Hip Hop — All Formats  

5 tracks "Put It In Your Mouth", "Robbery Song", "In The World", "F*ck Me For Free", and "Thug Sh*t". Beats by Frankie Cutlass, EZ Elpee, Dr Butcher and others.

The number of dope female vocalists who've left the group they started with only to lose direction is many. Fortunately, Lauryn Hill is not one of them. Amazing production and lyrics that steer clear of all the jiggy nonsense. In our opinion, even after all the Grammy's, etc, still the classic r&b album of 1998 that ruled the airwaves, and still rules our turntables.

Madlib invades Blue Note! He gets free reign of the catalog for this mix of sampler genius and live band interpretations, too, as/with Ahmad Miller, Yesterdays New Quintet, Malcolm Catto, Medaphoar, and others from the Stones Throw camp. This one's truly a conceptual triumph, if there ever was such a thing – one of the greatest hip hop producers alive, given carte blanche with the source beats of the century! Madlib's Blue Note crates are heavily weighed in the mid 60s through mid 70s electric beats that often get the shaft in mainstream jazz round-ups, but floor the beathead world into overdrive. Re-interpretations, remixes, and revisions are spliced seamlessly with the source samples, creating a whole new world where hip hop and late model live funk not only co-exists with classic Blue Note jazz, but it actually draws a linear transition between the 2 genius art forms. Beautiful stuff – if the album isn't the most original idea to come along all of these years into the hip hop & jazz underground, it's certainly one of the most perfectly realized projects of its kind, ever! It's one for the time capsule – pure funky sample wizardry by any standard! Includes Monk Higgins' "Slim's Return" interpreted by Ahmad Miller and DJ Lord Such on cuts, "Donald Byrd's "Distant Land", "Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Bounce", Yesterday's New Quintet's adaptation of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", Madlib Invazion's "Funky Blue Note", the Joe McDuphrey Experience take on Horace Silver's/Herbie Hancock's "Peace/Dolphin Dance" and lots more.

A pretty great follow up to the previous hits package Retrospective – this one with many of the Tribe's OTHER hits, plus 2 previously unreleased nuggets! Alternate mixes, out of print soundtrack and 12-inch cuts, plus album tracks that weren't ingrained into the mainstream consciousness – cuts like "Oh My God", "Award Tour", "Can I Kick It?", "One, Two, S&!t" with Busta Rhymes, "Peace, Prosperity, and Paper" and "Glamour & Glitz". Of course, you also get the better known tracks like " I Left My Wallet In El Segundo", "Check The Rhyme", "Buggin' Out", "Scenario", "Jazz (We've Got)" and the rest. 2 rare unreleased cuts made it on: "Mr. Incognito" and "The Night He Got Caught". Now if the BMG folks would only be so kind as to release Q-Tip's lost Kamal The Abstract. . .

A masterpiece from prime era Tribe Called Quest! Midnight Maurauders was Tribe's third LP, and even though there were no tracks yet credited to the Ummah, this is pretty much the beginning of Tribe's transition to that sound – with the same mellow, laid back vibe as their best early material, but less of an overtly jazzy reference in their sound. Phife and Tip are still on point lyrically, and honestly, this is pretty much the last LP that Tribe dropped that's got nearly all hits and no misses on it. With the cuts "Award Tour", "Midnight", "Electric Relaxation", "Clap Your Hands", "Oh My God", "The Chase, Part II", and "Keep It Rollin".