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, ...
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 ...
It's hard enough to transform an entire musical genre -- Cypress Hill's eponymous debut album revolutionized hip-hop in several respects. Although they weren't the first Latino rappers, nor the first to mix Spanish and English, they were the first to achieve a substantial following, thanks to their highly distinctive sound. Along with Beastie Boys ...
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, ...
Black Sunday made Cypress Hill's connection to rock & roll more explicit, with its heavy metal-like artwork and noisier, more dissonant samples (including, naturally, stoner icons Black Sabbath). It's a slightly darker affair than its groundbreaking predecessor, with the threats of violence more urgent and the pot obsession played to the hilt ...
Snoop Dogg leaves much of his gang-banging past behind him in favor of preened pimp posturing on his final album for No Limit Records, The Last Meal. Snoop's increasingly old-school pose suits his gracefully aging self well. Despite his former affiliation with Death Row Records and his much-publicized murder trial, Snoop never seemed like much of ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
As time keeps on slipping into the future, it becomes apparent that Master P's greatest gift is marketing, particularly when his advertising masquerades as liner notes. Witness P's work for Snoop Dogg, once considered the brightest rapper of the '90s but now merely a general in the No Limit army. The Master began plugging Top Dogg, Snoop's second ...
Like 100 Miles and Runnin' (1990), the five-track EP that preceded it, N.W.A's third full-length album, Niggaz4life, courts controversy in every imaginable way, from its title (printed backward on the cover, as a mirror image) down to its mercilessly misogynistic second half, and it remains shocking years later, no matter how many times 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 ...
More than any other label, Death Row defined gangsta rap and hip-hop in the early '90s, and the double-disc Death Row Greatest Hits captures nearly all of the label's biggest hits from artists like Dr. Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and 2Pac. Although the disc bends some rules by including cuts that weren't released on Death Row and containing an ...
The late '90s ushered in a second golden age of progressive hip-hop, as a group of ambitious young lions rose from the underground to redefine the art of lyrical technique and revive the idea that hip-hop had relevant statements to make. With their 2000 debut album, Blackalicious established themselves as one of the West Coast's top outfits in ...
The soundtrack to a hilarious comedy directed by Mike Judge of Beavis & Butthead fame, the Office Space soundtrack features a slew of old school gangsta rap tunes, as well as newer rap songs composed specifically for this soundtrack. Office Space concerned the hell of wage slavery, a torturous lifetime spent in cubicles and retail establishments ...
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, ...
Too Short never had the skills or technique of LL Cool J or Big Daddy Kane, but what the Oakland rapper lacks in technique, he's always more than made up for with irresistible, '70s-inspired funk grooves that simply won't quit. When Short -- after enjoying a small cult following for a few years in Northern California -- joined a major label with ...
Ant Banks may not have a terrific or distinctive rhyming style, but he has an ear for thick, funky grooves. That alone makes his records enjoyable, even if he has trouble sustaining momentum over the course of a full-length album. Still, Big Thangs is a more consistently pleasurable listen than many of his records, and that's due to that ear. Much ...
As riveting as Rhyme Pays was, Ice-T did hold back a little and avoided being too consistently sociopolitical. But with the outstanding Power, the gloves came all the way off, and Ice didn't hesitate to speak his mind about the harsh realities of inner-city life. On "Drama," "Soul on Ice" (an homage to his idol Iceberg Slim), "High Rollers," and ...
As Ice Cube's 2006 Laugh Now, Cry Later was landing in stores, all the chatter was about whether or not Cube was back, and whether or not he could recover from a couple of lackluster solo albums that came out years ago. Did his major contribution to Westside Connection's satisfying 2003 album Terrorist Threats slip everybody's mind and do we have ...
Anchored by the laid-back G-funk anthem "Regulate," Warren G's appropriately titled Regulate...G Funk Era embodies the mid-'90s era of Cali sunshine, endless blunts, and switch-hittin' lowriders with a welcome and somewhat surprising sense of kind-heartedness. Unlike most of his West Coast G-funk peers, Warren doesn't celebrate drive-by gang ...
We guarantee every item's condition, as described on Alibris. If you are not satisfied that an item is as described, return your purchase for a refund.
Portions of content provided by All Music Guide or All Movie Guide. © 2009 All Media Guide, LLC. All Music Guide and All Movie Guide are registered Trademarks of All Media Guide, LLC.