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.