1. Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique

A love letter written in exodus, Paul's Boutique glued the recollected pieces of the Beastie Boys' New York City into a mosaic, teaming with the fragrant food carts and steaming sewer grates missing from their newly acquired, palm tree-lined Los Angeles headquarters. Packing their sonic suitcases with the auto-biographical detail of a Hemingway novel and the memory of an elephant, the Boys managed to ignore the animosity back home and impart their collective positive vibes into a project of immense sprawl, one with the broad ambition of a Beatles' concept album and the contrasting intimacy of a secret diary. The sentiment was novel, particularly for a trio pigeonholed as derivative ruffians, but the experiment's real ingenuity lies in its structure, building new compositions from thousands of nanoseconds of prefab sound.

The resulting piece pushed sampling to its inevitable extreme, morphing songwriting into multimedia art and transforming cultural influences from figurative to literal contributors. Tampering with the form also propagated a certain reckless abandon and danger to recycling culture, giving artists carte blanche to recontextualize the past without permission, foreshadowing everything from the homage fiction of Quentin Tarantino to peer-to-peer file sharing. That being said, none who followed shared the enthusiasm or resourcefulness of our whimsically gabby pranksters, particularly in the specificity of their vision and uncanny ability to pair highfalutin approach with humble craftsmanship.

Converting the art of rhyming from individual competition to team sport, the Beasties shape each bar into a game of call and response, vigorously mimicking their compatriot as he doles out superlatives or singing his praises as he steps away from the podium. The tone cluster created by the abrasive, cheerleader-style chanting inspires a rambunctious and jovial demeanor, mirrored through lyrical content rife with shameless self-aggrandizing and sexual hubris, studiously obscured by sitcom allusion or private joke. Conveying these cryptic footnotes in toto adds a layer of complexity to the writing, exposing a collaborative effort that functions as transmission from the unit and individual notion, imparting a fortuitous universality to every proper noun and neighborhood colloquialism. Despite the rigorous fidelity of idea, a certain lived-in comfortability permeates the dialogue, allowing the vocalist to go off script and birth the most peculiar of similes, shaped by a brand obsession in the spirit of Pop Art and the jokey wit of a Catskills comedy act.

This jocularity, accompanied by MCA's budding spirituality, cradles the tone of the composition, souring only for the rarest act of metaphorical aggression, benign enough in execution to treat handguns as props or abandon them entirely in favor of farcical armaments like bags of ice and egg-launching slingshots. Any vulgar display is in the name of role playing or tall tale, pouring itself into the tough-guy mold personified by Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen, allowing posture to act as metaphor for group disgust towards racism, domestic violence and drug addiction. A certain paraphrastic glee is channeled through these gritty passages, seasoning the usual banality of street rap with frozen steaks atop puffy black eyes and rotten teeth circling the bathroom sink drain.

Marrying these lyrical eccentricities with the Dust Brothers' capacity for auditory collage, rhythm is propelled by an endless stream of rapid-fire percussion loops and cultural paraphernalia, meticulously pasted into an army of jingles and asides, all vying for space at the aural buffet table. The resulting composition is frantic and adolescent in its enthusiasm, but never sloppy, utilizing the bombast and swagger of "wah-wah" drenched funk guitar to mirror the winsome attitude of the lyricists. Its deviations from beat lead to moments of pure spontaneity, reinforcing the anarchic nature of the project with sonic non sequitur (bong rips, didgeridoo, banjo) and extrinsic bits of dialogue, finishing rhymed phrases like a game of musical Mad Libs.

Non-verbal samples serve a dual purpose, acting as rhythm and accentuation of theme, lending the proceedings an air of classic cool through insinuated association. Cinematic urgency lent by "Superfly" and its rump-shaking low end elevate "Egg Man" from stoned hijinks to Robin Hood myth, painting the Boy's childish capers as noble crusade, further exalted by misappropriated bits of Chuck D's dogmatic poetry and Janet Leigh's disembodied screams. This palpable menace and gravitas carries over to "High Plains Drifter," which is imbued with the paranoid skittishness of cocked pistol hammer and sleazy bass line, transforming the jailbreak fantasies of vicarious outlaws into an erratic, flesh-and-blood manhunt.

The single most schizophrenic moment is "The Sounds of Science," which functions as a patchwork of 3 distinct movements squeezed into one package, only coming up for air by way of incongruous reggae sample or scratch passage. The introduction methodically bounces on an oompa-loompa bass line and warped siren wail, drained of the momentum of the previous 5 tracks and punctuated only by infrequent piano key clank. The team vocally matches the bass in tone and speed, gently lilting along with bleary eyes, but never losing intent or purpose ("expanding the horizons and expanding the parameters"). Laconic lyrics are dropped in a sort of stream-of-consciousness, free poetry, reflecting on a variety of "ologies" and aligning the fruitful endeavors of Sir Isaac Newton and Ben Franklin to their own experiments in hip-hop genre bending.

Ad-Rock signals the terse half-time show with loud, echoed exclamations of dominance and viridity, leading directly into a lyrical lightning round of relentless speed and raging libido. This proclivity for prurience and penchant for wisecracks doesn't change much for the coda, but the trio separates from formation to flex their individual abilities, highlighting personal preoccupations. Eagerly springing into action, Mike D's verses are as brash and foolhardy in construction as the warring Beatles samples they waltz upon, morphing a night of wine and women into a "freak unique penetration," drunk on a litigious brew of jaunty John Lennon guitar solo. MCA is just as enamored with the promiscuous and pernicious, but far more introspective, stressing epicurean taste over frugality in a life of indeterminate length. His capacity for debauchery and frivolity certainly matches that of his brothers in arms, but certain sacred cows remain untipped (i.e. illicit white powders), masterfully elucidated through a jarring cut to Pato Banton's paean to all things "sinsemilla."

As capricious as it is, boundless eclecticism and progressive thinking were bleeding edge in 1989, cutting far too close to the bone with fans unwilling to indulge in self-satire or fetishized 70's kitsch. With the progression of technology and society's ever-increasing cultural gluttony, artistic quotation has become ubiquitous and the once sophomoric and indulgent has become prophetic and revolutionary, inseminating everything that would follow and spawning a creative community of enthusiasts keen on making their work reflect their passions and existence.

2. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

Enigmatic and argumentative, Wu-Tang Clan's 9-man battalion of impeccable lyricists and raconteurs capture the grim reality of inner-city survival with a startling thematic fluidity, a unity wholly unexpected from a soup stirred by far too many ladles. Marrying a fly on the wall realism to the supernatural mystique of Wuxia cinema, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) constructs its own language and cultural benchmarks from the unique perspective of each member, lending a contemplative demeanor, vigor and peculiarity to hardcore hip-hop's growing consonance. Through this democracy of voices and contrast in theme, Wu-Tang births a sound as socially conscious as it is sophisticated, stressing the equal importance of reflecting reality and deconstructing artistic forms.

Shouted in guttural monotones and intended as brusque provocation, Wu-Tang's vocals are brawny and quarrelsome, "murdering the rhythm," especially when the crew barks out the last word of each bar or parrots the primary vocalist's lyrics in the wake. Intellectually, the unit has a remarkable retention of pop culture minutiae, rifling through cagey in-jokes, 80's political footnotes and arcane aspects of Blaxploitation with striking volubility and velocity. A masterful cohesion is sustained on "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'," capturing 6 members aligned in momentum and motif, breaking only to insert their own perspective or hand off the microphone to the succeeding focal point.

Functioning at the same level individually as they do in formation, each vocalist forges a unique role on the team, even if only given twelve bars. Ol' Dirty Bastard's comedic sashay stands out the most, tonally, due in part to a drunken stammer, not far removed from Redd Foxx's delivery, but met with a proclivity for fisticuffs and a charming boastfulness about the breadth of his depravity ("Jacques Cousteau could never get this low"). Raekwon is more focused and fluid, but no less indelible, compellingly capturing bleak moments without hint of fabrication or conceit. His sketches of teenage cocaine addiction and the paradox of drug dealing for sustenance are solemn and never preachy, carrying a transcendental verisimilitude.

Despite a youthful exuberance that often overshadows his vocal performance, the buds of a soon to be blossoming lyricist are there in Ghostface Killah's rough-hewn rhymes, particularly in his capacity for "kicking the fly cliches," that is, compartmentalizing the ennui of drug dealing into a blistering string of nouns (shots - knots - spots - hot). His counterpoint lies in Method Man, the group's front man pro tempore, who would rather take drugs than castigate them, his blunt-scorched throat lending credibility to those claims. His capacity for churning through kitschy catchphrases and interpolations is evident on his solo single, which strikes an interesting dichotomy between the two layers of his schizo persona: half cackling sadist, half channel-surfing burnout.

Handling production whole-hog, RZA lends a queasy menace to 36 Chambers, crafting sounds that echo from beneath the earth, rippling with water-damaged bits of piano and symphonic string, either played at the wrong speed or damaged beyond recognition. Fuzzy snippets of Kung fu flicks act as bookends, each airy swish of exaggerated jab or sword swing taking on new life, postmodern in its recontextualization, changing meaning to match the theme of the accompanying track. These disjointed passages of combat and proclamations of violence are especially chilling when paired with quick, clipped horn breaks and the atonal clang of woodblock, channeling malice when left unfiltered and curt against the vocals. No other forms of percussion are organic, always warped or filtered to add a supernatural ghastliness to the slam of a tenement door or the howl of the wind in the trees. The resulting creation is primitive despite its high-minded artifice, making for beats that stutter and stumble like they were pounded out on hollow buckets or thick phone books. The influence still stems from the soul and jazz that proceed it, but everything is filtered through RZA's frame of reference, burying the past beneath a craggy layer of grit.

"Clan in da Front" understands this marriage of disparate concepts, breaking into two distinct, autonomous portions. The first beat is decidedly less accessible, slowing a bass guitar sample down to a bruised stagger, lethargic enough to make each finger pluck audible, releasing its own agonized moan. The faint hum of a swarm of bees hovers above the low-end, personifying the vicious visuals militantly chanted by RZA and reproduced by his soldiers ("Wu-Tang Killa Bees, we on a swarm"). Each member and affiliate is named and accounted for, bellowing in compliance, preparing for battle, both physically and within the trappings of genre. The movements are separated by the magnified "shing" of a sword as if removed from a sheath, morphing into a jolly, drunken piano joint, stuttering awkwardly on the last note of the loop. A swirling "woo" fills the gaps between these jagged notes, adding a hallucinatory aura to the proceedings, deliberately contradicted by the elaborate vocal display of The Genius (also known simply as Gza), who rhymes uncontested for the remainder of the track. Emphasizing every "fuck" with pursed lips and a copious amount of saliva, Gza moves swiftly out of sheer excitement, littering his lines with allusions to pop and politics, just subtle enough to keep the anointed happy and leave the rest of us to our encyclopedias [Ed. - Who the hell remembers Geraldine Ferraro?]. He's a connoisseur of culture and superior linguist, but never is he more proficient than when disrespecting an opponent. His second verse is a devastating display of combative lyricism, lashing out at industry nepotism, dilettante MCs and cultural cows with the utmost meticulousness, much like the slice of a sharpened sword, which he so lovingly references.

Gza's moments of belligerence are Wu-Tang at their most quotable, but thinking of the Clan as talented tough guys is reductive and only half of the picture. Nostalgic passages on "Can It Be All So Simple" and "Tearz" brilliantly display the bittersweet nature of days remembered, reflecting on love, loss and poverty without inhibition. Hearing RZA recount his younger brother's final moments, as the Wonder Bread fell from the boy's clenched fist and warm blood pooled on the pavement, are hauntingly specific and genuinely distressing. Gone is the objective separation between writer/audience and entertainment, leaving behind an authentic portrayal of the permanence and damnable nature of violence. The fact that an emotional catharsis of this gravity is present on an otherwise rowdy piece of work is a testament to the magnitude of talent on display.

3. A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory

Not content to recycle or reinterpret, The Low End Theory is an extension of the jazz that came before, merging the fluidity of hip-hop vocal with airy, open spaces and curt instrumentation. Abrupt stops and starts allow each word to hang over an abyss of negative space, contributing to the composition as much as an instrument and stoking the narcotic aura of jazz's profligacy. The mood set by the intimacy of the environment and propelled by the rumbling undercurrent of bass is warm and nostalgic, placid enough to strike a demeanor mirroring A Tribe Called Quest's silken, phonetic flow. The coherence in sound and vocal composure has inspired an expansion of lyrical scope, capturing the playfulness of the debut with a new found ardor for sexual politics and major label maneuvering.

Introspective and sneakily political, Q-Tip's brilliance lies in his ability to unveil obscured truths, whether they be as profound as a lyrical exploration of art's seasonality or as trivial as a comprehensive list of backstage snack requests. His mastery of the form lies in this alternation between serious and frivolous, respecting even the most foolish of his conceits enough to take it beyond the two-bar minimum. Vocally, he's deeper than his counterpart, but no less agile, managing to strike a balance with the beat much like the one he's struck between disparate thematic material.

Crucial concerns find his words spit out at a quick clip, adding a needed tension to arguments against racial discord, vanity and the wiles of record-industry "shing-dings" (his word for phonies). Breakneck speeds find him concise and crystal-clear, as he's never one to fumble over an unneeded syllable, but relaxation and comfort only truly shine through when he "fluctuates the diction," ruminating over his sexual prowess in the most floral and frequent manner. These dirty dalliances are buried in the knottiest of stanzas, peeking out in feline metaphors that smack of chauvinism, even if his tongue is planted firmly in cheek. Measuring his capacity for copulation as a stockpile of "Tender Vittles" is amusing for its Chaucerian bawdiness, but assuming any female rejection happens around the 28th day of the month sounds positively primitive in the 21st century.

Phife Dawg doesn't fare much better on "The Infamous Date Rape," but he earns all other moments, maturing into a splendid storyteller and uproarious comedic writer. "Butter" finds him as a high-school Casanova, conquering every female opponent in sight and whimsically harmonizing their first names, until "Flo" serves him an unexpected dose of teenage heartbreak. Thankfully, this two-timer only gave him the life experience needed to shuffle on to a new partner, which most certainly won't be a lady with a weave ("I asked who did your hair and you tell me Diane made it.") or one of the snobs that dissed him before his royalty checks cleared.

Vocal sounds are as pronounced as the lyricists and at the fore of the production, with omnipresent bass and the thrum of snare drum gently resting behind, coaxing out a seductive, organic rhythm. Libidinous urges are as fleshed out sonically as they are in the minds of the vocalists, resulting in grooves that shake the pelvis and demand a complicit head nod. The bed of samples selected is fertile and lively, alternating between boisterous horn and subtle, dulcet organ tone, tranquil enough to go unnoticed next to the speaker-rupturing low end. One particularly muted passage finds Tribe leaning towards ambient atmospherics, flipping a sumptuous Grant Green guitar improvisation into a floating, spacy psych segue, replete with trails of heavy echo and sustained keys. Morphing quotations from other artists into parts of a bigger puzzle has allowed Tribe to define their own style, instead of linking their legacy to one artist or movement in particular.

Sidestepping avant-garde jazz in favor of a more fundamental sound, Tribe refurbished a lumbering Mike Richmond bass line into chunky, melodic gold. The resulting track ("Buggin' Out") is gloriously groove-oriented and fixated on its sonorous, obsidian low-end, varying only for bits of contrasting, crisp drum clash and sharply struck high-hat. Stripped of studio-imparted formality and artificiality, the composition pares down the sound to a trinity of words, bass and percussion, striking a distinctly unrestrained space suited for lyrical exploration. Phife thrives in this environment, dishing out scrappy, nuanced banter from the first-person perspective, phrased as punchline or retaliatory exclamation, often in relation to his diminutive stature. Q-Tip is eminently more confident and effortlessly poetic, effusive in his applause of musical expression, black introspection and uplifting positivity. His words are beautifully strung and rife with meaning, likening the catharsis of emotion in his writing to the release of seminal fluid, proliferating a thoughtfulness and imagination in hip-hop that wouldn't succumb to the emptiness of intellectualism or gangster rap nihilism.

4. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing.....

Constructed of 100% recycled sound material, Joshua Davis' bipolar, sublime ode to sampling exalted the sequencer as instrument, employing it to build the crescendos attributed to classical composition in the context of the hip-hop beat tape. As obsessed with the correlation of discordant sounds as he was record collecting, Davis used his DJ Shadow pen name to mine the potentiality of rap's form, abandoning benchmarks like funk and disco in favor of untraversed avenues. The product of this journey is a symphony in miniature, meticulously coupling the ethereal nature of strings and woodwinds with the galvanic kick of break-dance drum. Alternately exhilarating and analgesic, Endtroducing..... converts rap into a purely solitary experience, intended for headphones and nocturnal commutes, perpetually drawing you into folds of foggy humidity and dizzying passages of Gothic organ.

Shadow builds layers from his unearthed elements, reconfiguring or obscuring sampled works to conform to the whims of a piece, never allowing familiarity to distract from the collaborative nature of the whole. Shifts in tone and milieu are signaled by a bout of record scratching or vocal excerpt, subtle enough to be a suggestion or jarringly edited to provoke a vulgar, tectonic shift. Oral passages initially feel opaque or incidental, but gradually reveal intent, expounding on a facet of the production process or cunningly emulating the beat's progression (i.e. "Now approaching midnight" is minced to mirror the tick of an alarm clock). Beats themselves are often exposed at their most basic before being ruptured and broken into shudders and stumbles, exhibiting a sound from all angles, drawing the listener into the experience of hearing and examining music unconventionally. Though the pairings seem incongruous, often intentionally, all roads and sound marriages lead back to the first movement, which foreshadows the cyclical nature of each respective piece. Creating structural continuity without sonic uniformity makes for a cohesive work free from redundancy, capable of nestling a multitude of genres and concepts beneath the same blanket.

Soldering together jittery bits of drill 'n' bass and jazz percussion, "The Number Song" counts up to five before folding into a high-wire, nervy drum solo and influx of low-frequency rumbles, droning perpetually behind a torrent of arithmomaniacal samples. "Just listen to this" repeats endlessly, boring a hole into your temporal lobe, further indoctrinated by the repetitive lull of indeterminate bass tones and shimmering scratch, wildly flailing between each earphone. A down-tempo shift is signaled by the Moon landing countdown and a busy bout of turntable work, if just for a moment, jostling back to full propulsion by way of fortuitous horn break and damaged soul vocal. Just as it seems to find a balance, settling from its caffeine high of rapid-fire sampling, the track doubles back to the intro and runs off the rails, squealing into isolated bits of clatter and crawling to a sludgy, stagnant glop of sound.

"Mutual Slump" shares this transient nature, but shifts gears erratically, anticipating the listener's gradual adjustment over the course of the composition. Bursting from beneath one of John Carpenter's direful dream transmissions, "Slump" is propelled by rollicking drum roll, urgent siren and twangy, bent guitar strum. As the beat steadies, tones clipped from Bjork's "Possibly Maybe" meet jazzy cymbal and the stoicism of monastic chanting. Furthering the solitary, isolated mood, the drum is separated from the other ingredients, extrapolating on the spacious, cavernous nature of the sound. Shadow once again brings the track back its origins, hitting the breaks and leaving behind the throbbing, tranquil nature of the primary intonation. A storm of primal scratching and resurgence of skittish drum is unleashed following a transmission of another kind, one that amusingly channels the American Dream via Xanadu's roller-skate kitsch.

The arrangement operates on a dream logic that pairs bits of sound and thought into cognitive, unified strands. It's sampling as psychological experiment, striking moods through seemingly unorganized ebbs and flows of sound, either as subtle as the hiss of a heat-rippled videotape or as harsh as the bleating of feverish, sweat-soaked saxophone. The constant shift can be unsettling and emotionally manipulative, as anxious as a Hitchcock set-piece or the slow ascent of a roller coaster just before hurtling down an endless chasm. Yet, this contrast elucidates the cerebral nature of the project, which is to expose the power and variety of sound and how each individual note strikes a different chord with the listener. Endtroducing..... functions on both mental and physical levels, manufacturing complex concertos to act as aural Rorschach test, varying between the serene and the turbulent.

5. Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagonecologyst

Signaling the end of populist hip-hop and shortsighted coastal rivalries, Dr. Octagonecologyst merged East Coast lyricism and West Coast experimentation, manufacturing an immersive, nebulous atmosphere built from the spare parts of splatter horror cinema, moody electronica and turntable work as staggering and vertiginous as a swarm of locusts. The hallucinatory effect of "Kool" Keith Thornton's oblique lyrical universe rivals the full-body assault of psychotropic drug use, vivid and transcendental in its ability to burnish a cartoon character (the eponymous Dr. Octagon) into a frighteningly misanthropic and palpable antithesis to literal-minded art.

Conceptually, Thornton intends to merge futurism with a base carnality, twisting unnatural, oft-vulgar word pairings into catchy snatches of technobabble. His speed varies in relation to the content, slow and lumbering when building tension and blisteringly quick when rifling off bits of jargon or playing games of free association ("Equator ex my chance to flex skills on Ampex"). A predilection for the illogical also imparts Keith's writing with a lively, adolescent humor, brimming with acid-tinged celebrity gibes ("gerbils for rectums, I'll break you off like Richard Gere") and a synesthete's perception of color. Transference between the author and his fictional counterpart has also allowed an obsessive hypochondria and boundless libido to dictate the direction of the narrative, resulting in an unsettling paranoia and compulsiveness that contradicts hip-hop's passion for inviolable fortitude.

Dr. Octagon's sexuality reflects the mechanical, impersonal nature of pornography, focusing on body parts solely for their carnal function or capacity for modification. References to circumcision, insertion and butt play abound, though the vagina is suspiciously left out of the festivities, that is, unless it's in relation to a yeast infection. This sexual arrested development seems to fit the character's proclivity for anti-social, brutish behavior, merging the compulsive recklessness of a lunatic and the rambunctiousness of a child.

"I'm Destructive" could have been scrawled on a bathroom wall by a hyperactive 10-year-old. Recoil in horror or chuckle in disbelief as Dr. Octagon revels in the mischief of feeding a baby a stick of Bubble Yum and decapitating a parakeet with a pair of scissors. Keith can't even help himself from snickering at some of the more absurd passages, cracking up at the utterance of "baboon with buffalo wings" during a lengthy stretch of tasteless zoophilia. Indulgent or not, these explicit illustrations are accessories to the performance and Keith has managed to impart nuance and ingenuity, morphing an archetypal horror villain into a three-dimensional character.

Constructing the laboratory for Keith's mad scientist, Dan the Automator (nee Dan Nakamura) repackages the clichéd bits of sci-fi cinema into brainwashing, tonal soundscapes. His propensity for Moog keyboard and live bass result in chilly, nocturnal grooves replete with disembodied screams of pleasure and pain and indecipherable electronic whirr. Looped tones and zombified keys lie behind Keith's vocals like an airy breath of wind, as textural and wrapped in all-encompassing echo as the ambient work of Tetsu Inoue, but frequently broken free from the shell of repetition for aerobic blasts of drum machine and piquant touches of industrial clatter. It's the startling nature of these shifts in pace that spawns an overwhelming uneasiness, evoking images of darkened hallways and menacing prowlers.

"Blue Flowers" gurgles like stomach acid, churning through waves of coiled synth and lurking bass pluck, subtly contrasted in pitch by a violin passage on pins and needles. The chipped funk lick is brusque enough to be a suggestion, as are the cadaverous, indiscernible backing vocals, which waver between speakers and fade out like a lost radio transmission. Keith's vocals are just as cryptic and at a glacial pace, but far less delicate, marrying medical fetishism with a psychopath's delusions of grandeur. Aligning his experiments to a religious rite and mirroring the dehumanizing viciousness of the Schutzstaffel, Dr. Octagon's procedures befit his lust for power and sexual dominance, often resulting in regurgitated bodily fluids, accidental organ removal and streams of yellow rain.

Maintaining the nauseating leitmotif, DJ Qbert consummates the track with an unsettling segue of record evisceration, dizzying in its rapid-fire sonic depiction of tortured squeals and death rattles. The result is asymmetrical and divisive, nearly as provocative as the lyrical content, striking a rather uncomfortable balance between B-movie camp and shocking, sexualized violence. It's a corrupt concept, morally speaking, but artistically fruitful, particularly in the "magical realism" of transporting vivid depictions of murder and degradation into a world that was secure in making vague implications. It's through this disparity that Dr. Octagonecologyst transcends the alter-ego side project and gallantry of comic books and becomes dangerous, transgressive art.

6. Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele

Entrancing on the surface and rife with meaning just beneath, Dennis Coles crafts flavorful vignettes of meticulous detail, so consumed with the minutiae of gang life and the flavor of a hot meal that he compels his listeners to hear the clap of each gun shot and burn their lips on piping hot Ziti. The veracity of his street tales made him a standout in the sprawling Wu-Tang Clan collective in the 1990s, but his early work seemed restricted by the group setting, begging for the freedom of a three-dimensional solo effort. Though 1996's Ironman gave him room to breathe, it never possessed a singular vision, one that would define Ghostface Killah (Cole's alter ego) as an artist outside of the shadow of the Wu empire. Luckily, patience and hard work provided Ghost with a second opportunity to separate himself from the pack and his seminal sophomore effort, Supreme Clientele, manages to capture his abundance of raw talent, delicately balanced with an ability to self edit and a renewed sense of compassion. It's an enlightened and sophisticated work of art, painstakingly precise in its passion for language and triumphant in its separation from the superficiality of turn-of-the-century avarice.

Ghostface's delivery is a nimble stream of rhyming suffixes, punctuated with a colorful specificity and decorative nuance, built for both narrative and linguistic gamesmanship. It's a foreign and endless stream of food buzzwords and street crime colloquialisms upon discovery, but as a relationship develops, themes begin to unfurl, particularly in the newly-cultivated political bent and sentimentality. Investigating the dense and dazzling "Mighty Healthy" reveals an incisive analysis of racism, particularly in the ability of prejudice to morph a culture into its antithesis. Dispelling rumors that the black community is "immune" to the oppression surrounding them, Ghost takes aim at the malnourished, drug-addled stereotype masquerading as the visage of black America and urges an intellectual awakening.

The shrewd observations and invigorated confidence have even seeped into his moments of whimsy, resulting in "The Grain": a splendid satire of celebrity, replete with ice-adorned Pope John Paul II and passionate Vanna White make-out-session. While a Whopper-eating, horny "Queen Mum" may step far beyond the boundaries of good taste, paralleling Malcolm X and John F. Kennedy's assassinations and correlating sleep to the placement of a hyphen are the kind of epigrammatic writing choices that outweigh lapses in judgment, barring the far-too-frequent dalliances with homophobia. Thankfully, the artist is capable of seeing his own flaws and making amends, willingly leaving in a bit of botched dialogue here ("slaf-hash") or positively comparing himself to Boy George there, reflecting a humility developing alongside the artistic growth.

Overseeing the mixing and a lion's share of the production work, RZA broadens his scope to match Ghost's vision, but wisely maintains the cinematic atmosphere and low-tech grit of his oeuvre. Adorning the smoky rooms and rainy streets of Ghost's Gotham with shimmering horn and spectral music box, the body of sounds delicately walks the line between majestic and ghastly, tingling spines with each infernal echoed note and break. Sampled elements are noticeably brief, even rushed, toiling to keep pace with the furious vocal work, stranded as transitory shudders and gasps of wind instrument and girl-group chorus. "Stroke of Death" takes this penchant for brevity to its apogee, dragging a needle over the surface of a record for every solitary second of the track's length, resulting in a forcibly anti-commercial bit of agitation, almost liberating in its discomfort.

"Child's Play" also rides a single, indecipherable note ragged, but sets an altogether different mood, turning the high-pitched into placid and balancing out the rough edges with a dollop of George Jackson's rich, contemplative keys. A youthful, nostalgic tone is struck even before Ghost utters a syllable, captured in passing snippets of record scratch and half-heard 70's guitar lick. Lyrical passages occupy the space between pleasant reminiscence and lingering melancholy, as Ghostface goes out on a limb to divulge the focus of his youthful sexual desires, sparing none of the adolescent embarrassment that comes with reproductive maturity. Revealed in a matter-of-fact patter, wholly unashamed, Ghost's expounds on his carnal awakening, evoked by a brief glimpse of "Pretty Little Sally's" panties as she swayed back and forth on a swing-set. The image resonated deeply, resulting in virtuous moments of experimentation and aroused daydreaming, temporarily removing Ghost from his humble surroundings, if only in his mind.

Examining one's masturbatory habits is a foolhardy endeavor, but Ghostface's execution and honesty is strikingly moral, especially in the juxtaposition between the inculpability of young love and the accountability, disappointment and jealousy of adult relationships. His experiences are highly subjective and seen through rose-colored glasses, but his yearning is universal and, no matter the topic (politics, religion, culture), Ghost succeeds in taking a dialectic approach, seasoning his words with lived-in realism and sophisticated exposition. It's a refreshingly naked approach to a form far too interested in affectation and generality.

7. J Dilla - Donuts

As an artist, James Yancey was more concerned with how sound is interpreted and how it affects mood than with his audience making a direct connection between his samples and their source material. Unlike the cultural collaboration of mash-up and its ironic pretense, Donuts is all cerebral exercise, emphasizing and expounding upon the commonplace just before stripping it of meaning and origin. Freed of context, individual sounds, even the most distinguishable, become pieces of a new framework, one sophisticated enough to satirize the old guard on one hand, while celebrating its influence on the other.

The sheer technical wizardry and innovation, evident in Yancey's ability to transform simple elements into knotty concertos, are enough to make Donuts memorable as beat tape, but his genius lies in the ability to convey compassion without lyrical accompaniment. Moments of profound warmth lurk beneath the layers of twitchy drum and disorienting vocals, providing an emotional connection between performer and audience in defiance of the intentionally shrouded meaning and subliminal use of samples. It's personal, surprisingly sweet and occasionally rather forceful, reflecting a clear vision and vulnerability uncommon for hip-hop producers, even at their most progressive. The fact that it was recorded from a hospital bed by a terminally ill man only adds to the bittersweet finality of the work, which feels like a sketch book of everything Yancey wanted to say in his life, but never had the chance.

Essentially a collection of shorts, some built to accommodate a vocalist, others too anxious to exist anywhere else, Donuts is a ceaselessly ascending and descending smattering of half thoughts, joyous and free in its state of impatient flailing. Breaks and loops are awkwardly yanked from their homes and placed in stark contrast to the tempo, resulting in a disorienting garble of words and a limping drum fidget. Vocal sounds, once so full of vigor and pomp, have been transformed into befuddled nonsense, perverted as a drunken wobble far removed from their intended physicality. Using sampling as a vehicle for satire, J Dilla (Yancey's nom de plume) has playfully sapped hip-hop and R&B of their potency, mutating proclamations of brute force and sexual proclivity into desperate whimpers and flatulent grumbles.

"The Twister (Huh, What)" is a hand grenade thrown into the church of hip-hop posturing, subversively reorganizing threatening chants of "huh" and "what" into a mine field of horrifying siren and indecipherable, adolescent wail. Stranding the vocals in a pile of sound rubble and draining them of their passion creates a concussed confusion, far removed from rap's customary confidence and narcissism, crippled by the overwhelming sonic punishment. It's a startlingly effective protest against mediocrity, stern and straight-faced enough to make the epilogue of "One Eleven" come as a bona-fide shock. In a moment that's both victorious and a bit self-congratulatory, Dilla decides to follow his diatribe with the essence of what he was fighting against, the soul-inflected, hook-laden banality that his targets produce in bulk. Though initially off-putting, it's a perfect bit of irony from an artist having his cake and eating it too, pointing a finger at a formula mere seconds before taking a stab at it.

However noble creating art as a means of critiquing art may be, Yancey realizes that a personal connection always outweighs ideological regard and builds resonance through self-revelation. "Time: The Donut of the Heart" is his most candid moment, awash in warm guitar and cloaked vocal warbling, imbued with yearning for a lover left behind, beautifully evoked through a slowed tempo and wave of orgasmic moans. Its eroticism is unabashed, but never lurid, and there's an unequivocal honesty to the catharsis that never feels calculated, as if it couldn't be left unsaid. Donuts is brimming with these urgent moments of confession, forced into an endless loop and rattled off at full tilt by an artist unwilling to take a fountain of brilliant ideas to the grave.

8. EPMD - Strictly Business

For a duo obsessed with leisure and the spoils of Reagan-Era consumerism, Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith rarely seem compelled enough to work for it, at least not at the expense of their relaxed demeanor or enough to warrant naming their album Strictly Business. Even music industry chatter would have been premature at this point, since both rappers were barely out of their teens, working on their debut release and still fearful of parental retribution. Seriously Joking would have better fit the duo's unfocused vocal brilliance, mirroring their capacity for riffing off of each other and penchant for off-the-cuff one-liners. The compatibility of the pair and their dedication to stressing common verbal and sonic motifs shows a maturity beyond their years, making for an effortlessly meta advertisement for slackerdom and the artistic honesty that comes with it.

Slurred, slack flows pour out of EPMD in a lispy stream-of-consciousness, heavy on Long Island accent and light on tempo and articulation. The speed and rapidity of the vocal interchanges often result in swallowed words and misheard bars, but the improvised nature is exhilarating and guilelessly poetic. Throwing out ideas and cultural touchstones at random, much like their successors in Das Racist, Erick and Parrish love to investigate pop ephemera (i.e. Samurai Suzuki, Federal Express, "witch Matilda"), but never as indictment of the corrupting power of branding, but as dedicated capitalists, itemizing wishlists in preparation for their big payday. Loose ends are often tied together with a commercial jingle or interpolated song lyric, resulting in an unintended complexity that befits couch potatoes and stoners old enough to pick up on the cultural cues. Others will fare better succumbing to the power of the vocal dynamics, which effortlessly shift between Parrish's vivid bad cop routine and Erick's mush-mouthed litany of lyrical peculiarities ("If it gets warm, take off the hot sweater.")

As if to counter the esoteric nature of the narrative, production takes a demotic approach and sticks to sampling pillars of the 70's rock and funk movements. Contrasting loops are strung together from two or three familiar sources, marrying the sweetest bits of standards like "I Shot the Sheriff" and '"Jungle Boogie" into one recognizable, but unique, whole. Snippets are even alluded to over the course of multiple tracks, cohering divergent passages to key themes and inserting a certain self-referential charm to the proceedings. It's an elementary technique used for an ingenious construction, best described as the aural equivalent of creating a new outfit from hand-me-down clothes.

Yet, cursory beat plundering and a relaxed demeanor shouldn't be confused for lack of inspiration, since EPMD merely select the tracks best suited to fit their topics of conversation. While the placid, smoky notes of Bobby Byrd's organ are a perfect fit for "Let the Funk Flow" and its casually brilliant lyrical schemes, ZZ Top's "Cheap Sunglasses" is stripped of its pomp and given a glossy electronic makeover. Left behind is a hollow, frigid bass line, ideal for the ill-willed jeremiad of all things poseur on "You're a Customer." The residual tension even carries over to DJ K La Boss' instrumental track, an excerpt so moody and baroque that it would feel wholly separate if it weren't for the studied repetition, blurry scratch patterns and perfectly situated Vincent Price sample.

Similarly hazy trails of echo coat the blown-out, warped bass and mesmeric soul clap on "You Gots to Chill," producing a narcotic calm to match the persistence of the choral mantra. The schizophrenic pace of the scratching and distorted talk box vocals (swiped from Zapp & Roger) coax out the gentlest of head nods, predating Dr. Dre's fascination with the quixotic nature of funk, but with far more emphasis on danceability and vocal interplay. Lyrics are spewed forth without punctuation, too relaxed to give a passing thought to the woeful words of a "sucker MC" or precocious "new jack," but jokey enough to "issue dig-em-smacks" to those without a clue. There's even a hint of escapism in the lyrics, challenging the audience to free itself from the worry and self-consciousness that would overwhelm the genre within 4 years time. It's Sermon who best embodies these good vibrations, allowing Smith to play the role of terse agitator, while likening himself to everything from Zorro to a personal computer and playfully suggesting that inadequate rappers catch up on their beauty rest. His passages of jejune and colorful absurdism are what loosens the audience's inhibitions, imploring even the tightest of asses to spring from its seat.

Ardor seems to leap forth from every passage of Strictly Business, culminating in "Jane," a lover-man sex jam spun out of control by a bossy belle less than impressed with meat-and-potatoes coition. Willing to be the brunt of the joke is refreshing, but writing the joke is revolutionary in a genre full of bruised egos and brutish inflexibility. Putting humor and bonhomie before self-importance is what makes this product so desirable and even artists as green as EPMD understand that distinguishing yourself from the competition is half the battle.

9. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

As markedly different from hip-hop now as it was then, Public Enemy's confrontational politics and bludgeoning sound collage stood in stark contrast to the neo-Rockwellian bliss of 80's consumerism and the sunny demeanor of pop radio. While the mainstream found solace in "We Are the World," PE sought to get to the root of the problem instead of throw money at the end result of oppression, examining the hypocrisies of world culture and its subjugation of people of color.

Thankfully, Public Enemy isn't a paper tiger bestowing wisdom from an ivory tower, but a movement interested solely in the advancement of the art form and empowerment of the black community. It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back is the movement's manifesto and its clearest artistic statement of opposition to the hype of celebrity, bureaucracy and wealth, ironically constructed from the raw materials of the media they've conspired to make obsolete.

The message in the music is carried by the stern, guttural baritone of Chuck D (née Chuck Ridenhour), a defiantly philosophical scribe concerned more with countering the disinformation spread by the powers that be than "Yes Y'allin'" or mincing words. Chuck's quips are snappily written, but unflinchingly solemn, chastising the artificial fantasy of entertainment and exposing the domino effect of media brainwashing and how it shapes black self-image. This degeneration is even paralleled in his content, progressing from low self-opinion ("She Watch Channel Zero?!") to lack of compassion ("Night of the Living Baseheads") to incarceration ("Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos"). The fear of prison and helplessness of the imprisoned is both literal and figurative, reflecting the dehumanizing effect of the American penal system and the way it parallels the constraints of societal prejudice and the fallacy of racial equality. It's a sobering discourse, amplified to a feverish maelstrom by the impenetrable body of discord created by Chuck's backing band.

Mixing materials by hand, culling from an endless catalog of musical sources, The Bomb Squad construct monoliths of sound, muscular and maximalist waves of re-contextualized media soundbites and caustic sirens. The severity of their sound is an aural representation of the lyrical content, merciless in its quest to awaken the listener to full attention. Those struggling to find a reference point might take it for funk, played at accelerated rates and with little interest in dancing, but this has more in common with Negativland than The Meters. It even seems to show contempt for its sources, perverting the "marketability" of mainstream media into a piece of subversive activism, morphing benevolent maraca into crackling rock cocaine or channel surfing into a frustrated mass of white noise. It's this delicate pairing of subtext and atmospherics that generate the kinetic nature of the composition.

The most propulsive piece of the puzzle is "Rebel Without a Pause," which blasts off like a roman candle, enrapturing the ear with nagging trumpet squeal and commanding political rhetoric. Chuck's authoritative force reigns in the listener with a simple "Yes," cutting through any distraction caused by the perpetual, unsettling shift in sound. Stressing his vocal expertise while highlighting his role as enlightened outsider, Chuck wages war on black radio that refuses to endorse challenging black art and makes a plea for stimulating lyrical content and political involvement. Realizing that ideological rants can be stuffy unless properly packaged, Chuck wraps his incendiary dialogue in a melodic slew of puns and slogans, using ingenious verbal tactics to overthrow Reagan (or is it "ray-gun") and re-ignite interest in black nationalism. His message is vital, but his urgency and excitement is far more palpable, as is the rush of Flavor Flav's drum beat and DJ Terminator X's tense record scrapes and scratches.

It's a goosebump-inducing commotion, intellectually and emotionally stimulating, undeniable in its power to inspire, motivate and frighten. Disagreeing with Public Enemy's politics doesn't even diminish this immediacy, as the resourcefulness of their dexterous musical pastiche would be enough to elicit an emotional response from the most conservative of Republicans. Whether this hypothetical right-winger would enjoy the music or not is besides the point to Public Enemy. It Takes a Nation... was intended to rattle cages and motivate change. I doubt they even knew how much it would do for the form, both in gravity and virtuosity.

10. Nas - Illmatic

Think of Illmatic as a docile takeover.

Viewing gangster rap's fatalism as a dead-end street, greenhorn MC Nasir Jones saw his vocal precision and lucid perspective as an antithesis to the myth of the invincible outlaw. His crime fiction is one of fear, not cowardice, voicing the tension of those caught in death's snare with a pragmatic candor and a positive mental attitude. The viewpoint proved to be unique, particularly due to the conduit with which it was carried, an articulate and lightning-tongued slew of syllables, flowing over with a prodigy's photographic memory and capacity for free association.

Confident as jester and philosopher, Nas is a utility player, capable of amusing and inspiring in equal measure. His hobbies lean towards the genre's propensity for hedonism, grafting on to the chronic, cognac and clothing, but abandoning the nihilistic hatred and capacity for violence. In his own words, "I switched my motto; instead of saying 'fuck tomorrow' that buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto." It's far too evocative a couplet to cut short, perfectly articulating the viewpoint of the author and his advanced grasp of internal rhyme and metaphor. His confidence even extends to advances in narrative, seeing street crime through the eye of a keen observer instead of perpetrator, perfectly captured in "One Love," which details the neighborhood melodrama in a letter to an imprisoned friend. Its poignancy reflects an innovator eclipsing his forebearers, capably exercising idiom and symbol within the constraints of epistolary poetry.

An ingredient this fresh only needs a pinch of salt when served and the committee behind Illmatic's production understand that less is more, especially with a wunderkind behind the microphone. Large Professor lets Nas' words marinate alongside swirling jazz sax and indistinct "Human Nature" sample, allowing the chaos to unfold quietly beneath the rousing vocal track. Gang Starr's DJ Premier doesn't jump through hoops, sticking to a metropolitan melange of bass, playful sample and rapid-fire scratching that caters well to a young artist adapting to compositional structure. Naysayers might be inclined to hear it as the masters resting on their laurels, but don't fool simplicity for complacency, as the formulaic work present here reflects the nexus of the formula instead of a tired retread. All a "Golden Age" revivalist needs to hear are the Hammond organ and sampled soul croon on Premier's "Memory Lane..." to crack a grin of sentimental satisfaction.

"Halftime" carries on the air of nostalgia, pairing Motown samples with fond remembrances of CHiPs episodes and youthful bouts of stage fright. Large Professor strips down his sound, giving the lyricist free reign over infectious live bass and the hypnotic sway of sleigh bells, awakening only for the rare burst of horn over the chorus. Free to flex his "mad fat fluid" on the microphone, "Nasty" Nas careens at top speed through content-rich verses, making the obvious profound through eloquently woven tales of weed smoke and vocal dominance. Mastery of the figurative and literal ("I drop jewels, wear jewels...") and bookish references to Marcus Garvey glaze over moments of blatant homophobia, but the real attraction is the effortlessly poetic intonation of Nas' voice. Stringing 4 to 6 rhymes together in a cohesive narrative at high speeds without choking would be a feat, but doing it for nearly 4 minutes straight is superhuman, especially on your first attempt at making the majors.

Time saw Nas' infamy grow and his expanded catalog allowed him to develop arguments and concepts only touched upon in this pithy anthology, but rarely does increased notoriety capture youth's intrepid spirit. Illmatic streams with the unbridled enthusiasm of an author just finding his voice, relishing every syntactic innovation, off-the-cuff neologism and oddball pairing of historical footnote and modern colloquialism. It thrives by going the extra mile, masterfully described in the argotic title, which roughly translates to "a willingness to be ill."

11. Ice Cube - AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted

Equal parts horrified and inspired by the double standards and hypocrisies of polite American society, Ice Cube savors his role as fly in the ointment, dangling the thought of black rebellion over his frightened listeners like an older brother dangles spit near a sibling's forehead. Taking outsider politics and fueling them with bitter resentment, Cube directs his anger at police, the wealthy, Caucasians, women, race traitors, nearly everyone that he isn't, screaming a misanthropic monologue from atop his soapbox. AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted would be a merciless slog through a bitter mind, that is, if Cube wasn't bating us into being appalled, anticipating a serious reaction to his message after the shock and awe wear off.

Dancing the line between amusing and horrifying, O'Shea Jackson's inner-city exposé plays like a conservative's nightmare, brimming with a violent bravado and conviction that make flippant remarks about suburban home invasion sound like genuine threats. Inspiring terror isn't necessarily the point, but it benefits the serious inclinations roiling beneath the surface. By illustrating the most desperate measures of the broke and marginalized, Cube provides a voice for those without one, expressing the fears of existing in an unstable environment, particularly one under the boot of police corruption. It's a brutally honest, unpleasant vision, willing to rub the listener's face in the most base content and demand instant feedback. Whether casually talking about kicking a pregnant women in the "tummy" or seeing murder as benign necessity, stomach-turning moments pop up at random, creating a physical response to truly demanding bits of fiction.

This willingness to throw common decency to the wind may make him an asshole, but Cube is never a careerist or blandly commercial, since unflinching bleakness refuses to co-exist with the escapism that occupied early-90's pop music. He even questions how R&B and Top 40 radio intend to educate their listeners, since the content shares no common ground with the average person and manufactures false hope. Cube even struggles at times for a unifying thread, but wisely shades in the details of his everyday experience (unwanted pregnancy, drug abuse), making reality the most compelling catalyst for revolution.

The Bomb Squad's sound is as riotous as Cube's words, but rarely this bouncy and sprightly, forging a friendship between their trademark maelstrom of shrill sound clips and an over-caffeinated funk guitar groove. First impressions fool the ear into assuming these strange bedfellows are shacking up at random, but this is most certainly orchestrated chaos, intended to unnerve and agitate with its endless stream of abrupt fluctuations. Solace comes only in solitary drum passages, grinding like broken machinery and culled from microscopic bits of instrumentation, pared down exclusively for Cube's best one-liners and sobering moments of clarity.

The mash of disparate elements is tempered a bit by the free-jazz flutter of the composition, which moves from verse to chorus based on Cube's intonation and generates excitement with its delirious pace and mechanical repetition. "Get Off My Dick..." avoids structure entirely, simply looping its damaged guitar snippet ad nauseam while Cube expedites his flow to keep up with the shotgun-kick drum. It's all terribly fast and reckless until "Who's The Mack?," which prefaces G-funk with its elegant, incense-scented flute and ramshackle piano, moving along at a brisk jog. It's a wise shift in gears, showing the delicate pairing of samples and how this curated body of sounds thoroughly meets the mood and pace of the narrator.

The finest pairing of content and orchestration is "Once Upon a Time in the Projects," which happens to be the least cluttered and catchiest dish on the menu, teaming with heavy wah-wah guitar and tense percussive rattle. It's narrative would be satire if Cube didn't make it seem so matter-of-fact, examining the archetypal characters of LA's public housing system, making their every absurd action seem trite and ordinary. The culture shock for the listener, particularly those not exposed to the surroundings, may lead to nervous laughter, especially with Cube's penchant for painting his characters as insignificant buffoons. The irony lies in his exhausted shrug of a vocal track, which opens with a smirk, but ends with hopeless resignation ("Once again, it's on.") as a potential date night spirals into an evening in a crack house and two weeks in the county jail.

Plainly addressing the horrors of drug addiction, parental neglect and policy brutality plays like farce but stings like tragedy, especially as Ice Cube depicts the innocent trapped in a cycle fueled by racism and a disparity between the rich and poor. Burying AmeriKKKa's message beneath an assault of glacial scowls and scare tactics only increases the potency of Cube's agitprop, which, through its string of insults and provocations, intends to stimulate a response and, hopefully, inspire change.

12. Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full

So influential that to dub them as "pioneers" would be an exercise in gratuity, Eric B. & Rakim wrote the book that hip-hop would plagiarize from for the succeeding 30 years, leaving their mark on every movement and LP to follow reverently in their footsteps. Abandoning the plainly direct nature of rap's infancy in favor of lyrical intricacy and an expanded palate of musical influences, Paid in Full was dissonant and remote, dabbling in synthesized atmospheres and a bottomless well of echo effect. It was a sound on the outer limits of popular music, but its loquacious mouthpiece was the real extraordinary element, packing each of his verses with enough ingenious wordplay and cocksure pomp to write the epitaph on non-technical rhyming and bland universality.

William Griffin's rhymes are all flex, constructed from the egotistical hubris of a 19-year old gifted with boundless confidence and a preternatural talent for narrative eloquence. Free of comedic sensibility and inhibition, Rakim's content is personal and compelling, giving a director's commentary into the construction of his vivid word portraits with the specificity of a mathematician. He prefers a slow beat, matching the tempered and intentional nature of his flow, which happens to be both crystal clear and fatherly in its sternness. Employing internal rhyme and a precocious fascination with polysyllabic words, Rakim navigates his unbroken stream of phrases without ever slipping into predictability, pausing only for effect or to briefly suck in oxygen. It's a vocal force with maximum kinetic energy, spewing one-liners out at break-neck speed without sacrificing narrative drive. Though he rarely waxes philosophical, even the most passive listen reveals an obsessed student, certain only of his ability as a vocalist and the odious nature of his musical opponents. It's a distrustful and detached nature that marries perfectly to the tense electronics of his backing music.

Self-produced, with a helping hand lent by Marley Marl, Paid in Full is a study in repetition, building propulsive bits of future-funk from robotic drum loops, a mountain of horn breaks and agile record scratching. Steady and hollow, stressing silence as much as sonic clutter, each track is as herky-jerky as public transit, endlessly alternating between sparse minimalism and hyperactive soul. Eric B.'s cuts are acute and overstated, counteracting the numbing synthesizer whirr with ascending volume and rapidity. Bass lines are elastic and distorted, contrasting the gentle pluck of guitar or intermittent flute quiver, nuanced enough to make each element distinct without ungainly disconnect.

Exploiting this quiet/loud dynamic, "My Melody" is an echoey slab of moon rock, alien in its isolated drum kick and squealed passages of turntable desecration. Gone is hip-hop as communal party starter, repackaged as desolate sonic landscape, tailored to fit Rakim's singular, stoic personality through vast, open spaces and a bed of sinister synthesizer. This anti-social bill of fare both sets a tone and delicately inserts a symbol, separating Rakim from the crowd and the beat, laying his vocals atop the mix and, figuratively, above the genre. The allowance for negative space and hypnotic recurrence also emphasize the rhythmic nuances of Rakim's crisp vocal flow, somehow "rugged" and "sharp," at home in the most aggressive prose or delicately articulated poetry.

For all its high-minded complexity and outsider posturing, the individual pieces of Paid in Full weren't foreign enough to avoid duplication, making Eric B.'s speaker-blowing scratch tactics and Rakim's bombastic rhyme schemes as customary as two turntables and a microphone. Yet, no tribute ever matched Paid in Full's sense of balance, an uncanny and artful ability to waver between the subtle and the forthright without fatigue or tedium.

13. MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday

"Statement" albums are usually bitter ordeals, manufactured to insult ex-collaborators and chastise the industry that so woefully underestimated the artist responsible. They're intended to be seismic shifts in power, all the more tragic when they reveal themselves as desperate pleas for attention, paraded out as a return to form or stoic artistic endeavor.

Daniel Dumile had more than enough material for a major statement, having been dumped by Elektra Records the week of his brother and bandmate's death, followed by a crippling bout of manic depression and homelessness. Left with no other option, Dumile abandoned his previous politically-minded persona (Zev Love X), adopting the vengeful impulses and world domination schemes of Doctor Doom, comic enemy of The Fantastic Four and possessor of a suspiciously similar last name.

While fascinated by the melodramatic viciousness of the character, Dumile's terroristic inclinations stop there, as Operation: Doomsday plays more like an affable prank from the righteous opposition than the wounded diatribe of power-mad sociopath. His is a resistance fought through cockeyed, underground transmissions, swathed in clamorous "Quiet Storm" R&B and discordant superhero audio bites. Seeing the freedom in being cast aside, MF Doom sculpted a vision of hip-hop from the sum of his own influences, deeply fascinated by the amorphous nature of words and the ability to blend disparate sounds into a uniform whole. It's a debut of startling complexity and perceptive prose, etymologically powerful enough to stir a devoted cult decidedly off the mainstream radar.

Perfectly accompanying his throaty vocals, Doom's bars are speedy turns of phrase, gently stoned and slightly salivary, trading in onomatopoeia and simile with a knack for specificity and a poet's linguistic confidence. While he's certainly fond of digression or an off-the-cuff limerick, he prefers to carry a strand of related references through each track, sneakily obscured by literary device or intentionally diverting word game. "Red and Gold" drags the listener down the rabbit hole, prowling like a brawler's anthem on the surface, while paralleling non-Halal dietary habits to lunar superstition in the subtext, likening his profound content to a solar eclipse and the symbolic rebirth of the changing seasons.

Maintaining levity and avoiding heavy-handedness is a triumph, especially with this propensity for heady material and unconventional narrative. Doom uses this abnormality to his advantage, explicitly complicating his dialogue as a means of distancing himself from the mediocrity of his peers. When it seems like he's inches from the precipice of cliche or easy profanity, Doom pauses to replace the offending word or idea, taking a red pen to the banality of contemporary rhyming. He even goes a step further on "Hey!," flipping the same line in two completely different ways, complicating the second enough to apologize for the commonality of the first usage. The fact that the old adage he's refurbishing is "There's more than one way to skin a cat" further complicates matters, acting both as reinvention and affirmation.

His production is just as intricate as his lyrical content, pairing cheese-ball adult contemporary with juicy loops of soft jazz, using the disparity to further develop his image as a nonconformist and outsider. Expecting a recognizable hook is obviously out of the question, since the samples used aren't even given a chance to sour, left slightly askew and off-center enough to lend a jittery bounciness. The obviousness of the preset drum clap seems intentional, not as a bludgeon, but as testament to the lo-fi aesthetic. Doom even calls out his source on "Go With the Flow," giving Kool G. Rap & DJ Polo full credit, which seems positively moral for a self-described supervillain. Moments of criminal inclination rely on orchestral swoon and fluttering jazz flute for maximum dramatic effect, all rolled over a sleepy yawn of a bass stroll and spook show organ. Yet, this is all pantomime, since Doom's never that serious about his thieving ways, hoping for laughs as he eulogizes his missing gold fronts over a bed of melodramatic strings.

"Rhymes Like Dimes" banks on his audience's sense of humor, ripping baby-making organ from Quincy Jones and looping it into a agitated frenzy, creating a sonic metaphor for dealing and prostitution that couples perfectly with his subtle social commentary on American consumerism. Perverting a sex jam into a statement on sex trafficking may seem like a stretch, but Doom is always cognizant of the potential for an underlying message, even at his most callow. Comparing vaginal lubrication to Brita water filtration and verbal proficiency to Tae Bo aerobics might seem like dime-store triviality, but they're just as much a product of capitalistic culture as sex and drugs, only veiled by chauvinistic superficiality.

The allure of Operation: Doomsday stems from this shaggy spontaneity, indulging MF Doom's inner dichotomy between wisecracking weed head and odist aesthete. It's a work littered with brilliant concepts ripped from tattered rhyme books and outmoded E-mu Emulators, getting fat on an indulgent rolodex of samples and junk-food cultural minutiae, proving that living well is the best revenge and independence finds Daniel Dumile at his most vital.

14. Beastie Boys - Check Your Head

Reintroducing themselves as both adept instrumentalists and resident Californians, the Beastie Boys saw their third LP as an opportunity for spiritual and musical growth, pairing a new-found compassion with an ever-evolving nostalgia for forgotten soundscapes. Assembling a cohesive work with the flow and texture of a time-worn mixtape, the band manages to function at their most ferocious and thoughtful, utilizing this oxymoron of emotion as a vehicle for excursions through the outer reaches of their record collections. Funneling through funk, punk and bedroom electronics with the demure posture of the most seasoned session musicians, Check Your Head goes for broke, refusing to be anything but an honest representation of metropolitan musical culture and a desperate attempt to widen hip-hop's sphere of influence.

Building steam from a vocal bond so fluid that it rarely seems like the work of three individuals, Check Your Head finds the trio's verbal skills matching their bravado, confidently alternating between pensive think-pieces and confident dust ups, both of equal resonance. Stressing diversity, while actively provoking enemies and the closed-minded masses, the Boys' sharp tonal shift would seem contrary in comparison to previous works, but the addition of message-oriented material hasn't detracted from the infectious in-joking, which is at its liveliest and most inspired. Snacking is still the Boys' muse, generating rambunctious patter about cucumbers submerged in hot sauce, the Frugal Gourmet and Shasta, but gone is the party-boy entitlement, replaced with a certain working-class resolve, evident in their desire to take on multiple musical roles, as well as a genuine sense of gratitude (see similarly titled track).

The damaged, low-fidelity production, provided by Mario Caldato Jr., also carries this industrious dedication, cobbled together from disjointed bits of Money Mark's jaunty organ, down-tuned bass guitar and delicately-palmed percussion. Instrumental tracks bring to mind the Latin-tinged, blunted grooves of War and Santana at their most somber and sedate, contented to dish out positive vibes over feverish guitar strum and a bottomless cup of fuzzy distortion. Parallels are drawn between polar opposites, most notably on "Time for Livin','" which couples Sly Stone and mosh-pit worthy hardcore breakdown, bringing an almost religious fervor to The Family Stone's message of selfless charity. These digressions give the project a sprawl that would be ungainly if it weren't so intimate, a quality that seems to stem directly from the core five-man team that created the lion's share of the album's melodies.

The chief statement on this adventurous undertaking, "Pass the Mic," is also the composition most willing to take a detour, moving from Eastern psych drone to pummeling guitar riff to messy, drum-laden bricolage. Turning the figurative references to urban life into the literal, background cacophony mirrors the grinding pummel of public transportation, even closing on a heavily-distorted bass riff that squeals like a tire scraped over gravely asphalt. Think of sample-building from your own feedback as a less-litigious form of recycling*, though the vocal flurry is even tidier, taking on a tightly-coiled tension, flitting back and forth between pithy rage and sentimental call-and-response.

Equal parts sunny and cerebral, Check Your Head takes on an Autumnal feel, developing concepts previously in chrysalis into the leitmotif that would epitomize the Beastie Boys at the end of their 31 years as a team. Brave enough to apologize for past indiscretions and faithful enough to believe that audiences were willing to mature alongside them, the Boys proved that hip-hop wasn't a cul-de-sac but a clean slate, as welcoming of confusion and angularity as it was confidence and precision.

*They were still unsuccessfully sued for not paying licensing fees for the use of James Newton's "Choir."

15. Run-D.M.C. - Raising Hell

Raising Hell wasn't the moment of inception, but it may be the maturation point.

Hip-hop existed well before Run-D.M.C. ever laced up their beloved Adidas shell tops, sequestered to New York's five boroughs, acting as regional art form to the initiated and novelty to the uninspired. "Rapper's Delight" managed to crack the Top 40 and Debbie Harry insipidly stammered through a few bars on "Rapture," but these were merely ripples before a tidal wave, too nondescript to change minds or inspire imitation.

Rap needed to be defined before it could succeed. Genres need a personality to develop an audience, living and dying by their gallery of acolytes, abiding by a set of core values and reinforcing cliches. While the hip-hop sound was too diverse to be singular, siphoning the juiciest bits of rock, funk and disco into call-and-response communal experience, the attitude was unparalleled, especially in the case of our aforementioned hell raisers. Touting epic quests for lyrical dominance, punctuated by tag-team choruses and an epicurean's passion for fresh kicks, Run-D.M.C eschewed the status quo while they constructed a new one, taking "the beat from the street" and putting it on MTV. This exposure coupled with a persuasive, solipsistic, first-person narrative struck a chord with audiences, erecting a culture composed exclusively of its raw materials.

Concisely written and far from subtle, Run and D.M.C state their case without loquacious monologue or flowery exposition, favoring feverish emotion over poetic eloquence. Their candid content is carried over loud, intermittent shouting, a racket forceful enough to shake the listener by the stereocilia, yet never grating or straining for the profane. Run takes the higher register, playing the scrappy upstart, hustling to get in every word, occasionally treating his fans to a lively, saliva-spewing bout of championship-level beat boxing. D is the deep, thoughtful one, measured in his pacing, vocally more akin to a spoken-word performer and carrying that profession's capacity for lively oration.

Thematically, everything's as black-and-white as the diction, ladling applause on the rhymes, clothes and heritage, while leveling a hefty amount of ridicule on slobs, loose women and the ever-present copycat. While the storytelling rarely bares its fangs, favoring gentle sexism and sophomoric silliness over subtext, "Proud to Be Black" proves Run-D.M.C. can expand beyond superficial generalizations, voicing righteous anger without aggression or violent retaliation, each meritorious word accentuated by the album's potent blend of throbbing bass and break beat.

The brusque percussion is a tidy pairing of hissy cymbal clash and propulsive bongo roll, played at accelerated rates, resulting in a lean, masculinized pulsation. Rick Rubin's pioneering clatter is a dense wave of noise, diverted only by Jam Master Jay's spirited scratching, which colors outside of the lines and implements much needed chaos to the assembly line artificiality. Jay's gruff cuts are bursts of excitable cacophony, as jarring as a crack of thunder, often marking the end of a bar or playing back up to the vocal duo's moments of festive interplay. Gracefully slicing and dicing the guitar bits of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way," Jay's physical motions border on the divine, transforming water into wine and seamlessly blending contorted turntable work with Rubin's propensity for speed and unbridled guitar wankery.

"Peter Piper" acts as ode and example, idolizing Jay as supreme ass shaker and turntable athlete, wisely allowing his adroit handiwork to live up to the noble portrait painted by his vocal counterparts. Treating their verses as a bout of verbal jump rope, Run and Darryl Mac finish each others' sentences like excited schoolkids, spouting out measured, emphatic exclamations, peppered with references to Greek mythology and British nursery rhyme. Their words are playfully chased by boisterous bass kicks and a formative treble two-step, delicately glazed by sugary sweet spoon-to-glass treble in the chorus, dancing between melodic beauty and manic episode.

It's a dizzying amalgam of varying sounds, made ordinary only by decades of carbon copying, a crime for which Run-D.M.C. and their army of devotees share equal responsibility. Yet, is it possible to shake something so influential out of the cultural DNA? Nearly 30 years of hip-hop innovation hasn't bred out the cadence, bass throb or narcissism invented here, only magnifying them into self-parody or knowing satire. Maybe the genius behind Raising Hell lies in its ability to be replicated, forging an entire culture from its mannerisms and electronics.

Hip Hop Top 50 Vol. 2. Playlist

Submitted for your approval, a second sampling of tracks from the Hip Hop Top 50. Despite Spotify's claims of an encyclopedic and endless catalog of music, Dr. Dre's The Chronic is noticeably absent, leaving him unrepresented on our mix. In his honor, I've added a second track from Doggystyle, spotlighting his unique style of production. Also of note, De La Soul's "Me, Myself & I" contains elements not present on the studio LP. For that, we sincerely apologize.

16. Genius/Gza - Liquid Swords

Don't judge a book by its cover.

Liquid Swords may be as fastidious and handsomely mounted as its Prentis Rollins' inked artwork, but confusing it for cartoonish fantasy would be a grave lapse in judgment. This is investigative journalism, as objective and stark as an obituary, completely drained of the sex, camaraderie and revelry that so many "gangster" rappers use as commercial leverage. Speaking as omniscient narrator, The Genius rarely steps in to plead his case, leaving his small-time crooks without conscience or voice of reason, abandoned to forever circle the drain of their violent and hateful lifestyles. It's thematically oppressive and hopeless, all the more depressing when held up to the so-called legitimate forms of business it parallels, making its subliminal social commentary more of an attack on free enterprise and bureaucracy than the black market.

Gary Grice, known solely as Gza to those familiar, drafts sanguine sagas as detailed and ornamental as a gourmand ruminating over the buttery notes of a Bearnaise. Passions in science, chess and samurai mythology seem too bookish for an author of true crime exposés, but Gza imbues his wordy expositions with a lived-in realism and morbidity, always burying his street warriors in a casket built of their own paranoia and superstition. Simile and metaphor are his preferred rhetorical devices, as odd and unprecedented as his influences, strung along endless lines of rhyming suffixes and "unbalanced like elephants and ants on seesaws." It's astonishing how much he can squeeze into small spaces, delicately flipping near rhymes off the tip of his tongue and turning other rappers' gimmicks and word games into achievements of "rec room era" MC wizardry. His brilliance even extends to social commentary, intended to "defraud the hoax" of religious and scholarly hypocrisy, standing defiantly against faux activism and willful ignorance.

In contrast, the sound profile is more subliminal than confrontational, building off of airy atmospherics and welcome intervals of silence. Breathing room not only allows Gza's words to stand firmly in the forefront, but exposes the jagged edges of RZA's source material, comprised mainly of tormented keys and slowly bubbling bass lines, as dark and viscous as crude oil. RZA seems to carry a common thread throughout the piece (he is sole producer), repeating 4 notes in sequence, wavering from speaker-to-speaker, as if to send a signal to the attentive listener, luring them into his darkened, concrete basement. The hypnosis is broken only for nightmarish passages from Shogun Assassin, made all the more ominous because of obvious parallels to Gza's austere subject matter. Besides this penchant for cinephilia, Liquid Swords thematically breaks new ground for RZA, occupying the future worlds and technocentrism present in ambient and computer-based compositions.

"Killah Hills 10304" personifies this artificiality, made of pure steel and industrial mechanics, slumping back and forth with pounding bass purr and wrinkled VHS-tape slur. RZA rips the soul from his formula, leaving behind a sonic corpse, wrought with remote pulsations and monotonous, squeaky keys. The squelched rhythms are barely given more than a few notes, repeating endlessly, never allowed to blossom, but steadily building a claustrophobic and synthetic atmosphere. The Genius' words are tension incarnate, adding live flesh and tissue to the proceedings, painting a crimson portrait of global corruption. His exhaustive universe of characters never feels fabricated, all sneaky and corrupt, desperate enough to surgically implant a kilo of cocaine into a bum leg or hide a bomb in a bottle of champagne. All images of pleasure or power are symbolically bathed in blood, striking a shadowy, three-dimensional vision of street life caked in the grit most mainstream "gangsters" wash away in the recording booth.

The lyrical authenticity and aural chilliness make for an incongruous pairing on paper, but the truculent behavior of Gza's characters fit this alien, emotionless din like a glove. His works of violence are money-motivated and impersonal, showing the detached nature of the drug game and its crippling effect on those trapped in its clutches. By removing the superhero bravado often attributed to "coke" rap, The Genius has made a work of gripping realism and profound morality.