best 1993 rap album besides Doggystyle, Midnight Marauders and 36 Chambers

Akinyele

plz everyone vote Shaq Diesel

damn, i knew Vagina Diner and Shaq Diesel were too popular to leave in as poll options

Awwww. No spot for The Bliss Album...?

i really haven't heard too many of these and will hopefully get some recommendations but will prob go for either The World Is Yours or Strictly, which are imo pretty underrated vs. other Scarface and Pac albums

my bad about P.M. Dawn, didn't come across it in any of the several '93 rap album lists i referenced

Buhloone, JBeez or World is Yours. This is tough.

Black Moon.

this was a weird year, lot of "transitional"-type albums and a number of follow-ups that don't gel as well as their predecessors.

that being said I am a HUGE stan for J. Beez wit tha Remedy, one of the strangest, ahead-of-its-time rap albums ever so pretty easy choice for me

yeah definitely feels like kind of a thin year for the era, which is why it always kinda confused me that it was one of the 2 options in the official hip-hop litmus test: hip-hop's greatest year thread

that being said, some of my thoughts:

Get In Where You Fit In - this is actually really good in terms of a "$hort Dog tries to cash in on G-funk" album. "Money in the Ghetto", "Blowjob Betty", "Just Another Day", "I'm a Player", really solid tracks.

Buhloone MindState - probably my runner-up, a really funny engaging album, kinda all downhill from here for them tho imho (no I don't like Stakes is High)

Black Moon - other people here love this album way more than me, I'd never even heard of it before the big rap albums poll. the cartoonish nihilism gets a bit tiresome but it has its redeeming qualities.

No Need for Alarm - preferred his first but as second breakout albums go this was a real left turn and probably as good as Del got.

Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) - everyone clowns this album but beyond the overplayed single and its ridic video it's better than it's rep would suggest. they were definitely "reachin'" lol didn't always get there until the next rec.

Black Sunday - this is where I got off the bus with Cypress Hill, altho about a third of this record is killer and the sample of Dusty's "Son of a Preacher Man" on "Hits from the Bong" always gets me. But in general I didn't like Muggs' sparer, dustier production style compared to the first record.

Lethal Injection - this is like half a great album, and when it's bad it's terrible and when it's good it's pretty great. Opening track is killer, "Bop Gun" goes on forever, "Cave Bitch" is terrible, and a bunch of these beats are such shameless Dre-imitations... "You Know How We Do It" is super smooth tho. some good remixes/b-sides from this album too.

btw these were the 93 placements in the big rap album ballot poll:

89. Cypress Hill - Black Sunday [6 votes, 129 points, 1993] (tie w/ #90)
86. Black Moon - Enta Da Stage [7 votes, 132 points, 1993] (tie w/ 87)
41. De La Soul - Buhloone Mindstate [9 votes, 225 points, 1993]
20. Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle [15 votes, 389 points, 1993]
14. A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders [13 votes, 1 first place vote, 473 points, 1993] (tie w/ #15)
1. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) [28 votes, 1 first place vote, 956 points, 1993]

Brand Nubian's "In God We Trust" was probably the most disappointing follow-up on here, man that was a sad record

it always kinda confused me that it was one of the 2 options in the official hip-hop litmus test: hip-hop's greatest year thread

prolly because it was a huge singles year.

Ice Cube's solo career is so weird -- 4 albums in 4 years, then pretty much stopped at his commercial (if not creative peak) and didn't come back for 5 years, after which point he was never really relevant again. i guess Friday destroyed his music career.

I dunno why he bothered to come back and make records, after Friday it was obvious he was gonna go where the money was (ie movies)

a lot of personal favs on this list, return of the boom bap, slaughtahouse, del tha funky homosapien were all albums i spent months listening to in high school

I dunno why he bothered to come back and make records

weird q to me. he's a musician! he likes to make music! he's a writer, he likes to write!

I wanna vote for Eazy because Real Muthaphukkin G's is one of my favorite tracks ever but realistically speaking that is not the best album on this list

In hindsight it kinda feels like the wrong answer, but Buhloone is the album I've obsessed the most over out of any on the list. I played that album to death.

Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) - everyone clowns this album but beyond the overplayed single and its ridic video it's better than it's rep would suggest. they were definitely "reachin'" lol didn't always get there until the next rec.

It's pretty awesome in its own right; it suffers by comparison with its predecessor.

Buhloone Mindstate is awesome, esp that stretch which begins with "In The Woods."

It's pretty awesome in its own right; it suffers by comparison with its predecessor.

you have this backwards...?

weird q to me. he's a musician! he likes to make music! he's a writer, he likes to write!

I dunno he seemed pretty disenchanted with music, and his post-movies efforts have seemed so half-assed most of the time, like he really doesn't care, or enjoy it, or enjoy writing.

you have this backwards...?

haha yeah

oh it definitely shouldn't be a surprise that he continued (and continues) to make albums, he's fucking Ice Cube. i was saying 4 albums in 4 years followed by 0 albums in 4 years is a pretty huge drop in productivity, even taking into account soundtracks and the Westside Connection album (xpost)

buhloon mindstate 500 days a week, i vote for it over even the banned albums

i should give Buhloone another chance, it really has not grabbed me much in the past

the bay owns this poll, voting 8ball & mjg though.

my favs are :

Black Moon - Enta Da Stage
The Coup - Kill My Landlord
De La Soul - Buhloone Mindstate
E-40 - Federal
Eightball & M.J.G. - Comin' Out Hard
The Geto Boys - Till Death To Us Part
Ice Cube - Lethal Injection
Mac Dre - Young Black Brotha: The Album
Mac Mall - Illegal Business?
Souls of Mischief - 93 'til Infinity
Spice 1 - 187 He Wrote
Too $hort - Get in Where Ya Fit in

speaking of the bay, why is Body Hat Syndrome not on this fuckin list yo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2HQ7dkJfeo

gee oh well

187 He Wrote is an unbelievably good record. And surprisingly it had a brief stint at #1 on the Billboard Hip-Hop/R&B charts. The relentless murder show lyrics get exhausting, but you can always zone out to the dope production.

Ship: Don't forget he did the Westside Connection album in that timespan tho. Doesn't really invalidate what you're saying, but worth noting.

I'm kind of surprising myself here by voting for KRS. Could just as easily have gone for Black Moon or Pac.

well my last post said "even taking into account soundtracks and the Westside Connection album"

oops, I kind of skimmed the thread at a certain point

that Westside Connection album sucks tho

LL in 93 is an hilarious cultural document

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFvqfCWU__4

Akinyele - Vagina Diner
Tha Alkaholiks - 21 & Over
De La Soul - Buhloone Mindstate
Mac Dre - Young Black Brotha: The Album
Mac Mall - Illegal Business?
Masta Ace - Slaughtahouse
MC Breed - The New Breed
Naughty By Nature - 19 Naughty III
Scarface - The World Is Yours
Spice 1 - 187 He Wrote
Too $hort - Get in Where Ya Fit in

My top ten, probably gonna vote for Too $hort. Ive played that record so many times & "just another day" is an easy top 5 all time rap song for me

mac dre
mac mall
mac ace
mac breed
mac nature
scarmac
mac 1
too mac

have not heard 21 & Over but thanks to this thread I will.

dont front on mac mall
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UTpuikhMGU

this was hard too.

i think i'm voting 21 and over. it is p much the template of a fun ass rap record.

Torn between De La and Souls of Mischief; opted for how I chilled in '93 ('til ?)

also got the best use of 7 minutes of funk

intoxicated demons ep is missing, honestly that would be easily in my top ten if it was here

voted Buhloone ahead of J.Beez

weird q to me. he's a musician! he likes to make music! he's a writer, he likes to write!

nah I'm with Shakey, it was apparent that he didn't like to make music or write anymore at that point. He had been the best songwriter in the world from the age of about 16 to 21, then Lethal Injection sucked and indicated that he was best off walking away, good on him for doing so.

Westside Connection interviews meantime very very clearly indicated he had no interest in smart songwriting anymore

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Black Moon - Enta Da Stage
Cypress Hill - Black Sunday
Jungle Brothers - JBeez With The Remedy

this is a toss-up for me but i'll probably vote cypress hill

brand nubian, the coup, onyx and souls of mischief also get dap

Voted for Jungle Brothers, mainly because how much I love this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stEscLBXQiA

Souls of Mischief, Black Moon and Digable Plantes would be up there too.

my top 5 ended up being Scarface > Black Moon > 2Pac > JBeez > De La

not too concerned about digable planets because "blowout comb" is *so* much better

and you're cool like dat *biddy biddy bop*funky funky*

srsly surprised at how nobody's said anything about "black sunday"

xp yes, that was the jam

2 I Ain't Goin' Out Like That
3 Insane In The Brain 3:29
4 When The Sh-- Goes Down 3:09
6 Cock The Hammer 4:25
9 Legalize It 0:47
10 Hits From The Bong 2:41
11 What Go Around Come Around, Kid 3:42
12 A To The K 3:28
13 Hand On The Glock 3:33
14 Break 'Em Off Some

i can only imagine people get annoyed by sen dog on chorus otherwise should sweep the poll

it's like ... iconic or something? the way doggy style is? you don't hear cypress hill tracks in clubs but i don't know anybody in high school who listened to black sunday less than doggystyle or 36 chambers (certainly not more than those, but how could you be in high school in 93 and not have a black sunday tape in your car?)

how could you be in high school and own a car?!

Cypress Hill were definitely HUGE at the time in a way that is not really remembered now

sen dog is the best anyone whos mad at him is insane in the membrane

welcome to the 1% sic

oh wait there was one girl in my year whose daddy bought her a car for her 18th

fwiw me n my friends vibed to the first cypress hill in cars but not really black sunday

fwiw sic in the usa its p common for hs students to have cars

what the fuck I'm rollin
in a truck that's stolen
guess what I'm holdin
ammo to bust my loooooaaaaaaad

yeah i don't know where you are sic but i imagine at least 1/4 of students older than 16 have cars in the US if not 1/3 or 1/2

the genius of cypress hill is glimpsed in the fact that their lyrics don't scan at all on paper as rhythmic but b real makes it sounds like the most obvious thing when he delivers it

once i realized that all 3 of Black Sunday's singles had choruses that were essential 'B-Real says title phrase, Sen Dog repeats it' the bloom kinda came off the rose. "I Ain't Goin' Out Like That" is still a joint, though.

high school wasn't that long ago for me - and i prob lived in a pretty representative lower-middle/middle class suburb growing up - at least half of us had cars. USED cars, but cars

xp

yeah yeah all rap songs sound the same, i know

dj muggs production is incredible, iirc the rza was pretty geeked on it

yeah i think the thing is your parents buy cars, and then when you're sixteen they buy themselves a newer car and give you the beat-up one

thx planet earth, usa needs more oil

i mean every track on black sunday has sen dog repeating b-real at least once or twice not counting the choruses, but for whatever reason i can hang with it

car r cool for listening to raps in

rap is invented for listening to in cars! the cars that go boom!

he brings the absurdity w/o which they sunk into a gloomy pit of stoner boringness on later albums (though he was still there, so not sure where the absurdity went)

he = sen dog on black sunday, he's hilarious

I can make you famous like Amos
Same as the last punk, when I stuck the gatt up his anus
Hear me growl: Grrra! Howl!
I got the night vision just like the wise old owl

GRAA! HOWL!!

oh don't get me wrong i love sen dog

best verse on black sunday imo

in 93/94 i was still years away from having a car and i sat home all summer watching cypress hill videos on THE BOX

fwiw me n my friends vibed to the first cypress hill in cars but not really black sunday

what's funny is that black sunday is in some ways a track-by-track remake of the first one but just more amped up and, uh, booming or something

the box was the shit!

only place to see wu tang videos

ive havent heard it in years but at the time i felt like they just got too goofy re black sunday

feel like we get into a THE BOX tangent at least once a year but hell yeah, the box was the shit

no jaymc but i used to memorize all the video numbers

videos you used to see on THE BOX all the time

the box was the first place i heard vanilla ice's first cypress hill bite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i30kpGeIeM

the box was suuuuper important to my understanding of teh cultcha

the early 90s were an era of such blatant trend hopping

what era of rap since hasn't been, though?

i dunno, i feel like it was so obvious when a rapper made a blatant stylistic departure over the course of like a single year back then

now the production style might shift but the rapper stays more or less consistent

yeah, true, not as much image makeovers/rapping style. back then it was like, rap like das efx this year, rap like nas the next.

like gucci over mike will vs. gucci over zaytoven is nothing like big daddy kane dropping "groove with it"

vs. aint no half steppin or whatever

uh ... please to break that sentence down for the n00bs

oh you're talking about shifts in production style, not image makeovers

i think

i'm saying ppl don't really do image makeovers now

they don't really change how they rap, either.

the big daddy kane example might be a bad one i was a lil young, I just remember ppl talking about how pronounced his falloff was

to be fair, i was like 4-5 yrs old during that era

he didn't fall off so suddenly so much as it suddenly wasn't cool to wear a leather trenchcoat and wraparound shades instead of like, jeans and a rugby shirt

between hardcore and afrocentrism there was no more room for shiny clothing

whoops wrong thread

wait a second, i'm not even talking about bdk, i'm talking about kool moe dee

i'm going to go eat dinner now

LL in 93 is an hilarious cultural document

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RFvqfCWU__4

― lag∞n, Monday, August 20, 2012 4:22 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwkFSQfE2Bc

remember when house of pain dissed marky mark

ha i didn't realize there was a rung below 3rd bass going after the beasties

i'm saying ppl don't really do image makeovers now

think this is generally true & is an interesting thing to think about even though the "why" of it is probably just market forces

on a comedy level i'd call it a cut above rather than a rung below

true

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

whooops forgot to vote

it would have been 1 for cypress hill i guess

Guru - Jazzmatazz Volume 1 2

we need to stop letting europeans vote in rap polls

yeah that gravediggaz victory was unacceptable

wish non-new york shit would get more love in general, but i'm not mad at this victory, even if it is a bit overwhelming, that's a dope record

if i was gonna take a 4th record out of the poll options it definitely would've been the De La, definitely is in the top 4 of a lot of lists out there and this being ILM after all.

no matter how far we drill the poll down i think ilm will be ilm

These results seem spot on to me (at least until Guru's Jazzmatazz).

Didn't know Buhloone Mindstate had such a high standing---it always seemed like the De La Soul album casual fans couldn't name---but I do love it. I'd rank it above Midnight Marauders, probably.

yeah but there are a lot of not-just-casual de la fans here

top two are both super dope gj ilx

where are the 17 ilxors who listened to black sunday?

Yo-Yo - You Better Ask Somebody 1

who was this...? even I don't think this record is that good

Missed this one, but mad props to the three who voted for the Jungle Brothers' third!

that Erick Sermon has a dope verse from Keith Murray

is there any album besides The Chronic that's widely loved enough to be worth considering excluding from a '92 poll? Pharcyde, Pete Rock, Gang Starr?

some dude deej and whiney should have their own board where only they are allowed to vote in rap polls. board should also be invisible to everybody but the three qualified posters

Ah. Their own circle of hell, you mean.

Guru - Jazzmatazz Volume 1 2

we need to stop letting europeans vote in rap polls

― jjjdoom (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, August 27, 2012 8:04 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah that gravediggaz victory was unacceptable

― some dude, Monday, August 27, 2012 10:43 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

aero you realize i was mocking whiney w/ this, not cosigning, right

"we need to stop letting europeans vote in rap polls" is hilarious

Given the De La blowout here, I wouldn't be surprised if Pharcyde actually beat The Chronic in a 92 poll

I don't really like the Chronic tbh

Given the De La blowout here, I wouldn't be surprised if Pharcyde actually beat The Chronic in a 92 poll

― Evan R, Thursday, August 30, 2012 12:30 PM Bookmark

gross

I don't really like the Chronic tbh

― chicago rap twitter luminary (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, August 30, 2012 2:32 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cmon son

I think I've explained this before.

I do like Doggystyle

like I get the Chronic's importance in the genre, I've heard it/know all the singles, I understand why it's such a big deal ... but youthful prejudices meant I didn't buy into it at the time, and when I've gone back to it it's just struck me as one of my least-favorite Dre productions sonically. I love all the NWA stuff up to Evilf4zaggin (which is nigh unlistenable) and a lot of his post-Chronic work (Doggystyle, loads of singles) but yeah it missed me at the time and I can't bring myself retroactively to care about it. I wouldn't vote for it in a poll from that year. The Chronic and Ready to Die were like a one-two punch that knocked me out of caring about chart rap for maybe a decade or so (maybe less, I came back around for the Timbo/Missy/'Kast era)

"Evilf4zaggin (which is nigh unlistenable)"

cmon son

"The Chronic and Ready to Die were like a one-two punch that knocked me out of caring about chart rap for maybe a decade"

0_0

unpopular opinions about rap I have held

totally agree w/you on Chronic

chronically ilx

tbf I don't expect anybody to agree with me really. anyone younger than me is likely to have grown up with Dre/Biggie/Jay-Z/Puffy dominating the radio landscape for a huge chunk of time and that stuff was instantly canonized due to its commercial impact, there's kind of no arguing with it. I'm just explaining my personal preferences which were informed more by the previous era. and like I said I did come back around to chart rap once the east-west bullshit faded and the south became the big locus of hitmaking activity.

fyi people never respond never well to "you like it because it's canon." you wouldn't if it was directed at you.

I wasn't thinking of it strictly as a canon thing, I think it's more of a "being really excited about music that was huge when you were young" thing. maybe there's some overlap there, I dunno. but I don't think people here who didn't grow up with the Chronic would go back to it and love it just because it's canon, I'm not trying to impugn anyone's motives, just explain my own.

like if I had been 16 when "Juicy" came out I probably would have loved it. but I was 16 when "Humpty Dance" came out.

Missed this. Would have voted Black Moon.

It's okay, Shakes: The Chronic missed me then and does little now. Not because it's canon though.

i hope people do realize that these polls do not presume that everyone likes Ready To Die or Midnight Marauders better than all of the available options. it's just a device for having conversations about different favorites.

I guess what I'm getting at in a roundabout way is that there was a very dramatic and self-evident shift in hip-hop from '93 on and I didn't like it at the time and have never really changed my mind about it. If you didn't experience that shift you probably don't give a fuck about it. But I can't grow new positive associations with a lot of stuff from this era, it's all just a bummer to me, squandered promise, a depressingly wrong turn for the genre. There was still a lot of hip hop from the 90s that I loved and still love, but the stuff that dominated the charts for the most part leaves me cold.

xp

Shakey's opinion on 'ready to die' is most shocking to me, that'd be in my top five albums of all time.

lol I meant '92 there

xp

btw have we talked about Chris Lighty RIP anywhere yet? this might not be a bad spot

poor guy

I align almost 100% with Shakey on The Chronic and Ready To Die, though I've warmed more to the latter over the years. And Doggystyle >>>>>>>The Chronic is OTM. But "Deep Cover" is still the best Dre/Snoop song.

yeah I fux with Deep Cover

what do you dislike about hip hop in the nineties, Shakes? how did it betray the tradition?

oh c'mon there are lots of obvious (and often perfectly defensible) reasons for that

I'm asking Shakey though

betrayal is maybe a bit strong - it's more like hip hop's scope narrowed, in a couple different ways.

sonically hip hop moved away from being a structurally innovative amalgam of sampled material and other instrumentation to a much more streamlined, traditional songwriting format. samples were still used (and still are), but they moved increasingly to the background - they started to function more as a simple source for traditional hooks, or just as the skeleton that other instrumentation (synths and drum machines, primarily) would be structured around. Dre is totally a good example of this - if you look at how "We're All in the Same Gang" is built, with so many shifts and turnarounds and breaks crammed in there, and compare it to any number of songs where he just copped Atomic Dog for 3 and 1/2 minutes the difference is pretty striking. The former was like a totally different pop vocabulary - it didn't follow the songwriting structures that had developed around traditional live instrumentation (intro-verse-chorus-bridge etc), it was this whole new thing. But for legal and economic reasons, that kind of approach fell by the wayside and a lot of chart rap figured out "oh hey, it's easier to just make a song with a drumbeat and a keyboard, throw one 8-bar loop in for the hook = bang we're done"). And that is why I hate listening to Puffy bite the Police for 3 1/2 minutes lol the end.

The other thing, and this is also totally a cliche, is that the range of narrative voices shrank considerably. Prior to the Chronic/Doggystyle/Ready to Die labels were throwing anything at the wall to see what would stick - you had afrocentric black nationalists, goofy party raps, gangsters, posturing intellectuals, sex raps, boho stoners - it was just a really vibrant, diverse mix of personalities. but that narrowed as soon as huuuuuuge money and white suburban audiences became the focus. You still had weird stuff at the margins, but dudes chasing the money all went for gangster nihilism and it really became the dominant narrative strain, which persists to this day.

there are exceptions to all of these generalizations, of course, this is just what I saw as the trends at the time and in retrospect my evaluation hasn't changed much.