Random A-List for Set: Hip Hop

Hip hop.

Here are 12 A-list albums, selected at random from Set: Hip Hop. Use your Reload button to get more.

The Beastie Boys: To the 5 Boroughs [2004, Capitol]
Don't let the hipsters scare you away. "An Open Letter to NYC" is as inarticulate as most love letters, so hackneyed Mike D could be gunning for an October engagement at Yankee Stadium. But from "We've got a president we didn't elect" to "It's time we looked past all our differences," many clichés here are worth recycling, as with the black (sounding) hype man who reinforces the one about differences with a faint but unmistakable "that's fresh fresh, for a Jewboy, Jewboy, Jewboy." As much as Jay-Z, and with more jokes, the Beasties are masters of their sound, of which this is the old-school variant. Like the Catskill shticksters they honor, they crack wise as naturally as John Hurt drawled, only with a better sense of rhythm (than the shticksters). They sound sharp-witted even when they mouth homilies. They sound like the reason uppity Queens boys used to think the 7 train was bound for Jordan. A−

Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk [2003, A&M]
In which the unbelievably dull El Lay alt-rappers fabricate the brightest actual pop album of 2003. They remain unbelievable, but in pop that's just one more aesthetic nuance. Titles like "Let's Get Retarded," "Shut Up," and the guitar-driven "Anxiety" are what you'd hope except cleaner--tremendous ups every one. You can bet new member Fergie, a showbiz lifer who also put in a tour as JC Chasez's girlfriend, lured her pal Justin down for "Where Is the Love," an actual hit that actually called out "the CIA." Terrorists, the song claims. Rhymes with "The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK." A−

Black Eyed Peas: Elephunk [2003, A&M]
In which the unbelievably dull El Lay alt-rappers fabricate the brightest actual pop album of 2003. They remain unbelievable, but in pop that's just one more aesthetic nuance. Titles like "Let's Get Retarded," "Shut Up," and the guitar-driven "Anxiety" are what you'd hope except cleaner--tremendous ups every one. You can bet new member Fergie, a showbiz lifer who also put in a tour as JC Chasez's girlfriend, lured her pal Justin down for "Where Is the Love," an actual hit that actually called out "the CIA." Terrorists, the song claims. Rhymes with "The Bloods and the Crips and the KKK." A−

Digable Planets: Blowout Comb [1994, Pendulum/EMI]
Their edge was music not attitude, vocals not words--they had 'em both, their fellow middle-class revolutionaries in Arrested Development didn't. So while the follow-up rhymes could be more down-to-earth, it's amazing how good they sound with a live band and limited samples--less jazzy, a loss, but still thick, warm, and smoove. They rap like themselves and no one else, and as skilled as the guys are, Ladybug is the genius, even putting across rap's most (nay, only) charming piece of sun-people demonology: "I'm 62 inches above sea level/Ninety-three million miles above these devils." A−

Digital Underground: This Is an E.P. Release [1991, Tommy Boy]
There's no "Doowutchyalike" or "Humpty Dance" here, but those aren't true album cuts anyway; there's also no "Gutfest '89," the frat-boy fantasy about girls in cages that put the rest of Sex Packets beyond my ken until these remixes sent me back to compare and contrast. The hectic dissonances underneath the original "Sex Packets" jar the senses nicely, but I'll take the slick byplay of this laid-back in-your-face, which sets out to prove that funky dooesn't mean hard. Nor is "Same Song" a novelty, baby brutha. And in case you're worried they're going quiet storm on you, Humpty Hump gets chicken grease on a young thing's pantyhose. A−

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five: The Message [1982, Sugarhill]
Their belated first album tries to be commercial, to touch a lot of bases with a broad demographic, but it's anything but formulaic. On the contrary, it's an act of self-expression--they do consider Rick James a hero--and thus experimental like albums used to be. The only instant killer is the opener, a borrowed funk showpiece featuring calisthenic bassist Doug Wimbish and three-handed drummer Keith LeBlanc. But in the end every experiment justifies itself, from the one Rahiem wrote for and performs like Stevie Wonder (he can actually sing, thus distinguishing himself from Kurtis Blow, Joseph Bowie, and the entire population of the United Kingdom) to the vocoder number to the idealistic Spinners-cum-Edwin-Starr impression to the one Rahiem wrote for God and performs like a believer. A−

Ice-T: O.G. Original Gangster [1991, Sire/Warner Bros.]
Learning and diversifying, remembering where he comes from and sticking to what he knows, Ice-T wins big as the old school shakes out. He won't desert the hards because a hard he remains; his violence is pervasive and graphic because he knows brutalization from the inside. But he's nothing if not a moralist, and so the new jack drunk dies in his Benz, the cops break down the gangbanger's door, his gays are left to live their own lives, and his prematurely ejaculated sex jam is a dis on the horny fool who slavers for it. Since most of what I know about the hard audience comes from rap records, I can't guarantee he'll get away with it. But I can guarantee that this one has something to teach everyone who can stand to listen to it and almost everyone who can't. A

Lil Wayne: Tha Fix Before Tha VI [2023, Young Money/Republic]
Expecting not much of the annoying little Trumpsucker from the forthcoming The Carter VI itself much less its teasers, I was impressed to find that conceptually catch-as-catch-can suits him as he puts 40 behind him--freed of vague narrative obligations, the talented pardon-seeker had some good ones in his kit or maybe just his subconscious. So although I understand why rhyming "esophagus" with "misogynist" and suggesting that his pubic hair can double as dental floss aren't tropes likely to impress the few if any feminists who value his artistic gifts, in a grab bag like this they're evidence of his continuing if intermittent creative vitality. A−

MC Lyte: Ain't No Other [1993, First Priority]
An around-the-way girl who's always dissed the gangsta life from a street perspective, her greatest charm is the ordinariness that's also her biggest liability. In 1991, with Latifah and Monie Love passing her by, she failed to go pop with Act Like You Know; in 1993, with Latifah and Monie Love falling off, she's acting like she knew: "Never ever have I ever said I was good-lookin'/Just one bad-ass bitch from Brooklyn." But finally she's hitting her self-conceived rhymes and beats with some regularity--on the turf-proud "Brooklyn," the jilted-and-glad "Lil Paul," the bloodied-and-unbowed "I Go On," the jovial "F--k That M-----f--kin' Bulls--t." And on the boy-loving "Ruffneck," over a male chorus cheering like the studio was a football terrace, Lyte raps the praises of her hardcore boyfriend. "Fiddling with his dickhead" or sneaking away from the cops, he's always rude and not always what he pretends to be, but when she's got a problem: "He'll be there/Right by my side with his ruffneck tactics." I hope so. Because they're going to need each other. A−

Public Enemy: How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul??? [2007, Slamjamz]
Not only are their albums still good, they're getting better. Beats keep changing, too. Most of these are by the kind of heavy guitar-bass-drums unit Chuck D has coveted since Anthrax-the-band was bigger than anthrax-the-disease, and intermittently there are also uncredited horns, keyb effects, scratching and backup singers, like the child chorus who recites the message of "Sex, Drugs and Violence": "We like those gangsta rhymes/Just make sure they don't corrupt our minds/These rappers kill and thieve/A lot of times it's only make believe." Flav remains a knave on TV and the king's fool in PE. And though the title's moral braggadocio has been one of Chuck's more pigheaded tropes since he was dissing soaps, the Don Imus flap has imparted to him an aura of contemporaneity that comes none too soon. A−

The Roots: The Tipping Point [2004, Geffen]
Foolhardy though it was to saddle such an uncrucial record with a title that dares the young and the restless to bitch about how it doesn't change the world, the rest of us are free to enjoy how confidently it develops a groove. Theme-setting Sly remake leads to varied confluences of democracy and Black Thought (try the hummed and mumbled hook of "Don't Say Nuthin'") that swing up at the end through two attention getters certain to dismay the restless--Timbabeats, how 2003! Then, to remind us they're a hip-hop band, there's a bonus cut for their sole virtuoso--which means ?uestlove, not Kamal. They understand what they can do, and what they can't. That's 2004 enough for me. A−