Please use the thread to discuss the selections and inform everybody of your voting intentions. A poll will be added at a later date in order to tally votes, once everybody has had the opportunity to listen to all of the selections. If there are specific links to the albums or singles you have nominated (on Youtube, Spotify, etc.) that you would prefer voters to listen to, please post them in this thread. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Last edited by Skinny on 02/10/2021 19:52; edited 1 time in total
Just in terms of sheer quality and consistency, this is my favourite match of the tournament so far. I unreservedly love all four albums (though if I had to rank them, it's a fairly straightforward pick to put YG at #1), and the singles are routinely excellent as well, even if an otherwise very good Pusha T song is unfortunately marred by a couple of characteristically clumsy, wannabe "cool uncle", late-era Jay lines, in what is generally a pretty dope verse by his 2010s standard. 'Fu-Gee-La' is everything that was ever great about the Fugees, 'JoHn Muir' is the TDE style done to perfection, Labcab is The Pharcyde's best, Eightball & MJG are one of the greatest duos in all of rap and they simply didn't miss at this point, Atrocity Exhibition is a work of visionary genius, and 'Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers' is a boom-bap all-timer, a posse cut where three excellent rappers bring their A-game over an elite Preemo beat. If you'd have told me this tournament group stage would throw up a match in which Labcabincalifornia - a dense, melancholy, yet immediately catchy masterpiece of an album - would be maybe my least favourite album of the four picks, I'd have told you that you were mental. And yet, before relistens (not that they're desperately necessary in this case), here we are.
Congrats to both users on a ridiculous set of picks. No idea which way I'm gonna vote here, but this is crazy nonetheless. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
touch matchup, although am leaning towards '16. 1995 we've got one good album and one great album (On Top of the World and Labcab, respectively) and one good single and one great single (Fu-Gee-La and Crooklyn Dodgers, respectively), so while it's a little uneven, there's nothing close to bad here, maybe even a couple of minor masterpieces. 2016 might just win based on sheer consistency. the highs of the '95 teams are higher but the overall average quality on this 2016 team I think seals it for me. also I quite like the Jay-Z verse on Drug Dealer's anonymous, even with the fucking damn daniel reference _________________ A Variety of Artists
Pretty much all of On Top of the World is perfect, but MJG's verse on 'Friend or Foe' is really something else. One of my favourite verses of all-time.
For those who don't know, MJG has the last verse here, straight after Eightball - starts at around 4:13 ("I'm thinkin' 'bout haaard times, freein' my mind..."). _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
Sia Michel is currently Deputy Culture Editor at The New York Times. In 1995, she wrote a critical review of Lacabincalifornia for Spin in which she rather spitefully compared their supposed newfound maturity to "Martin Lawrence doing Chekhov". Not only has the benefit of hindsight proved her initial assessment of the album as some sort of misguided yet "calculated progression [to] get Labcabincalifornia as much play in the streets as their debut did on college radio" to be completely wrong, but there's something I find inherently discomfiting about a white journalist suggesting that comically-minded Black entertainers (in this case, both The Pharcyde and Martin Lawrence) should stay in their lane instead of striving to be taken seriously. (All of which is ignoring the fact that she completely overexaggerated The Pharcyde's progression - which was extremely natural and actually pretty subtle - in order to make what was a reductive, potentially harmful joke at everyone else's expense.)
Anyway, it was written over 25 years ago when she was undoubtedly a relative novice attempting to make a name for herself, and we've all written shit that we later regret. (God forbid anybody go through my posting history with a fine-tooth comb.) I'm sure she's an extremely capable cultural commentator responsible for lots of excellent work, and it is fantastic that a female writer has been able to ascend to numerous positions of journalistic influence and respect in her career. I can only imagine she'd be, at the very least, mildly embarrassed by this 1995 Pharcyde album review. I just thought it was an interesting quote worth sharing, for some reason. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
1. YG - Still Brazy (best rap album of the decade? Certainly the one I return to most often - love the mix of old-school g-funk with post-Mustard bounce, and YG is just on fire from start to finish, spitting with a clarity of vision he's just never replicated since)
2. Eightball & MJG - On Top of the World (one of the all-time great Southern hip-hop albums, full of heartfelt rhymes and tar-thick funk)
3. The Pharcyde - Labcabincalifornia (after relistening, there is just no way I can put this bottom - Dilla and Pharcyde are a match made in heaven)
4. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition (a work of a singular genius, finding exactly the sorts of wired, paranoid beats to suit his insanely good writing - the idea that this album, one of the greatest hip-hop records of all-time, should sit bottom of this pile is just stupid, but here we are)
Singles:
1. The Fugees - Fu-Gee-La (I know every word without having to hear the beat, and it's everything they were ever good at and more)
2. ScHoolboy Q - JoHn Muir (one of Q's best songs, and a track that completely exemplifies everything TDE do well, particularly that mixture of gangster sensibilities with hazy, jazzy production - if they re-made Friday and its soundtrack, this would be the 'Keep Their Heads Ringing')
3. Crooklyn Dodgers '95 - The Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers (a stunning Preemo beat, Chubb Rock's verse is incredible, and Jeru manages to actually make some words rhyme without resorting to creating mythical villains out of abstract nouns for him to conquer) [EDIT: I'm sure I mentioned a certain type of NY rapper using the term "manifest" as a verb in the last set of matches; well, O.C. does it again here. Such a weird mini-trend.]
4. Pusha T - Drug Dealers Anonymous (fantastic, but neither top tier Jay nor top tier Push)
This means nothing. I can't decide. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
2. Eightball & MJG - On Top of the World (one of the all-time great Southern hip-hop albums, full of heartfelt rhymes and tar-thick funk)
Hmmm... I'm going to have to listen again. I thought it sounded pretty generic (both lyrically & musically) & it kinda bored me.
Really liked the other three, especially Atrocity Exhibition which seems tailor made for me.
Put another way, I listen to stuff like Atrocity Exhibition and I'm all like.." Holy shit! I LOVE hip hop. I need MORE hip hop in my life! It's so creative & inventive with all those sounds. It's the freshest genre on the planet. Easy!" And then I queue up On Top Of The World, and I immediately need to listen to ten hours of Black Flag just to feel like myself again.
I am honestly just stunned at the quality of the selections across the board here, to be honest. All four albums could easily make my top fifty hip-hop albums, and the singles are uniformly great as well. And there are still so many great options for 1995 in particular to choose from moving forward, too. Mercury hasn't even reached for the greatest album of all-time yet. _________________ 2021 in full effect. Come drop me some recs. Y'all know what I like.
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