THE MT. RUSHMORE OF HIP-HOP ALBUMS
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I’ve often wondered about "Big Fours" or Mt. Rushmores, if you will, for certain genres, be they songs, artists, or albums. In some areas, the debate is pretty much settled: you’ve got your "Big Four" thrash bands with Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax, and Slayer, for example. But what about other areas where there is more actual debate? Given the size and scope, I thought instead of trying to tackle these various debates solo, I would enlist expert assistance from a few friends of the site for their views, focusing here on hip-hop albums in the first of what will be an irregular series of "Mt. Rushmore" pieces. I left the question of what exactly the criteria would be for inclusion up to the individual, and I think you’ll be interested in what they settled on and why. Was it most iconic or influential? Was it more personal or genre-defining? Classic or contemporary? Read on to find out:
Tamara Harris (Kick Mag) says:
Here is my list of the four most important albums in hip-hop:
Run DMC: Raising Hell 1986
This is the first true hip-hop crossover album. They announced in "King Of Rock" that hip-hop was the new rock and roll, and they made a video replacing The Beatles' wigs on mannequins with their hats. They were letting everyone know that guitar rock was dead and hip-hop was not a fad. On Raising Hell, they proved this by collaborating with Aerosmith on "Walk This Way" because it was like an honest passing of the baton and it broke rap music into the mainstream. The song is also considered to be the first rap and rock collaboration. They were also the first rap artists to have their videos played on MTV, and it started with the video for "Rock Box" from their first album. The video for "Walk This Way" was one of the most played ever on the network. A lot of Black artists could not get their videos aired on MTV. Raising Hell is the first platinum and multiplatinum hip-hop record. "My Adidas" opened the door for the first endorsement deal between a music group and an athletic company. Rappers sell everything now, thanks to Run DMC. They were hip-hop's earliest stars and were doing arena tours at their peak.
Salt-N-Pepa: Hot, Cool, & Vicious 1986
The first album by a woman rap group to go platinum. Sha-Rock of the Funky 4+1 is the first female rapper (I despise the term "female"); however, Salt-N-Pepa became the embodiment of women in rap due to their successful industry career. "Push It' was controversial because people thought it was about sex. The women were told if they performed the song they would be arrested. They had to prove that it was really about pushing it on the dancefloor. They were talking about sex in the '90s and they also glammed it up. They paved the way for every woman rapper after them. They are also the first woman hip-hop act to have a Lifetime biopic that unfortunately stained their legacy because of the DJ Spinderella exclusion.
2 Live Crew: As Nasty As They Wanna Be 1989
The 2 Live Crew are pioneers in southern hip-hop and the issue of censorship in music. It is the first album declared legally obscene. Members of the group were arrested in 1990 for performing some of the songs at a strip club in Broward County, Florida. A store owner was arrested for selling a copy of this album. The group also had clean versions of their albums. The copyright owners of "Oh, Pretty Woman" filed a lawsuit against the 2 Live Crew and the United States Supreme Court ruled that the parody was fair use and did not infringe. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the obscenity ruling. All this drama led up to them releasing the follow-up album, Banned in the U.S.A., for which Bruce Springsteen allowed them to sample "Born in the U.S.A."
N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton 1988
Schoolly D and Ice-T did gangsta rap first, but N.W.A. crossed over from the underground into the mainstream, and their influence is still felt to this day. "Fuck tha Police" talked about the kind of racial profiling that unfortunately still exists. George Floyd is a reminder of this, along with the rise of Black Lives Matter. The assistant director of the FBI sent a letter to their label Priority because of this song. The police refused to provide security at a lot of their shows, which made it difficult to tour. This album was one of the first to have a parental advisory sticker. Despite being banned from radio airplay, it became the first gangsta rap album to go platinum. Unfortunately, they are also pioneers in misogyny as well. "Express Yourself" was their only radio-friendly song.
Poetical Nadz says:
My top 4 greatest hip hop albums of all time is from a personal point of view, rather than looking at the overall contribution and effect an album had on hip-hop culture as a whole. As a nineties baby and someone who grew up in Jamaica, reggae was predominantly on the airwaves, so when I first heard hip-hop it took me by surprise and to this day, I'm still learning a lot about it!
Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - most influential in my opinion, influencing singers, rappers and producers. Definitely a no skip album, so much emotions and so much effort and passion put into every track. In my opinion the whole album is a masterpiece, there's no faults or bad songs. One that I go back to every now and then to get some inspiration.
Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly - was genre defining because of its unique sounds. Nobody was sounding like Missy did and nobody still isn't sounding like her nowadays either! Timbaland's production also stood out to me from then till now. I always admire how he had his own signature sound and how he could add any sound, like a baby laughing or birds chirping to his productions and they would still sound great!
2Pac -All Eyez On Me - is a personal favourite of mines, very poetic, rebellious and at times playful. Presented as a double album as well just made it even better. All the tracks told a story and definitely captivated me as a listener. It's one of the albums that made me realise how powerful words can truly be to evoke emotions in others! It's a classic, it's timeless and definitely one I'll always have in my collection.
Nas - Stillmatic- this album not only has one of the best diss tracks ever (ether) but it was released in 2001, 4 months after I arrived in the UK from Jamaica. During a time that was rough, I found solace in the wider variety of hip-hop/rap music I was now exposed to. This album is one of the many that helped to shape my awareness of hip-hop and influenced my decisions to become a lyricist/beatmaker.
Abstract Sekai says:
No Pac, No Biggie. No problem. I've never been one for controversy, but don't expect a "just kidding" after that opening line because I wasn't. I won't say much about any of these because music to me is a feeling hard to put in words, funny I say this being a musician myself, but I guess maybe that's the divide between creating and listening, so Big Four, let's get to it in no particular order:
1. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
L boogie, what's there to say about this album that hasn't already been said. I'm yet to, and dare not meet anyone who doesn't at least have this gem in their top 10. As for me. Well we know it's a top 5 no brainer. A perfect blend of poetry, soulfulness and straight up rap Lauryn showed us her lethality didn't end in her Fugees days and that was no fluke ( let's be honest and admit she was the best rapper amongst the trio). Going solo was probably the best decision not for herself but for the gift she would give the world. This album continues to stand the test of time. This album will be talked about for many more years to come.
Favorite Track: Final Hour
2. Mm.. Food
What's a list without your favorite rapper's favorite rapper, The Man, the Myth, the Legend. I honestly had a serious tug between Madvillain and Mm.. Food but remembering lines like " Rap snitches, telling all their business, sitted in court they be their own star witness" or "jealousy the number one killer amongst black folk" made my decision easier. This one is the unsung hero in MF Doom's catalog. Genre defining?, I wouldn't say. Influential, maybe not. But Mm.. food to me is that Gem on the B side no one expects, and because most people don't even get to the B-side...well maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.
Favorite Track: Deep Fried Frenz
3. Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Man if Wu- Tang is for the children then consider me an infant. Most influential Hip-Hop album? I'll vouch for it. After all we still talk about it like it came out yesterday. The Wu-Tang Clan’s dive into cult classic kung fu movie flicks, insane and surgical deliveries from the likes of GZA, Raekwon and my favorite Method Man was a breath of fresh air at the time. No one was doing what Wu was doing, and for me that step into their own space with what was a colossal release, is the reason they still stand today. The album gave us classics like C.R.E.AM and Clan In Da Front and who can forget that blend of Hip-Hop and martial arts. This one needs no words, those do no justice. This one you just have to plug-in, play and listen to what a bunch of friends were up to in 1993.
Favorite Track: Method-Man
4. Dr. Octagonecologyst
Abstract you rap weird, and this is why. This one for me is personal, this one for me told me it's okay to rap Abstractly, about anything and everything, this one for me was genre defining, this one for me was I too want to rap over trip-hop beats about science and space and all that other stuff people don't rap about. This for me was plain and simple I just want to rap. What Dr Octagon and Dan the Automator did on this beautiful solo album I'll never forget, this one I've been told is an odd choice whenever I mention my favorite albums. It never seems to fit in for most people and yet for me it's home itself.
Favorite Track: Blue Flowers (Revisited)
(You can read my interview with Abstract Sekai here)
For my personal Mt. Rushmore, Ice Cube had an incredible run on his first four albums and Common was on fire from Resurrection through Be and any of those would warrant consideration—and I also absolutely love The Coup’s Party Music—but ultimately my four would have to be Wu Tang Clan’s Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers), Big L’s The Big Picture, J Dilla’s The Shining, and the fourth spot would be a hotly-contested battle between two very different albums in The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill and BONES’s PaidProgramming. (Side note: after reading Tamara Harris’s contribution, I thought long and hard about including NWA and 2 Live Crew both for my personal Rushmore and the larger, genre-wide one; I ultimately swapped out one of my initial picks for the genre-wide one for NWA’s Straight Outta Compton). That Wu Tang record is like the Glengarry Glen Ross of rap albums, an all-male ensemble cast at the height of its powers. The production is menacing, grimy, and murky in all the best ways, and it served as the more sonically rough-and-tumble East Coast counterpoint to the g funk exploding out of the West Coast. For those reasons, I would also include Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) on what I’ll call the more macro Mt. Rushmore of hip-hop/rap. Big L is to me the most gifted MC of all time, one we tragically lost way too young, and J Dilla’s The Shining—another posthumous album along with The Big Picture—is a masterclass in production. And speaking of masterclasses in production, the second album I’d put on the macro Mt. Rushmore would have to be the signature g funk record that signaled a complete sea-change in the sound and culture of mainstream rap in Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, which I discuss in more depth in this Death Row Records Top Five.
My third inclusion here as mentioned above is NWA’s Straight Outta Compton, one of the first modern-sounding hip-hop records and of which I think Tamara does an excellent job explicating. For the last selection, I thought about both Tupac and Biggie and the Tupac and Biggie of the latest generation in XXXTentacion and Juice WRLD, but I’m not sure X has "that one" album, and though Juice WRLD’s Death Race for Love is a modern classic, I think for both rappers not enough time has passed for us to fully assess their legacy. There are so many great options from the pre-Chronic days like EPMD’s Strictly Business, A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory, or Eric B. and Rakim’s Paid In Full or from the golden era—Illmatic, Ready to Die, All Eyez on Me, Doggystyle, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx—but given its seismic impact and impressive range, for the fourth spot, I’ve got to go with Lauryn Hill’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. As Gall Mitchell writes, it "still endures as one of hip-hop’s most influential musical feats. Its melodious mélange of R&B, neo-soul, hip-hop, gospel, pop and reggae provided the perfect accompaniment to the Fugees linchpin’s emotive vocals, raps and searingly honest perspectives on life’s and love’s ups and downs, motherhood and God."