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 ...
Following up one of the biggest debuts in hip-hop history, crack dealer turned charisma dealer 50 Cent makes some bold moves, recycles plenty of old ideas, and sprinkles in some perfect party singles for The Massacre. Crafty man that he is, 50 must have known following up the massive Get Rich or Die Tryin' was going to be extremely difficult, ...
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 ...
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, ...
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 ...
The Slim Shady LP announced not only Eminem's arrival, but it established that his producer Dr. Dre was anything but passé, thereby raising expectations for 2001, the long-anticipated sequel to The Chronic. It suggested that 2001 wouldn't simply be recycled Chronic, and, musically speaking, that's more or less true. He's pushed himself hard, ...
With its stylish, sonically detailed production, Dr. Dre's 1992 solo debut, The Chronic, transformed the entire sound of West Coast rap. Here Dre established his patented G-funk sound: fat, blunted Parliament-Funkadelic beats, soulful backing vocals, and live instruments in the rolling basslines and whiny synths. What's impressive is that Dre ...
Before releasing his first solo album, Puff Daddy (aka Sean "Puffy" Combs) was famous as the producer of the Notorious B.I.G., Junior Mafia, Craig Mack, Lil' Kim, and many other rappers. As he was making his solo debut, the Notorious B.I.G. was murdered, and that loss weighs heavily on Puff's mind throughout No Way Out. Even though the album has ...
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, ...
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 ...
T.I. has been playing with the split-personality concept for years, most notably on 2003's "T.I. vs T.I.P.," where the only strict differences were laid out like this: T.I.P.'s women sell weed and have gold teeth, while T.I.'s women have jobs and good credit, and T.I.P. is neither as paid nor as laid-back as T.I. Four years on, after getting real ...
The fourth album released in the wake of 2Pac's 1996 death, Until the End of Time certainly offers plenty of music, two discs' worth to be precise, although the songs here seem overdone, which can obscure 2Pac's performances. Nevertheless, those performances somehow remain remarkable no matter how deep into the vault Afeni Shakur and Suge Knight ...
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, ...
For his second album, Jay-Z protégé Memphis Bleek makes small strides forward from his debut album, Coming of Age. Yet like Coming of Age, the tracks on The Understanding may be a level above those of most rap but still aren't in the same category as those of Jay-Z or the other superstars from New York's hardcore school of rap: Nas, Ja Rule, Mobb ...
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 serious contender for the title of best Wu-Tang solo album (rivaled only by the Genius' Liquid Swords), Only Built 4 Cuban Linx is also perhaps the most influential, thanks to Raekwon's cinematic imagination. If the Genius is the Wu's best overall lyricist, Raekwon is arguably their best storyteller, and here he translates the epic themes and ...
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 ...
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 ...
Recorded following his near-fatal shooting in New York, and released while he was in prison, Me Against the World is the point where 2Pac really became a legendary figure. Having stared death in the face and survived, he was a changed man on record, displaying a new confessional bent and a consistent emotional depth. By and large, this isn't the ...
Released a year after his previous EP (5150 Home 4 tha Sick, 1992) and a long five years since his one and only album to date (Eazy-Duz-It, 1988), It's On (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa was both a stopgap release for Eazy-E and a response to the runaway success of Dr. Dre's The Chronic (1992). Eazy had been lambasted on that Dr. Dre album (and especially ...
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