all of De La Soul's catalog EDIT (except Grind Date) is free to d/l today.

3 ft high & rising, and buhloone mindstate are essential, if you ask me:

http://www.wearedelasoul.com/

Caps, you and I have often shared similar tastes, so perhaps my list will work for you:

Guilty Simpson & Apollo Brown: Dice Game


EL-P & Killer Mike: Run the Jewels


Danny Brown: Old


Harry Fraud: Adrift mix tape


Earl Sweatshirt: Earl

I don't care what kinda music you're into, NWA and Dr. Dres solo stuff is THE best hiphop you can get your hands on.

early 90' or GTFO

You just can't compare Tribe, Roots, The Goats, Lords of the Underground, Beasties, Pharcyde, House of Pain, Gang Starr, Dre/Snoop, Public Enemy, Ghetto Boys, etc to the groups being mentioned hear. In other words, the gap is too large to care about.
Not that people are trying to compare them here, I just can't take these groups seriously

Early 90s hip hop has had no worthy siblings IMHO. Even Jurassic 5 doesn't have the hooks their ancestors did.

Been buying loads of CDs from the 90's. Many bargains on ebay. Have to say i prefer East Coast style and flow to WC overall. Hip-Hop from the South is great too. I'll put a list of recent buys together soonish. Thanks for the recommends/sign posts.

IMO, you can't do better than with group that introduced this thread. While not a hip hop fan, Gangstarr's Moment of Truth is a desert island album for me. I still listen to it all the damn time....one of the most played albums on my Ipod.

Damu the Fudgemunk is great if you're down with instrumentals.






Mf Doom wasn't bad. Been a while since i last listened to this album, but did play this one a lot back in college when it came out.

I'm personally not a big fan of east coast hip hop. Obviously the east coast scene is so vast that Its impossible to generalize, but the accents, the boom bap, etc, very monotonous & goofy.

West Coast (Los Angeles underground lyricism) alt hip hop (the stuff that originates from the GoodLife Cafe/Project Blowed in the 80s, Freestyle Fellowship, Abstract Tribe Unique, etc, not trash like de la soul & Jurassic 5, who are honestly cheap ripoffs of the aforementioned groups) would appeal most to someone into the deeper side of heavy music.

Freestyle Fellowship - 'Inner City Griots' is where it all began & is Absolutely essential, as is Aceyalone's 'The Book Of Human Language', which is probably the most lyrically brilliant hip hop record ever produced. Swollen Members - 'Balance' & Abstract Rude - 'Showtyme' are great starting points for newcomers to West Coast Lyricism, both were released on the Vancouver based Battle Axe imprint. I could go on for hours on end about past stuff, so I'll just list off what I've been jamming lately:

Eligh & AmpLive - 'Therapy At 3'
Myka 9 & Factor - 'Sovereign Soul'
Self Jupiter & Kenny Segal - 'The Kleenrz'

Also, the stuff that came out of the south Houston scene throughout the 90s, DJ Screw & the Screwed Up Click, would be very appealing to sludge/doom heads. There are well over 400 Screw Tapes and they are some of the most bass heavy, distorted, bizarre things ever recorded.

This probably isn't the best place to go searching for hip hop recommendations, you'll primarily just find mainstream trash recommendations from casual listeners. Not a big deal really, this is a rock/metal forum, but the hip hop universe is the most vast of them all, and even scratching the surface can be a daunting, overwhelming task in & of itself.

Owning 30-40 "Classic" 80/90's/a few 00's era CDs is my mark. I'm already nearing that.

Get more than a few posts before you make stupid fucking generalizations like that.

2 of those groups had their best releases in the 80's.
I was taking your post seriously until house of pain... then "ghetto" boys, and that Jurassic 5 thing.
good trolling, i hope.

Oh pipe the fuck down. I said PRIMARILY, which is true. I didn't say in general.

Yikes. The word "classic" means so many different things to so many different people when it comes to hip hop.

to label this "community" (srlives as well) as the wrong place to get turned on to ANY kind of music shows an utter lack of sense. You may like some stuff, but there is always someone else who listens to stuff you've never heard.
also, fill out your top 10.

Another Classic from '94. This is one of my faves thus far. It's got tons of differents flavors goin' on and a sense of humor! Very solid shit. (YMMV.)

Fuck yeah, caps. Rzareccta!

Lol, look, there are some excellent recommendations in this thread.

There was also someone that claimed the hip hop realm was minuscule in comparison to rock/metal.

And another who claimed that there hasn't been any quality hip hip post-early 90s.

Honestly I wasn't that far off with what I said.

If you like Gravediggaz, you should check Shabazz The Disciple's solo shit. He's the guy that dropped the infamous first verse on Diary Of A Madman. He's also cousin to Freestyle from the Arsonists (another absolutely essential east coast collective).

Question: do people actually believe the RZA has any talent outside of the production booth? Like on the mic?

I like RZA's rhymes in early Wu-Tang and company. I liked his style better when he was screaming and had grit to his vocals. Most of his stuff during and after B.O.B.B.Y Digital I don't care for.

His production skills are still pretty solid though.

The bloody, ferocious, attack, hits the body
Explosive diagnosis, it's fatal like multiple sclerosis
Oh it's, not the hocus-pocus
Gravedigga nigga, just to keep the focus
Fucking up the tracks like the Fist of the White Lotus
Catching trichinosis If you ever try to smoke this


That RZA verse has been stuck in my head since '94.

415 released in 1990... such an underrated gem!