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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
jetrexpro
506 posts
 

MarkTomaras,

I have been getting very tired of this blanket genre and new music bashing and its not just Taters. Some of the recent stuff said about Adele is embarrassing. Her singing moves millions of people including me.

One of the coolest things I have been hearing over the past years is how so many of these current styles like Rap, Hip hop, rock and R&B have been combining in so many wonderful ways.

Kanye, Rick Ross, Justin Bieber, Alabama Shakes, Nicki Minaj  and so many many more are making great music and yes TATERS it happens to sound GREAT on a hifi system. The new Justin Bieber record sounds wonderful! The new David Bowie is a monumental record. Prince has a new one that I have not checked out yet. So much great new music and great sounding to. I think a great way for some of these folks to get into new music is listen to how many current artists are drawing from Soul, Motown, R&B from the 60 and 70's.

With a tool like youtube a music lover has a wonderful resource to find new music he/she might want to buy. Regards Jet

marktomaras OP
544 posts
 
Jet, I like your style.  You seem like a music lover that I could have a few drinks with.  If you're ever in Miami, let me know!
jetrexpro
506 posts
 

MarkTomaras, ditto. if you get to NYC Brooklyn let me know.

I have been posting and reading threads here on Agon for 4 -5 years and have always kept it light and positive - always about mine and others system, DIY, and the music I thought others might enjoy. I have learned a huge amount. Its only been in the past few months where I started to feel the need to speak up about some of these very negative blanket bashing threads. All I have learned from these threads is what people don’t like and why they don’t like it and why others should not like it. That’s a bunch of Crap.

The young people who might be into good sound and good music may read some of these threads and run away. I don’t want to see that happen. Jet

77jovian
421 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.
marktomaras OP
544 posts
 
77jovian,

This is exactly what I was hoping for, to find people who may not find the genre in their play lists, but will have an open mind, and a bit of curiosity.  I agree, a lot of the lyrics in the genre are pretty base and vulgar, but not all.  Mos Def has a style that is fairly intense (and may not be for hip hop beginners), but his lyrics are not about gangsters and prostitutes at all.  His album "Black On Both Sides" is one of my all time favorites, and I recently bough the LP so I could play it on my higher quality analog front end over the digital.  Another group would be Digable Planets.  They focus on society at large, shy away from intense vulgarity, and use a lot of jazz and soul in their hip hop.
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