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.

20. Madvillain - Madvillainy

Perfectly marrying the sophisticated with the peculiar, Madvillainy is 22 disparate snapshots, completely stripped of mainstream rap's pop sensibilities and obsession with hooks and freed to be willfully obscure, off-the-cuff and hysterical. Super groups rarely succeed, let alone eclipse previous individual achievements, but pairing Madlib's capacity for regenerating the grooviest relics of jazz past and MF Doom's impossibly sophisticated, stream-of-consciousness jabberwocky was a stroke of genius, birthing a work beyond genre, song structure and conventional wisdom.

Vocalist and cover model MF Doom rhymes with a deep, stoned growl, working his tongue and lungs to capacity, all in the name of coughing up dense, symbol-laden, lyrical poetry. His verses are pop culture at its most arcane, showcasing a man obsessed with junk food, syndicated space operas and creamy clouds of marijuana smoke. His vocal ebb and flow can be rather entrancing, which slightly distracts from the complex use of simile and double entendre, demanding repeat listens and even note taking from his ever-growing army of disciples. Verbal trickery is the name of the game on "Money Folder," where he claims to have penned the rhyme after downing a few "Heines," only to reveal moments later that he was referencing warm derrieres and not cold beers. Gambits like this occur endlessly, often multiple times in a single verse, showcasing an author capable of constructing an extremely intricate narrative and demanding enough to expect listeners to keep up with his manic pace and rapier wit.

"Curls" intends to slow Doom's roll, opening on the low tinkle of steel drum, pulled back in the mix slightly as to not overshadow muted guitar strum and gently scraped hand percussion. Doom deliberately harnesses his flow, exposing the crackle in his smoke-damaged throat, but never stumbling over a syllable or gasping for air. His uncommon gift for phrasing shines radiantly, mutating banalities about money-grubbing women into an eloquent game of near-rhyme hopscotch ("reckless nekkid girls get necklaces and pearls"). It's exhilarating to hear his verbal ingenuity, particularly when classing up well-worn cliches, ranging from the joy of financial frivolity to the perilous life of the young hustler. This supposed "coming-up" story revels in absurd exaggeration, so implausible that it appears Doom's having a laugh at his peers' expense, mocking their eternal quest for authenticity. His farcical tales of toddler battle rapping and second-grade smoke-outs are accompanied by eerie Gothic organ and intermittent electro drum kick, camping up an already cartoonish anecdote.

Madlib gives the entire LP a sense of knowing mischief, rudely throwing seemingly incongruous pieces of jazz, soul and 60's ephemera at the wall, never giving a damn if any individual piece sticks. Somehow, amid the sound and fury, wavering from speaker to speaker, is a disorienting and brilliant piece of Musique concerte, constructed from thousands of lulling, symbiotic sound puzzles. Dashes of maraca and robust bass marinate with old-world accordion, book ended by superhero clips and bizarre B-movie sound effects, all corrupted and rearranged by constant breaks in tone and shifts in focus. Familiar elements are tossed in via bubbling bong rips and funk riff strut, acting as a buoy to the listener, forever drowning in a sea of details. This sense of security is temporary, washed away in a flood of half-audible cackling and faded dub scraps.

The elements are tightly packed, never showing their patchwork or revealing a formula, orchestrated with a surgical, almost inhuman, focus. Yet, this is not de rigeur studio product, but free-form experimentation, built around two friends sharing a laugh while pugnaciously stripping away two decades of perpetually-recycled genre convention. Rarely do inside jokes brim with such versatility, personality and boundless enthusiasm.

28. Ghostface Killah - Fishscale

Authenticity in writing is not necessarily based on one's personal experience, but the willingness of an author to bring real emotion to the fictional lives they put on paper.

A common misconception of the hip-hop songwriter is that they're constantly speaking from their own perspective, cataloging their life experience in diary form, avoiding creative license and the occasional white lie. Not only does this fallacy give the impression that rappers are all egotistical materialists (though some certainly are), it paints them into a corner artistically, forcing them to "keep it real," in lieu of making it innovative.

Ghostface Killah has always put the composition before the image, treating Fishscale more like a compilation of short fictions than a commercial rap record. A willingness to indulge artistic flourishes has yielded the richest of character development, breathing life into the paranoid crack dealers, septuagenarian assassins and strung-out strippers that occupy the dark alleys of Ghost's noir-influenced street poetry. Through these minute details, Ghost has created a body of work that demands attentive listening, packed to the gills with the subtle footnotes and cultural references that beg for an annotated dictionary and scholarly attention.

What makes these words so worthy of dissection and different from the work of contemporaries is the ambiguity of the narrator. Moving from a gritty tale about an agitator getting fitted for false teeth to an unflinching look at memories of childhood abuse, Ghost is capable of playing the audiences' emotions like a master manipulator, particularly by giving the impression that he may have doled out or received the aforementioned beatings. The actuality is besides the point, especially in relation to his talents as an author. What does matter is his ability to envelop us in the mood and setting of a story and shade in enough detail to make each lick of the belt sting as much for us as it does for the protagonist.

His production team wisely saw the vivid, filmic quality of his prose and backed it with the heavy bass lines, blaring horns and squealing guitar solos synonymous with 70's Blaxploitation cinema. Despite a legion of producers on hand, there's a water-tight continuity to the piece as a whole and the sound never deviates from the theme, despite mild tonal shifts and the occasional surreal passage. High-profile beat conductors like MF Doom, Pete Rock and J Dilla all step up with multiple entries, but politely give Ghost most of the spotlight, backing him with a combative drum kick when he's aggressive or the angst-ridden wail of female vocals when he's feeling introspective.

One such moment is "Beauty Jackson," which finds Ghost pouring over the female form, while Dilla repeats and repositions keys elements of Philly Soul by way of The Three Degrees "Maybe." As swirling strings and a quick snippet of downtrodden bass fidget and repeat endlessly, Ghost reminisces about a bus stop belle, capable of turning heads with just the puff of a cigarette or the downwind scent of her perfume. Every aspect of her look and personality are fetishized, rolled up in an eloquent stream of superlatives that note a cute birth mark, name check the Cover Girl lipstick and express genuine surprise when she actually listens to the petty advances. He daydreams of every jealous passerby, disappointed by their inattentive spouse and dated fashion sense. He even briefly lets his guard down, only to accidentally drop his handgun from his waist, sending his object of affection running for the bus.

If this story is pure fiction, Ghostface may be subconsciously exhibiting embarrassment about his early dalliances with a life of crime and depicting the common public perception of criminal offenders. Showing vulnerability and regret is beyond rare for songwriters, but unprecedented for a rapper. On Fishscale, Ghost broadens the scope of what it means to be a storyteller and MC, birthing an expansive fictional world constructed from bits of his real life, further shaded in by a versatile wordsmith far too talented to be sequestered to the ghetto of "real" MCs.