When I was just starting to get interested in music as a pre-teen, I would look to my older siblings to see what they were listening to. A few times in my life, my cousins (who live in the UK) would suggest things like, “Oh, you should listen to this, and this, and this.” I’d keep a list and then go buy it when I had money. Nowadays, it’s a totally different musical landscape. People don’t listen to whole albums all that much. They tend to stream music, or maybe even load some mp3s on their phones. Sure, there are still people (like me) who buy CDs, and there are others who love vinyl, but this is not about what music format you use to listen to music, it’s about those records you must have in your collection.
My music tastes are pretty much rooted in rock. Alternative, hard rock, classic rock…really music that involves electric guitars, bass guitars, drums, and maybe some keyboards. What can I say, that’s the music I grew up on — and we tend to stick with what’s imprinted on our brains from our teen years.
This is a roundabout way of saying, hip-hop is a genre that I didn’t connect with — I think it has to do with my age when it bubbled up from the underground. However, there’s no denying the power of this musical form (and its continued popularity). But as I sometimes wax rhapsodically about the greatness of this or that group, or this or that album, I know for others there’s a whole bunch of music that means a lot to them; music I have very little connection to (like country or speed metal).
So, in the interest (and spirit) of record recommendations, I have listed a number of hip-hop records below. These are albums that you should listen to in their entirety — and in the sequence that the artists ordered them. To assemble this list, I asked three co-workers who are big fans of the genre for recommendations of records I should have in my collection. Two of my co-workers collaborated on their list, and the other compiled his solo. There are some repeats in both lists, but here’s what they came up with — in no particular order:
Mitch and Phil’s list
Nas, “Illmatic” (1994)
Souls of Mischief, “93 ’til Infinity” (1993)
The Notorious B.I.G., “Ready To Die” (1994)
De La Soul, “3 Feet High and Rising” (1989)
De La Soul, “Buhloone Mindstate” (1993)
Wu-Tang Clan, “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
N.W.A., “Straight Outta Compton” (1988)
Boogie Down Productions, “By All Means Necessary” (1988)
Public Enemy, “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” (1988)
A Tribe Called Quest, “Midnight Marauders (1993)
Nick’s List
Chance The Rapper, “Acid Rap” (2013)
Kid Cudi, “Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager (2010)
Nas, “Illmatic” (1994)
Kanye West, “The College Dropout” (2004)
Kanye West, “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (2010)
J. Cole, “Born Sinner” (2013)
J.Cole, “2014 Forest Hills Drive” (2014)
Drake, “Take Care” (2011) The Notorious B.I.G., “Ready To Die” (1994)
Kendrick Lamar, “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” (2012)
