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Hip Hop & Rap recommendations for Taters

There is a rather heated thread that is fairly universally bashing rap & hip hop here in the music section of the Audiogon forums.  This is a thread to search for the best that the genre has.  Please recommend artists, albums, and songs that you feel are the best that hip hop & rap have to offer.  What tracks would you recommend to someone who enjoys music, but is quite far outside of the usual listening audience for hip hop and rap?

Here is the thread that inspired this post:
https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/when-rap-came-out-30-years-ago-i-thought-it-was-just-a-fad?la...

So, to start it off, I'll offer up a few of my favorites.  I'll surely come up with a few more, but for now, this is where I would start.  I hope you enjoy this challenge!

- Mark


Format:
Artist
Album
Track


A Tribe Called Quest
People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
Bonita Applebum

Mos Def
Black On Both Sides
Hip Hop

Mos Def
Black On Both Sides
Ms. Fat Booty

Us 3
Hand On The Torch
It's Like That

Common
Like Water For Chocolate
The Light

Kanye West
The College Drop Out
All Falls Down

Digable Planets
Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)
Where I'm From

2 Pac
All Eyez On Me
Only God Can Judge Me


marktomaras

Showing 1 response by 77jovian

77jovian
271 posts
 
All I know of this genre is snippets I hear on radio or TV, and I haven't liked what I heard.  So, I appreciate the suggestions by you more knowledgeable fans, which have prompted me to give a listen.  I'm finding that I enjoy some of the underlying music....Us3's "Eleven Long Years" incorporating the well-known Horace Silver/Steely Dan intro as well as the suggested Us3 "It's Like That", particularly nice sax on Us3 "Cruisin" and the first minutes of Kanye West "Touch the Sky", for example.  But I lose contact when the rap begins, which usually is just atonal, staccato musings.  I'm not parochial, but I can't relate to the scatology, drugs, low-brow sex, gang banger anger, etc.  I lived through "Yummy, yummy, yummy, I've got love in my tummy", so I'm used to listening past the lyrics to hear the music, which is probably how I'll approach most rap.  I hope those of you who are rap fans will keep suggesting good examples, though, as there is clearly more going on there than I was aware of.
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