this dude had an incredible magic talent of taking a song to sample and distilling it all the way down to what exactly makes it enjoyable and manages to extract a little bit of strangeness with it too and combines them into absolute head-nodding anthems

Some super cool Japanese alternative hip hop, super fresh and unique for fucking 1992 and surprisingly super refined given it's a trio of three Japanoise avant-gardist dudes.

Essentially the first Antipop Consortium album. Has vocals by Beans, High Priest, M. Sayyid, scratches by DJ Prime Cuts and production by legendary DJ Vadim, great shit.

Oh also this is straight up 100% a Kool Keith/Sir Menelik rip-off too—the offbeat, fast talk-rapping and minimal, farty synth beats and scratching sound EXACTLY like something from Sex Style or Dr. Octagon.

organic trash

What is hip hop? Hip hop is post-disco Jamaican sound system deejay/dancehall. Hip hop is extended loops of funk/soul drum breaks. Hip hop is steady drum machine patterns of kicks and snares. Hip hop is live acoustic, repetitive drum rhythms. At its most distilled state, hip hop is beats– steady, repetitive rhythms. But also hip hop was birthed from the sample and technically anything can be sampled and looped to create a beat.

Following the Glitch hop scene from the early ... read more

I like that they have somewhat contrasting styles vocally, but man Westside Gunn is just annoying and says nothing special at all; just mildly cool, gangsta swag rap. All he does is just name-drop drug vernacular, car brands, fashion brands, mentions of food (like a third-rate Ghostface) and his signature, ear-grating adlibs. If you are going down this lane of gangsta rap then either be super blunt and cutthroat with your lyrics and delivery, or super witty and have clever wordplay like Clipse ... read more

As the sound of mainstream rap grew more glitzy and glamorous by the late 90s, the edgier, more sample-based, lyrically-focused rap music that once had a foothold in the industry was pushed more and more to the margins. This resulted in the return to college and independent radio (most notably the Stretch and Bobbito Show) with many major label acts going the independent route. This caused a reactionary backlash in the underground with the culmination of this collective frustration and ... read more

tl;dr

- it's easy to walk in with pre-conceived notions and not being able to shake 'em off
- album is up there with Madvillainy and Vaudeville Villain
- this album fits DOOM and Danger Mouse's discographies perfectly
- if this album is just promo material, it goes well above and beyond
- if this is gimmicky, so is every DOOM album
- the skits/snippets are extremely well incorporated into the production, lyrics, themes, humor, voice actors
- you don't need to be familiar with any of the shows ... read more

During the time of its release, abstract/experimental hip hop was starting to gain some traction in the underground with folks in Definitive Jux, Dälek, Antipop Consortium etc. popping off with indie rock and electronic music publications and record labels.

Fast-forward to 202X, and with alternative hip hop being much more understood and readily consumed by people, seeing this album placed on GOAT lists no longer warrants a double take, which is good, cause it is a monumental release imo ... read more

Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch in particular are in a way cut from the same cloth as the Freestyle Fellowship and Project Blowed crew in that they incorporate elements of Jazz rhythms and syncopations into their flow albeit in a less sporadic and more pre-planned manner. On this album and subsequent releases, the duo introduced a lot of advanced techniques and innovations in rapping that preceded more celebrated releases like Nas's Illmatic by three years. The MC's use a lot of rests and ... read more

This album launched the start DOOM's creative peak of 2003-2005 which he followed the now fondly looked back upon Operation: Doomsday with a near non-stop streak of consistent project after project. This was also his first producer-curated album where he gets a chance to further showcase his production chops and adopting his beats for other rappers. This is also the album where DOOM really solidified some of his instantly recognizable poetic characteristics and idiosyncrasies he started to ... read more

Conceived as a soundtrack to a film of the same name, "a period piece taking place in Depression-era urban America". Basically a short EP of Crescent Moon rapping over 6 drumless (six months before Act 1: Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)) early Post-Bop era Sun Ra loops (including tracks from Jazz by Sun Ra, Vol. 1, Super-Sonic Jazz, Sound of Joy) sampled pretty liberally by DJ Anatomy with minimal edits or additional production, but somehow all this works like absolute magic.

Casselle ... read more

This monumental album presents true 'jazz rap', not just in the sense of relying on jazz samples to form the basis of the tracks, but a deeper incorporation of jazz elements into every aspect from the instrumentation to the flows. With a strong background rooted in the Good Life Cafe freestyle scene, the MC's flows called chopping (that often border on scat singing) are reminiscent of jazz trumpeters and saxophonists complex and intricate jamming with a flurry of notes. They incorporate jazz ... read more

Ultra unique flow for 1994. It's very clear he was a big influence on Anticon, specifically Doseone (who mentioned him on Yoni's podcast) and even Aesop Rock (who mentioned him on Open Mike Eagle's Secret Skin podcast). Out of the three main 'first wave' of west coast underground collectives influenced by Freestyle Fellowship (Hieroglyphics/Souls of Mischief, Quannum MCs & Hobo Junction) Saafir pushes the unorthodox style the most to the extreme. The rapping is completely off-kilter ... read more