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."