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.