Good Rap Music Thread

[Acuff-Rose]

Public Enemy and ONLY Public Enemy for this white boy!!

[Old Lost Tomas]

Still prefer a talking blues over rap...

What about rap over blues?

That was pretty cool actually!

[Major Danby]

it doesn't get much better than this in my humble opinion. If you haven't heard it, give it a go!

[Sandusky]

Public Enemy and ONLY Public Enemy for this white boy!!

what the above said!





these 2 wrap up the PE holy trilogy. Great run of albums.

[Acuff-Rose]

Public Enemy and ONLY Public Enemy for this white boy!!

what the above said!





these 2 wrap up the PE holy trilogy. Great run of albums.

Power to the people ya'll!!

[Rusty]

I really like the Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique is a masterpiece, Licensed to Ill is great, heck they all are.

As others have mentioned the Roots and Public Enemy are both excellent.

[Phelan]

[Rubashov]

The beat for Don't Sweat the Technique never never never stops being amazing. One of the first rap albums I ever bought and it still sounds magnificent.

[Bowood]

Never been sure exactly who is the beats and who is the mic, but either Eric B or Rakim is about the most natural smooth rapper I ever heard.

[Rubashov]

Never been sure exactly who is the beats and who is the mic, but either Eric B or Rakim is about the most natural smooth rapper I ever heard.

Eric B. on the 1's and 2's, Rakim on the mic. You are correct about Rakim. Generally considered one of the best, if not the best, MCs ever. Especially when he came to prominence in the late 80's, no one could touch him.

This is from the late 90s, but it's still an awesome song. And the video is one of these

[Hap]

I got away from rap about 10 years ago, but there's a lot of good stuff still out there. My recommendations are a bit dated:

Tribe Called Quest is my all-time favorite.
I dug EPMD for a while in the early 90s. A little too heavy on the mainstream rock sampling for my taste, though.
Can't go wrong with the Roots
There was a band out of Philly called the Goats which I liked in highs school.

[keylimetrev]

Thought I'd drop in and give a few recommendations. The last year or so I've been listening to pretty much nothing but hip-hop. The thing that got me hooked was instrumental stuff. It avoids all the lyrical issues that make a lot of hip-hop hard for me to listen to and is some of the more creative music out there. Some of my favorite recent instrumental albums are:

Oh No - Dr. No's Oxperiment and Dr. No's Ethiopium

Oh No is the brother of the more famous Madlib. Each of these albums takes a particular genre of music (italian psychedlic rock for Oxperiment and Ethiopian jazz for Ethiopium) and creates an entire album exclusively from samples from the genre. The results are pretty incredible.

Blockhead - The Music Scene
Really any of his albums are great, but this one from last year is my favorite. He is the producer for a lot of the beats on Aesop Rock's albums.

Blue Sky Black Death - The Evil Jeanius Instrumentals
These are the instrumental tracks to the Jean Grey album Evil Jeanius. These guys make great use of strings in their beats. Imagine John Cale's viola on Venus in Furs over hip hop beats.

For non-instrumental stuff a few of my favorites are:

Serengeti - Get everything. He was basically my gateway back to rap music. I think he's among the best lyricists going in any genre. To start with, everyone should get the albums Dennehy and Conversations With Kenny. They tell the story of Kenny Dennis, a superfan-esque chicago guy who's life goes pretty horribly wrong over the course of two albums. Serengeti's albums with Polyphonic are probably where I'd go next. If you want to try him out for free, you can download some of his stuff for free at audio8.com. He is also giving away a remix album from his group Friday Night at http://thefridaynight.com/.

Blu & Exile - Below the Heavens
Everyone should hear this. Maybe my favorite hip hop of the 2000s. Exile might be the best producer going right now. Blu has a great lyrical approach on this album, basically rapping about blue collar life.

Deep Puddle Dynamics - The Taste of Rain...Why Kneel
This is basically all the guys from the anticon label recording as a group. It can be a bit pretentious (pretty much par for the course with anticon) but their sound is unlike anyone else. I think of Deep Puddle Dynamics as the bizarro world Wu-Tang Clan.

Also, in addition to the two K'naan albums already talked about here (which are great) he also released a free mixtape project last year called The Messengers. It's K'naan's attempt to highlight the musicians that influenced him. The project was released as three eps, one for Bob Dylan, one for Bob Marley, and one for Fela Kuti. They have since been compiled and released as a single free album at http://www.jperiod.com/knaan/.

For older stuff that hasn't already been mentioned I really like:

Siah and Yeshua - The Visuals Anthology

Freestyle Fellowship - Innercity Griots

[mookie]

I think this one would appeal to most everyone. Plus it includes a sample of Tom Petty.....



These 2 arent as easy to like, but I love 'em.......





What's a rap thread without including the greatest song of all-time......