Hip Hop — Recently Added

A win for wily hip hip mainstay Big Boi's growing legacy as a solo star! The onetime more subtly innovative half of the Outkast – subtle as compared to Andre 3000's more flamboyant presence, anyway – succeeding mightily out front now, backed with solid, wisely timeless Organized Noize ... LP, Vinyl record album

A great EP by Jneiro Jarel & MF Doom's JJ Doom duo – impressive enough in duo form and featuring pretty incredible roster of guest participants & producers/remixers! JJ Doom appeared as instantly one of the fresher Doom collaborative projects in years, and it's aged incredibly well, ... LP, Vinyl record album

Soulful beats from the Dilla archives! This batch of untitled, numbered tracks from the Ma Dukes vaults feels a little more along the lines of his more soul steeped efforts – persistent beats and a tight core, but with bits of keyboards, piano or jazzy organ or strings – some spacier ... LP, Vinyl record album

The massive third album from Run DMC – made at the top of their game – an pivotal effort that brought them to peak popularity and helped break hip hop in a huge way in the pop culture landscape! Part of the album's strength is its guitar-heavy sound on some of the grooves – ... LP, Vinyl record album

Stone classic LL Cool J! There was a time we didn't really rate this one on the same level as Radio, but listening with fresh ears after all these years – prime old school Def Jam with an energy that's really missing in so much of the hip hop to follow in the next couple years – and ... LP, Vinyl record album

A batch of spirtually resonant hip hop instrumentals from the mighty Ras G – built from and all gospel bevy of samples! While sticking with the gospel concept, he really draws from a deep well of diverse beats and styles – from string-laden gospel soul to spacier sounds, with pitch ... LP, Vinyl record album

Always a fresh producer and smart, personal storyteller, Jonwayne steps to the plate and knocks it out once again on Rap Album Two – rooted equally strongly in timeless production and focused rhyme spitting! Jonwayne handles the majority of production himself, but as always he's a gracious ... CD

If Paul's Boutique was the Beasties' psychedelic hip hop Sgt Peppers, then Check Your Head is their White Album – a raw, stylistically sprawling, yet always connected batch of live instrumentation – backing rhymes that range from stream of consciousness to expertly written. Check Your ... LP, Vinyl record album

Benchmark west coast gansta – and one of the hardest hitting albums of any genre of the past couple decades. We're not gonna lie, we played this record to death when it came out – and it still holds up better than most of the material put out by former NWA's, and most of the West Coast ... LP, Vinyl record album

Lupe Fiasco takes his style a kick & a push deeper than the perceived sunny positivity of his debut on second album The Cool – flashing some biting social criticism – and a sharp brilliance that shows he's too restless to simply coast! The clean, buzzing synth funk orchestra vibe ... LP, Vinyl record album

Genius from the mind of Kool Keith aka Big Willie Smith aka Poppa Large aka Dr. Octagon. Since his days with Ultramagnetics, no one has mastered the abstract lyrical style like Kool Keith, self-proclaimed inventor of all rhyme styles. 20 tracks, with dope atmospheric features by the Automator and ... LP, Vinyl record album

The Ownerz, indeed. The first Gang Starr full length after a 5 year break, and only their third in the preceding decade picks up exactly where Guru and Primo left off. It's Hip Hop 101 from the purists with love to the believers, and a proud, healthy disdain for the pretenders. Premier's ... LP, Vinyl record album

The blistering 1990 EP by NWA – a fanbase divisive and critically underappreciated salvo in its day, despite being a fast seller – and a much sharper piece of work than it was credited for back in the day! NWA as a driven singular force was pretty much a thing of the past by this point, ... LP, Vinyl record album

Nice early Ruthless compilation, issued on Macola in '87, and a year later on Priority with a slightly altered tracklist – featuring NWA and other affilated members of the Ruthless stable at the time – with tracks by NWA, solo Eazy-E and Fila Fresh Crew featuring DOC! A genuine ... LP, Vinyl record album

A hip hop milestone for the Def Jam label and early rap superstar LL Cool J! This the fantastic first LP for LL – one that really helped kicked off a whole new school of hip hop – and proved to be huge game changer for the early Def Jam era! Radio features straight up excellent early ... LP, Vinyl record album

A vital third act in the thankfully ongoing RTJ saga! The first album was unsurprisingly excellent, but surprisingly popular. The second album not only turned out to be a bigger hit, it was also a creative peak for both El-P and Killer Mike – which is really saying something. So the stakes ... CD

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Largely instrumental craft from Cologne producer Flitz & Suppe! Mirage works well on dual fronts – setting up a laidback, often breezy jazz flavored atmosphere of dreamy keys, piano smoothed out sax and more – but it's got a very compelling beathead and aesthetic, too, with sampled ... LP, Vinyl record album

Kendrick Lamar takes wider creative left turns than ever before on To Pimp A Butterfly – with a funk steeped production style that filters tried-and-true P Funk influences through leftfield modern beatcraft styles, inspired by cats like Madlib to Thundercat, the latter of whom is an official ... LP, Vinyl record album

A groundbreaking meeting of musical icons – with veteran jazz greats, a couple of then-young guns, and one of the MCs who helped bring jazz into hip hop in the first place! Jazzmatazz bridges both stylistic and generational boundaries in incredible ways, not only an earnest effort by Guru to ... LP, Vinyl record album