The 5th Best Hip-Hop Album EVER MADE

In our last installment, Ethan praised The Notorious B.I.G.'s hit and story-filled double album and Scott showed love to Mos Def's contemporary old school classic. Get ready y'all, because we are about to crack the TOP 5 best hip-hop albums ever made!



Ethan's #5 Pick: OutKast - Aquemini (1998)

“Even though we got two albums, this one feel like the beginning…” Truer words were never spoken. Don’t get me wrong, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was sick and ATLiens was magnificent, but OutKast never sounded as much like OutKast than on Aquemini. 

With this album, OutKast finally found orchestration worthy of their distinctive style. Organized Noize is dope, but Big Boi and Andre 3000 are far too unique to be rocking over the same beats as pop stars and second-rate rappers. While great, one can only imagine how much better ATLiens would have been with more out-of-this-world instrumentals to match its ambitious theme. Limiting Organized to a mere four (great, but more traditional) beats helps ground this album while providing room for 'Kast to really spread their wings. Mr. DJ does his thing on another three tracks, but it is Mr. Boi and Mr. Three Stacks themselves that take on the majority of the diverse production and really make the album shine. The superb haunting and stripped-down title track is contrasted (immediately) by the heavy, complex (and aptly-named) “Synthesizer”. The definitive track, however, is the perfectly selected first single, “Rosa Parks”: an exhilarating sonic journey through switch-ups and breakdowns (and even a harmonica solo), topped with intriguing lyrics about remaining relevant while being completely different from everyone/everything else listeners have ever heard before.

While on the subject, the lyrics too have progressed from Kast’s previous works. Big Boi is as flavorful as ever, but this time around he is more cool, confident, and thoughtful: “Continue to sell dope, it's payin the bills so you gon' do it/But legislation got this new policy, three strikes and you're ruined”. But, while Big Boi’s one-of-a-kind delivery may have made him the standout on previous efforts, the star of this show (and every subsequent OutKast release until Idlewild) is Andre 3000. The mind and headwear altering journey Andre had been on since the first album culminates here with better-than-ever lyrics that seem to push all limits: “let's talk about time travelin', rhyme javelin/somethin' mind unravelin'”. After mastering the conventional rules of rhyming, Andre is now free to break them at will. With his exceedingly clever and analytical lyrics, he explores wildly divergent topics, including technology, drug-addiction, and spirituality and morality: “Sin all depends on what you believing in/Faith is what you make it that's the hardest shit since MC Ren”.

The most impressive accomplishment on this album, however, is the perfect balancing of Big Boi’s cool and Andre’s crazy. Until this album, OutKast’s music seemed to favor Big Boi’s street sensibilities, while everything after (until the split at Speakerboxxx/Love Below) leaned more toward Andre’s eccentricity. The two elements, however, come together beautifully on Aquemini, pushing the music into outer-space while still keeping one foot planted in the dirty south. This synergy results in amazingly imaginative and inventive songs, like “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”, “Liberation”, “Chonkyfire”, and my favorite song on the album, “Da Art of Storytellin’ (Part 2)”. These are the kind of boundary-pushing, genre-bending songs that OutKast is known for, and they have never sounded better than this.

The incredible triumphs of Aquemini far outweigh the minor failures (the weak “Y’all Scared”, the dated-sounding “West Savannah”, and the surprisingly homophobic Andre verse on “Mamacita”). However, the fact that the album is nearly flawless is not the reason for its greatness. Rather, it is because the album is able to be that good even while taking so many risks. The music scene was completely different at that time and, if made by lessor artists, this album could have easily flopped. Luckily, OutKast doesn’t do that.

Scott's #5 Pick: 50 Cent - Get Rich Or Die Tryin' (2003)

Stars aligned.  Lightning in a bottle.  A perfect storm.

These explanations for the success of 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ are not without merit.  There is no denying that everything fell perfectly in place for Curtis Jackson leading up to his Aftermath debut.  He survived nine shots, released a mixtape to extraordinary buzz, and signed a record contract with both hip-hop’s biggest star and its most celebrated producer.  50 was handed a golden opportunity that no other relative new-comer had been privy to before.  But an opportunity is meaningless if not seized, and 50 Cent did that in spades.

Though not often characterized as such, 50 Cent is a very unique talent.  He has an innate pop sensibility, exemplified by his ability write and sing catchy choruses.  However, what makes him unique is that he can cabin this ability firmly inside the realm of hardcore and gangsta rap, creating songs that are extremely accessible but not at the expense of losing an edge.  The result is music with mass appeal, attracting fans of both gangsta rap and commercial music.

50 was in a zone on Get Rich or Die Tryin’. He seemed to have trouble finding space for all of the hooks he was writing.  For example, album-opener “What Up Gangsta” has three separate melodies, any one of which other rappers would kill to have.  The stand-out cut “Many Men” has an exceptional chorus which is actually surpassed by a refrain only heard once at the beginning of the song.  Even seemingly off-the-cuff stuff, like the birthday intro on “In Da Club”, has become ingrained in rap’s lexicon.  Never has rap sounded so effortlessly or organically melodious before.

But this isn’t a pop album.  Other than on the blatant commercial overture “21 Questions”, 50 remains hostile and brash, refusing to take his music outside of the hood.  On the Dre-produced “Heat”, 50 describes how he is willing to kill a person at any cost, going as far as to assert that he has a bulletproof cap.  “Back Down” is a venomous track directed towards rival Ja Rule, who is warned that even Shaquille O'Neal would get held down by his people’s guns.  He even tries, albeit unsuccessfully, to go head-to-head lyrically with Eminem on “Patiently Waiting”.

Other artists have written better melodies.  Other rappers have written better gangsta raps.  But these are two diametrically opposed types of music, as evidenced by 50 Cent's own tendency to stray stray too far to one side or the other after this album.  The brilliance of Get Rich or Die Tryin’ is that it was able to simultaneously execute both types of music, maintaining an inexplicable homeostasis that resulted in perhaps rap's most universal album.

Maybe it was lightning in a bottle after all.



DOWNLOAD AQUEMINI HERE:  http://www.megaupload.com/?d=wo52ykpu
DOWNLOAD GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' HERE:  http://www.mediafire.com/?ookmzzmt3mz