing keeps things light-hearted and absurd. "Snakes" is a crew cut about death and betrayal until Dirt swoops in after Killah Priest, RZA, and Masta Killa with a verse about actual jungle animals.
#NOTORIOUS BIG READY TO DIE DISC COG FREE#
"Raw Hide" is half-cocked and crazy, chasing Dirt's free associative madness ("I came out my momma pussy! I'm on welfare!") with a chorus from Method Man interpolating the theme to the old Western that gave the song its name. ODB's rhymes sounded like they could fall apart at any moment. Lead single "Brooklyn Zoo" might be ODB's finest moment on mic, and it's as much lyrical tour-de-force as structural oddity: a fifty-some-odd bar dash to an off-time chorus that didn't make any sense on the radio but slayed anything you played alongside it. ODB's rhymes sounded like they could fall apart at any moment, but upon the release of his debut solo album Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, it became apparent that his weirdness was performative there was true showmanship at play. Ol' Dirty Bastard was the maddest in a crew of mad men, and at his best, the Wu-Tang Clan's drunken master matched whip-smart lyrics to a flow so off-the-cuff and unusual it could scarcely be believed. "With Da B.G." has clavinet bass and watery guitar lines, "Niggaz In Trouble" has bombastic orchestra hits and pew pew laser gun synths, and "Cash Money Is an Army" creeps along more menacingly than any track in the producer's discography. It's one of his most varied collections of beats, already drifting far from mere Trigger Man variations. As with any Mannie Fresh-era Cash Money album, the super producer takes center stage as often as any MC. Other Cash Money Millionaires appear on half of the album's 16 tracks, but on solo cuts like "Hard Times" and "Uptown My Home" the former Baby Gangsta holds court with a darker, more grounded variation on the label's celebratory signature sound. He may be the last of five rappers to spit on his biggest hit, "Bling Bling," a song best remembered for Weezy's dictionary-altering hook, but Chopper City in the Ghetto is B.G. had the most traditional lyrical rapping style of anyone in the Hot Boyz. With a relaxed, conversational flow and an eye for detail, B.G. He didn't have a blockbuster album like Juvenile's 400 Degreez, and he didn't establish an ear for platinum hooks like Lil Wayne. In the initial deluge of major label Cash Money releases that followed the New Orleans label's big ticket distribution deal with Universal, B.G. Hit the jump and take a journey through hip-hop’s most vibrant decade. The classics you’ve played every day since elementary school, to the records you forgot existed, and maybe an album or two you didn’t even know about-all compiled in one place. With that in mind, we’ve ranked the Best Rap Albums of the 90s. At the time, your musical menu most likely depended on what part of the country you lived in. But with the benefit of hindsight, and the Internet, it’s now possible to survey the cream of the crop and make informed decisions about which records are good, better, and best.
There was so much great music being made in so many different places and spaces that it’s far too easy for great things to get overlooked. They’re works that set the tone for the future of hip-hop, secured their legacies, and made us realize beyond a reasonable doubt that the genre was already taking over the world just as quickly as it took over our music libraries.Īll rap fans know these classics, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to 90s hip-hop. They’re records you know front to back, even if some of them outdate you. And in the process, these men and women created classics. Tupac, 3 Stacks, Lauryn, Jay, Biggie visionaries who took an art form just over a decade removed from its infancy and gave it the attention it needed to develop into adulthood, where it now stands three decades later as the most-consumed genre of music in the U.S. The storytellers of the ’90s were, and will always be, some of the greatest to touch a microphone. This feature was originally published in 2014.
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