Image credit: Max Williams

I was ten years old when I bought my first cassettes. With some of my savings I took the bus to the city with my brother and got two singles, Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back and Del tha Funkee Homosapien’s Mistadobalina. It was a big deal back then in 1992, listening to them back-to-back all summer long. Over the years I continued listening to hip-hop, but because most of my money was spent on video games for the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis for US readers) it was merely a casual interest. It lasted until 1996 before I really started getting attracted to music. Hip-hop was still my genre of preference but I couldn’t really identify with the hip-hop culture. Gangsta rap was very popular at the time but I never felt comfortable with its commercialized sound and negativity in the lyrics.

Luckily there were more serious and intelligent hip-hop collectives around too if you looked hard enough. Through websites like Hiphopinfinity (which sadly closed years ago) I found out about more socially aware hip-hop artists and collectives like Quannum, Anticon, Freestyle Fellowship and the Stones Throw label. I was hooked on this music for years. This week, while flipping through and listening to my old hip-hop albums again, I was startled by the difference in how well those records had aged over the years. Some of them still sounded surprisingly fresh but others – even those that I regarded as my favourite albums back then – sounded undeniably dated.

As I was rediscovering my hip-hop background I decided to collect some songs that still get me going. Which resulted in two playlists, the first of which is included below. Hopefully by revisiting these hip-hop albums again it will lead to some discoveries for others.

1. Lyrics Born – Hott People
   Quannum Spectrum (Quannum, 1999)
2. Latyrx – Lady Don’t Tek No
   Lady Don’t Tek No (Solesides, 1997)
3. Freestyle Fellowship – Innercity Boundaries
   Innercity Griots (4th & Broadway, 1993)
4. A Tribe Called Quest – Jazz (We’ve Got)
   The Low End Theory (Jive, 1991)
5. Quasimoto – Come on Feet
   The Unseen (Stones Throw, 2000)
6. Breakestra – Inner City Blues
   Live Mixtape Pt. 2 (Stones Throw, 2001)
7. Handsome Boy Modeling School – Holy Calamity (Bear Witness II)
   So … How’s Your Girl? (Tommy Boy, 1999)
8. Binary Star – Reality Check
   Masters of the Universe (Subterraneous / Trc, 2000)
9. Haiku d’Etat – Still Rappin’
   Haiku d’Etat (Meanstreet, 1998)

Stream playlist