Birdman is a vulture, a nasty bird of prey. He feeds off other people’s talent, while he is little more than a bargain-basement Don Corleone. Yet he has two aces up his sleeve: his protégé Lil Wayne, who joins him on some tracks, and top-notch production. At times, those two assets are enough to make his albums genuinely good despite everything, as is the case with “5 Star Stunna”.
After his own moment of glory, it’s now his crew’s turn to step into the spotlight. With their debut album, “Serve & Collect”, Slim Thug’s Boss Hogg Outlawz take the police motto, turn it into a slogan for drug dealers, and deliver a quintessential slice of Houston rap. This album is utterly generic, without even the slightest hint of originality. And yet, the whole thing is impeccably executed.
After rubbing shoulders with the biggest names – Lil Wayne first and foremost – All Star changes course. Like the protagonist of “Carlito’s Way”, a gangster trying to leave the life behind, he abandons flashy rap. On this double album, the Nashville rapper turns to resentment, abandonment, and bitterness. He becomes Starlito, one of the most respected rappers of the years to come.
One of the major mixtapes of 2009 was also a turning point in the careers of its creators. While French Montana would become a rap star, Max B was about to begin a seemingly endless prison sentence. But for the duration of this release, the two men, united by their hatred of Jim Jones, complement each other perfectly as they make songs from all kinds of sources their own.
The phenomenal success of 50 Cent and G-Unit starts here. It begins with this mixtape, on which the rapper and his crew hijack other artists’ beats and make them their own. It begins with this masterfully executed release, that will become the soundtrack of the summer of 2002. It is here, also, that 50 Cent cements the image of the untouchable gangster that will define his career.
Danny Brown, the rapper with the towering shock of hair and broken teeth, has a bit of everything. Boom bap and weird rap. Drugged-out lyrics and “conscious” rap. Humor and seriousness. No track sounds quite like the next, and that is precisely what makes the Detroit rapper so compelling. A late bloomer at thirty, this seasoned veteran finally joins the big leagues with “XXX”.
Long before they came to blows, the so-called cousins Trae and Z-Ro worked together as a duo. This second Assholes By Nature album, in particular, is a real gem. The two Houston rappers unleash their tales of everyday crime at full throttle, with insolence, pride, and flash. Yet beneath the bravado, their warm voices and melodic, carefully crafted sounds also carry a hint of melancholy.
After performing with Global Phlowtations – a collective within the extended Project Blowed family – Thavius Beck established himself first as one half of Labwaste, before earning further recognition through his solo work. His finest album, however, may well be this understated compilation of instrumental tracks, released only on CD-R and in digital format under his original alias, Adlib.
Another great L.A. record that sounds nothing like a typical L.A. record. On this legendary debut album, The Nonce, a duo closely associated with the Project Blowed collective, deliver a masterpiece of smooth, jazzy hip-hop steeped in a profound sense of nostalgia, sounding far more like the jazz rap of A Tribe Called Quest than anything coming from their Californian contemporaries.
In the 2000s, deep within the California underground that had emerged in the wake of Project Blowed, in that extraordinary world known only to a happy few, Awol One was almost a star. And yet it is not easy to single out one undisputed masterpiece in his catalogue. Unless it is this album – more consistent than most – released relatively later in his career with Canadian beatmaker Factor.
The Holocaust is a Wu-Tang affiliate, while production duo Blue Sky Black Death hails from the deepest reaches of the hip-hop underground. Yet these three were destined to work together. The former’s grave, declamatory rapping – a wild cascade of references both pop-cultural and highbrow – is a perfect match for the ceremonial instrumentals crafted by the latter two.
With El-P, Cage finds a framework for his broken-man rap. The rapper who could have been Eminem instead of Eminem gets backing from some of the underground’s leading producers, tempering his provocations with confessions about his shattered childhood. “Hell’s Winter” is the most balanced album by a man who is anything but, and one of the finest releases on Def Jux.