Maybe it was his time in prison, or maybe it was simply his signing with Suge Knight's Death Row label. Whatever the case, 2Pac re-emerged hardened and hungry with All Eyez on Me, the first double-disc album of original material in hip-hop history. With all the controversy surrounding him, 2Pac seemingly wanted to throw down a monumental epic ...
One of gangsta rap's defining albums, O.G. Original Gangster is a sprawling masterpiece that stands far and away as Ice-T's finest hour. Taken track by track, O.G. might not seem at first like the product of a unified vision; perspective-wise, it's all over the map. There's perceptive social analysis, chilling violence, psychological storytelling, ...
Seemed like drama was always something Eminem craved, but in the year leading up to The Re-Up, the drama was heavy, a really, really bad kind of heavy. He checked himself into rehab, got remarried for a few months to the infamous Kim before that went south, then his best man and best friend Proof is murdered in a bizarre and depressing incident ...
At the time of The Dynasty Roc la Familia's release, Jay-Z had already established himself as a towering figure in the rap world. His previous two albums -- Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life and Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter -- spawned numerous gigantic hits and were filled the brim with the biggest hitmakers in rap: producers like Timbaland and Swizz ...
Before Jay-Z fashioned himself into hip-hop's most notorious capitalist, he was a street hustler from the projects who rapped about what he knew -- and was very, very good at it. Skeptics who've never cared for Jigga's crossover efforts should turn to his debut, Reasonable Doubt, as the deserving source of his legend. Reasonable Doubt is often ...
Greatest Hits is a strange release. Sure, Tupac Shakur had more than enough hits to make a terrific compilation, but its appearance in the fall of 1998 felt a bit like another opportunity to milk his catalog, simply because of the plethora of releases, from previously unheard recordings to interview discs and bootlegs. Even with these misgivings ...
Socially conscious rappers Thug Life rap about inner-city happenings, but also address the problems which cause the hopeless feeling of many residents. Musically, they borrow aspects of G-funk and New York hip-hop. Though it's led by the rap hit "Cradle to the Grave," Volume 1 has more to offer, like the ghetto lament "Pour out a Little Liquor" ...
From out of nowhere, Fabolous swooped onto the hip-hop scene in summer 2001 with this big-money debut album and a sure-fire hit ("Can't Deny It"). It also didn't hurt that Fabolous' rhymes happen to fit right in the with the zeitgeist of the moment, exhibiting somewhat of an East Coast variation of the bling bling style synonymous with Southern ...
Fabolous' new label, Def Jam, rolls out a wide red carpet for From Nothin' to Somethin', enlisting a great deal of starpower to bolster its new artist's fourth album. Akon, Rihanna, Jay-Z, Lloyd, Junior Reid, and even Ne-Yo (on a track produced by Timbaland) make appearances, while there is room made for past collaborators like Just Blaze, Swizz ...
For his second album, It Was Written, Nas hired a bunch of hip-hop's biggest producers -- including Dr. Dre, DJ Premier, Stretch, and Trackmasters -- to help him create the musical bed for his daring, groundbreaking rhymes. Although that rhyme style isn't as startling on It Was Written as it was on his debut, Illmatic, Nas has deepened his talents ...
If Snoop Dogg's debut, Doggystyle, doesn't seem like a debut, it's because in many ways it's not. Snoop had already debuted as a featured rapper on Dr. Dre's 1992 album, The Chronic, rapping on half of the 16 tracks, including all the hit singles, so it wasn't like he was an unknown force when Doggystyle was released in late 1993. If anything, ...
Released only eight weeks after Tupac Shakur died from gunshot wounds, Death Row released this posthumous album, The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, under the name of Makaveli, a pseudonym derived from the Italian politician Niccolo Machiavelli, who faked his own death and reappeared seven days later to take revenge on his enemies. Naturally, ...
"Y'all n*ggas got me really confused out there. I make 'Big Pimpin' or 'Give It to Me,' one of those -- that had me as the greatest writer of the 21st century. I make some thought-provoking sh*t -- y'all question whether he fallin' off." When you've built up a back catalog of eight studio albums and walk the earth as one of the biggest, most high ...
Once the Game surfaced as a force in hip-hop, a big deal was made of his dance with death. Apparently he was shot five times. If you're scoring at home, that's four times less than label mate and executive producer 50 Cent. After the altercation that nearly took his life, the Game took a crash course in hip-hop and studied up on the master MCs ...
Almost three years after the epic-length Art of War album and following solo albums by group members Krayzie Bone (Thug Mentality 1999) and Bizzy Bone (Heaven'z Movie), Bone Thugs-N-Harmony returned with a comeback album fittingly named BTNHResurrection. Much has changed in the rap game in just a few short years, however. Bone Thugs were on top of ...
Divorced from the controversy that surrounded its release, Body Count's self-titled debut is a surprisingly tepid affair. Apart from the previously released "Body Count" (which appeared on Ice-T's 1991 album O.G. Original Gangster), the record is devoid of serious commentary, trading intelligence for a lurid comic book depiction of sex, violence, ...
With their second album, F.B.I., the Dayton Family stick to the gangsta clichés that made their debut, What's on My Mind?, a buzz band in underground hip-hop circles. Borrowing from the slow G-funk of West Coast rap and the mafia imagery of the East Coast, the Dayton Family concocts a strong set of hardcore rap. What makes F.B.I. a better album ...
After the crossover success of 1998's Vol. 2: Hard Knock Life (complete with highly publicized samples from Annie), Jay-Z returned to the streets on his fourth proper album overall, 1999's Vol. 3: Life and Times of S. Carter. A set of hard-hitting tracks with some of the best rhymes of Jay-Z's career, the album is much more invigorating than its ...
Since their sprawling debut, Cam'ron worked his Diplomats crew hard through numerous mixtapes, both as a unit and solo, with features for Jim Jones, Juelz Santana, and J.R. Writer. Maybe that's why Diplomatic Immunity 2 is so much tighter than the first edition, but dropping the two-disc format in favor of just one helps more than a little. Adding ...
Rap and drugs. The somewhat unholy marriage is now decades deep. Not surprisingly, the conjunction has produced some dynamic musical results that have been readily smoked, ingested, and snorted by the mainstream music listening public. Back in the late '80s, Ice-T was one of the first rappers to blur the lines between the rap world and the ...
Brad Jordan, head of A&R for Def Jam South, was a big success after just a few months on the job; his signing of Ludacris in 2000 paid off in triple-platinum after less than a year. It's not every A&R man who's rewarded for great work with an album of his own, but then again, not every A&R man is also one of the most influential voices in the ...
John Singleton's debut as a director, Boyz N the Hood, was naturally compared to other urban dramas that came out during the early '90s -- such as New Jack City, Straight out of Brooklyn, Menace II Society, Fresh, Juice, and South Central. While the soundtrack for South Central was heavy on late-'70s and early-'80s funk, the soundtracks released ...
A sequence of events juggled the release dates for Boyz N da Hood's first album (issued on Bad Boy) and Young Jeezy's own widely distributed breakout (issued on Def Jam). Boyz N da Hood hit the Top Five the week it was released, and Young Jeezy -- the group's most visible member -- wound up releasing Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101 only a month ...
Nicknamed after a notorious drug dealer, William "Rick Ross" Roberts claims to have dealt drugs himself, prior to becoming an MC and gaining the interest of Def Jam president Jay-Z. Rather than merely lure Ross away from his initial label (Slip-N-Slide) with a lucrative contract, Jay-Z linked up with the entire label and netted a distribution deal ...
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