Hip Hop — Recently Added

KKanye West's & Kid Cudi's joint debut as Kids See Ghosts! Each looks inward and tackles existential personal issues on the lyrical front, with kind of a spacey melancholy vibe to the production, and with cool synths and fuzz-steeped production with some really interesting samples in the mix ... CD

"That's The Joint" is one of our favorite grooves from the classic years of Sugar Hill Records – a killer cut based around Cheryl Lynn's "To Be Real" – with the original groove slamming nicely on the bottom, as Funky 4 Plus 1 trade lines over the top! The track's ... 12-inch, Vinyl record

DJ Muggs in a raw, neo classic NY gritty hip hop mode – and if you're going to pull that blueprint off convincingly, you may as well be one the architects – really doing a solid, timeless job here! This is tough, terse, top notch stuff with a strong guestlist to suit, including legends ... LP, Vinyl record album

If there's a sure thing when it comes funky drum breaks records, there's no surer bet than on on DJ Paul Nice! Volume 2 in his Sure Shot Drum Series is another deeply dug collection of drum breaks put together for the first time on wax, curated and culled from we can't even guess how many records, ... LP, Vinyl record album

The last great Notorious BIG single issued in his lifetime! "Hypnotize" gets your head nodding right out of the gate, Puffy & company's production bringing a funky heft to that impeccably sampled bass groove from Herb Alpert's "Rise", Biggie spitting pure charisma all the ... 12-inch, Vinyl record

A collaborative effort from Madlib and Freddie Gibbs – the union of one the most prolific producers in abstract hip hop and a hugely talented rhymer! We've said it before and we imagine we'll say it many more times, but Madlib really delivers when he's paired with straight forward MCs – ... 12-inch, Vinyl record

A USB producer kit featuring a collection fantastic sounds from the original recordings the late great producer Jay Dee made for Slum Village – put together by sample service Splice, the Nature Sounds label and Slum Village! This is the blueprint production materials for an important piece of ... Misc

A Stones Throw sci-fi masterpiece – one that was destined for greatness from conception, but we're still pretty well blown away by the final product! MC Doom and beatmaster Madlib couldn't be better suited for a collaboration. As much as we've dug the best of Doom's material of the last ... CD

Lupe Fiasco proves again why he's one of the most respected voices in early post-millennium hip hop on Lasers – running the show here, but with some guest spots by Skylar Grey, Trey Songz, MDMA and others. Lupe is that fascinating figure who is more likely to be heard plotting a route out of ... LP, Vinyl record album

The classic debut album by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five – one of the pioneering groups in hip hop -history- not that we didn't need to tell you that! With prototypical party jams and the original conscious rap landmark "The Message", all over old school grooves laid ... LP, Vinyl record album

The second Pharcyde record – and though not as blunted and playful as the first one, it's still nearly as great – with that unrivaled, wholly original, easy west coast vibe! The production is more steady-handed this time around, which alienated fans of Bizarre Ride early on, but it ... LP, Vinyl record album

NERD sees sounds all right – and those sounds are far looser and more free associative than the precise hitmaking formula that main NERDs Pharell Williams and Chad Hugo spun as superstar production team The Neptunes! The sounds to see, feel, and hear, include jittery synthesizer beatcraft, ... LP, Vinyl record album

The game changing Def Jam classic – and possibly the greatest album by the Beastie Boys – even though they'd grow up a whole lot after this! Profane party anthems galore, and the Beasties would distance themselves from much of the attitude of this album, making their career arc from ... CD

Hip hop's reigning kings of longevity The Roots deliver another great album with Undun – we'd have to think it's entirely uncompromising and they're doing exactly what they want to do on this one – so if you thought their day (eh, latenight) job would would bring their album work into ... LP, Vinyl record album

Kev Brown doing a lot more than merely filling in the blank, he's filling out a furiously paced release schedule with win after another – some of most rewarding and stylistically farthest reaching material in his career to date! This one follows up his solo rap return-to-form Homework and ... LP, Vinyl record album

An on target salvo from one of hip hop's longest reigning mic maestros, produced by a mercifully focused Kanye West! With a taut running time of around 27 minutes and a title as no nonsense as Nasir, you could be forgiven if you hit play expecting something as sharply honed as Illmatic, but neither ... CD

A record that no hip hop home should be without – the one and only album from Main Source, but a set that's more than strong enough to stand next to the best from contemporaries like De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, and Black Sheep! Like all three of those groups, these guys have a way of ... LP, Vinyl record album

AAn on target salvo from one of hip hop's longest reigning mic maestros, produced by a mercifully focused Kanye West! With a taut running time of around 27 minutes and a title as no nonsense as Nasir, you could be forgiven if you hit play expecting something as sharply honed as Illmatic, but ... LP, Vinyl record album

One of the toughest, leanest, tightest and most on point efforts from Freddie Gibbs to date – and one of the best! Despite the dead on perfect homage to the Teddy Pendergrass's quiet storm soul classic Teddy with the cover art here, make no mistakes, the material is Freddie Gibbs at his most ... CD

A jazz-inspired hip hop uberclassic! While Digable Planets might not have pioneered the jazzy hip hop vibe – we mightnod to the Native Tongues scene and DJ Premier's productions in the late 80s for that – Digables set a new standard with breezy but head nodding production and mellow, ... LP, Vinyl record album

The somewhat slept on second album by Das Efx – and in hindsight, it's just as solid as Dead Serious – maybe even more consistently strong than the breakout debut! Dray and Skoob keep up the loco syllabic tempo and tongue tripping rhymes on this one – over the head nodding Solid ... LP, Vinyl record album

Outkast's first single from Aquemini – one of the great southern hip hop singles of the late 90s and an important creative benchmark for Big Boi, Andre 3000 and Organized Noize however you might feel about their use of the civil rights heroine's name! As fresh, soulful & uniquely Outkast ... 12-inch, Vinyl record

A modern classic hip hop soundtrack to Black Panther that should make T'Challa proud! It was pretty clear early on that Black Panther might be one of the greatest modern super hero movies – and an important one for the political and cultural climate of the late teens – so the pressure ... LP, Vinyl record album

Alchemist mixing up hypnotic aural elixirs in ways we've never heard from the legendary hip hop producer – working with samples, sounds and atmosphere from French jazz, funk, soundtracks and psychedelia – half a world away from the bedrock hip hop he made is name on! It's a rewarding ... LP, Vinyl record album

Blockhead still delivering the goods after and a solid decade and a half delivering distinctive, solo producer driven independent hip hop! Free Sweatpants is a pretty straightforward (and wisely timeless in sound, even if some the track titles give away the late teens era) headnodding hip hop ... LP, Vinyl record album

A pretty fantastic record from Chicago rapper Joey Purp – the kind of set that makes us mighty proud to share our hometown! If there's one thing that seems to come from Chicago of late, it's the sense of surprise in hip hop – that maybe the city's style is no sense of style at all ... LP, Vinyl record album

Streetwise raps from Freddie Gibbs, backed by inventive production from Madlib – here on one of the best records yet on 'Lib's own Madlib Invazion imprint! If you'll forgive us a little bit of repetition – because we KNOW we've written this before – there's just something extra ... LP, Vinyl record album

Heavily funky sci fi weirdness from the Metal Face archives! If you dig Doom beats – and why wouldn't ya?! – this is pretty prime stuff. They come nice and heavy, with all the rolling soul sample loops, peppered with odball dialog snippets from horror and sci fi flicks here and there. ... LP, Vinyl record album

The essential early 90s classic by The Pharcyde, the group's high water mark, and one of the greatest hip hop albums of the era! Along with Del and the Souls Of Mischief, the Pharcyde were one of the few West Coast units to achieve any kind of widespread popularity using the uniquely loopy, ... LP, Vinyl record album

DAMN!, indeed – Kendrick has yet to take even a small step down from the creative peak he's been riding for years – and takes another daring step forward with this strong, strident, no-mess-taking classic in the making! The surprise-announced DAMN! finds him taking on timely concerns ... LP, Vinyl record album