Listen to Tracks #41-50 of Our Mandatory Golden Era Hip Hop List or You’re a Dirty Heretic

The Inquisitor has taken a break from suspiciously sniffing the shaven heads of the bound psykers aboard the nav deck of the Blade of Procrastination, issuing orders for canonization of another 10 great Golden Era tracks.

You can listen to the whole list here and improve you throwback listening time.

41. Souls of Mischief, "That’s When Ya Lost"
Bay Area underground asserting itself as an MCing force. Everybody from the heads to the white, stoned skaters in the CU Boulder dorm rooms heard "'93 Til Infinity," but this is better. Not as hooky as the "'93 Til.." sample, but harder-hitting beat and better bars. A monument to mic skills, regardless of ZIP code.

42. Leaders of the New School, "Bass is Loaded/Zearocks"
From "T.I.M.E.", Leaders of the New School's second (and I think, final) LP. Lush production and the reason I still shout out MANY STYLES and BRROOK-CHOOK-CHOOK I'M PLAYING SUPER NINTENDO while I'm making breakfast for no reason at all. Tagging "Zearocks" on to this because it's more than the usual producer-challenge interstitial: Banging snare, killer horn sample and Public Enemy snippet refashioned to announce late glory of a high-voltage crew that would never be quite the same again.

43. Jay-Z, "Reservoir Dogs"
Became my #2 all-time crew joint behind "Don't Curse" after two listens. The swagger. The wordplay. The firepower. The utter contempt for anybody else who even claims to be on the chess board. If this song were a scene from a movie, it would be the slo-mo part where nine dudes pull heat from Italian jackets striding over marble floors.

44. MC Lyte, "Shut the Eff Up! (Hoe)" 
Nothing focuses an MC so much as a) having a story to tell or b) an antagonist to dismantle. Fun track that refuses to economize; the measures keep going as long as Lyte had something to say, which was a lot. "I sensed it, predicted it, knew it would happen/You'd plop your fat ass on the scene and start rappin.'" You can tell Lyte and Milk D were having a lot of fun with this.

45. Splack Pack, "Scrub da Ground"
Crews of young Miami dudes exhorting female dancers to do EVERYTHING NASTIER is standard issue, but this track cooks a little hotter: sizzling tempo with super-efficient studio fillips that work very hard with minimal footprint. An absolute banger.

46. Kool Moe Dee, "I Go to Work"
LL made fun of his old-school pedigree and wraparound shades, but Kool Moe puts on a passionate seminar here — metaphors, internal rhymes, switching up schemes — over a big, dramatic track. Heard this for the first time decades ago and I still can't get enough of it.

47. Beatnuts, "Get Funky"
The Nuts became more prominent for their studio work and collabs a few years after this, but the debut Street Level LP will always be their magnum opus, in my view: this album sets the final jewel, production-wise, into the big-snare-and-a-jazz-hook era with their own loose, thuggish tapestry of sound. JuJu also was underrated as a rhyme writer. This and "Fried Chicken" are the primary pieces of evidence.

48. Brand Nubian, "Steal Ya Hoe"
Off In God We Trust, the full-length LP that Jamar and X did after Puba went off to do his own thing. Highlighting this one because it's such a great example of Sadat X's craft and style, as he taunts, teases and threatens all the unfortunate cuckolds in towns where the Nubian roamed. A singular manifesto of the hip hop Lothario.

49. Naughty By Nature, "Hot Potato"
I don't hear Treach mentioned enough when people are recounting the Great Golden Era MCs, because he was one, keeping it in fifth gear through an entire album and bringing along Bumpy Knuckles himself for a tag-team mic beatdown that blazes like a newborn star.

50. "Coolie High," Camp Lo
Uptown Saturday Night feels like one of those divine manifestations that slips into sight like a golden-scale fish and leaves you in wonderment; Camp Lo never made much of a splash thereafter, but I could go to the afterlife knowing I did one thing this perfect, a luminous tableau of creative cadences that takes you to some sort of otherworldly bootlegger conference/Player's Ball in a nightclub on a plane of existence where it's eternally 1:30 a.m. and people are still rolling in freshly dipped for the night.