Two Songs That Amazed Me Last Winter

File under: Non-hip hop listening that somehow spun bleak mid-winter mid-evenings into pre-bedtime revelations. Mucho gusto.

“Monomania,” Deerhunter
Amazing how a sprig of melody can tease despair into a wider, protean ache pulsing with ecstatic light. You can feel hope or rage or some nameless, riveting aggregate of the two. That's one of my favorite moments as a listener: "What, exactly, am I feeling right now?" And upon subsequent listens: "What techniques are being used to do this to me?"

This landed on my playlist after I found an article about the 10th anniversary of Deerhunter's Monomania. The writer talked about frontman Bradford Cox's state at the time in relation to the title track, which I listened to right after reading the article.

“In my head/There's something rotten and dead/I can't compete with,” he croaks in a highly processed voice seconds before the song launches into one of Deerhunter's signature Heroic Layered Fadeouts that take up half the song. Except they subvert the formula so the usual dreamy surrender becomes disintegration. There's a very pretty and simple guitar melody, but it is subsumed by what I take to be an obsessively sculpted sonic portrait of allostatic overload. Alcoholism. Nervous breakdown.

The little melody gets buffeted and nearly drowned by groaning walls of feedback (wait, is that the sound of a go-kart engine or chainsaw they're throwing in there?), and it's oddly soaring, if soaring means escaping any geometric plane at steep angles regardless of the orientation of the surrounding world. I listened to it six times in a row before bed and it felt like the only important thing that happened all day.

“Unwritten Law,” The Sound
Most of the time I "shop and hunt" with my music list. I hear a track that wallops me. Calculate that a track that good will have maybe two others that make me feel that way. Play the LP, harvest the handful of star efforts into the big list and move on.

But if intriguing singles from a particular act keep surfacing—especially one whose sound and smarts feel ahead of the curve or spring out of a lacuna in my mental map of an era—I'll stop and listen longer. Enter Jeopardy by The Sound. For the purposes of feeding readers a morsel, I'm going to put a single track at the end of this entry, but I played this thing front to back and was rewarded.

At first I assumed I was hearing a polished and studied post-punk revival band from c. 2008, like somebody trying to subtly optimize old recipes. But I looked it up and gaped at the result. They did this in 1980. They predicted every slick, moody trick that bands like INXS and Flock of Seagulls and U2 would use to flood the charts in '83. It's punchy and saturnine. Full of good hooks. Rutilant with a smoldering confidence. It shifts from austere to jubilant—within and between songs—with such sure-footedness and absolute trust in their arrangements and mixing. Like a sentence that reveals just what it means to and not a syllable more.

After I did my first room-to-room tour of Jeopardy, here's the track I circled back to put on repeat while drinking Starkville-style toddies and pitying every dunce who was not in that room with me. (One of many nifty touches here: I love how the chorus is just instrumental the first two times and he sings on the third one. Showcase that toothsome bass string and beautiful lead melody, let it glisten and chug while the lead singer broods in the cut to emerge at the end. All the best drugs at all the right potency in the divine sequence.)

“What We Listen to and Why,” feat. Josh Buergel: A Discussion and a Playlist

Imagine our delight in learning that software engineer Josh Buergel was not only a boardgame designer, but a simultaneously mordant and self-effacing capsule writer and tireless curator of music at his Five Random Songs blog. Josh indulged BGS in an exploration of stuff we love—and how people and delicate circumstance pushed our listening lives in new directions.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: I began by de-digitizing my morning and making a mental note of the random song snippet that was in my head when I woke up. It seems to arise from the same part of my mind where anxious second voices offer unwanted running commentary, but it was a good track: "Santa Cruz" by Fatboy Slim. 

I've revisited several tracks from Better Living Through Chemistry and found them even stronger than I remember. I overdosed on hip hop between '87-'94, but the UK big beat stuff became a staple of my mid-late '90s listening because it recalled the thrill of discovering hip hop: those Big Beat producers loved breakbeats, scratches, punchy vocal samples.

There are worse ways to start a day. How did your musical day start off?

JOSH BUERGEL: I came to Fatboy Slim from a different direction, as I was a big fan of The Housemartins back in the day, so knowing that Fatboy Slim was Norman Cook made me more curious than I otherwise would have been. I was never a huge Big Beat guy. During that time period, I was mostly consumed with indie rock and noise rock, but I definitely sampled it here and there. 

I have to relate one of the dorkiest anecdotes I have: I was in debate in high school (that's not the dorky part, or at least, not all of it), which meant that I spent a fair bit of time hanging out with other high schoolers in motels with limited supervision. However, this didn't result in any of the bacchanalian hijinks that the movies of the time would have led me to expect. No, it mostly led to things like "gluing ceiling tiles back in place with spray cheese" and "teaching ourselves how to play bridge." 

One time, as we sat around a room listening to The Housemartins, a favorite among that group, we decided that we were going to record our own little cover of it. In the absence of proper recording equipment, we disassembled a headphone and secured it at the bottom of a lampshade, giving us a makeshift mic. We gathered around and did a shout-sing into a lampshade, recording straight to a cassette tape, belting out "Sheep" as best we could. Did it sound terrible? You know it. Did we have fun? Absolutely. Did we get yelled at to keep it down? I think you know the answer to that.

Anyway, my musical journey this morning began when I woke at 4 a.m. out of unspecific anxiety. As my unfocused mind tried to go back to sleep, it flipped through my mental songbook and settled on the punchy intro to the Slackers' "Every Day is Sunday” Not the whole song, mind you. Just that intro, looped into infinity like a klaxon for the world's coolest old-timey fire engine. It's reminiscent of the horrible old Wiseblood track, "Death Rape 2000": seven and a half minutes of three notes drilling their way into your skull. At least I didn't have that in my head, I suppose.

Where did you head after Big Beat? For me at least, I had to purge "Every Day is Sunday" by actually listening to the tune, and I headed from there to listen to the rest of the album, which is a treat.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: Ah, remembering your penchant for ska guitar from my Five Random Songs listening. Hopefully that killed the earworm.

One note on Fatboy Slim and The Housemartins: I had London 0 Hull 4 on tape in high school and didn't uncover the connection until I'd been listening to breakbeats for several years. I hope you have that recording you made somewhere.

Mid-'90s to early aughts began my tutelage: My boss, Tim, and two of my colleagues, Michael and Sam, took me to school. There is no algorithm that will ever replicate the range and depth of stuff they turned me onto. And they'd do it in the coolest way possible: I'd hold forth on the handful of things I knew about, and they'd be like, "Yeah, I love that shit, but check this out." I knew a lot about a little. They knew the best five adjacent alternatives for everything I would rattle off. Electronic, psychedelia, punk and art punk, metal, jazz, garage rock, soul...

One of my favorite lessons: closing the bars one night and ending up at Sammy's place. I had a Photek CD I had just bought on the strength of a good review. The first track was good, and I was trying really hard to like the rest, it being well-reviewed and all. I tried to impress Sammy with it. It played for 30 seconds and he slurred, "We're not listenin' to this fuckin' porno music." Then he threw in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Eno and Byrne and just fucked my head up.

JOSH BUERGEL: Alas, I think that hotel-room Housemartins recording, scratchy and distant, is lost to time.

The value of a music guru in one's life cannot be overstated. In high school, as I began to develop actual music tastes and begin to explore what I might like, the closest thing I had to a local music guru was my oldest sister. And obviously, that was wildly unacceptable to a fourteen-year-old. This obstinate, rock-headed stance meant that I was slow to recognize that my sister's taste was really good, and led me to disdain The Clash and Elvis Costello for years. Youth is wasted on the dippest of shits.

I had friends in high school who were also exploring underground music. It was a challenge to find stuff in pre-internet days in Spokane, WA. The key guru in my life at that time was an anonymous dude that my debate partner (shut up!) and I met at a debate camp (SHUT UP!) at the University of California at Berkeley. 

As he lived in a far cooler part of the state, he had access to far more information about underground bands. When he caught us listening to Nitzer Ebb in the dorm while reading through newspapers for things we could egregiously take out of context, he started talking to us about industrial. It became clear that we didn't know a whole lot—sure, Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails, but those bands weren't hard to find. And we knew about Big Black, so that was pretty cool of us, comparatively anyway. Rather than disdain us as the hopeless busters we obviously were, he decided to educate us.

He wrote down a whole bunch of bands on a scrap of paper. Just off the top of his head, he threw down a canon of industrial and underground shit for us to track down, a Rosetta Stone, but for clattering noise and angry shouting. It became a quest for us find records from this list, some of which are still very much favorites. Einstürzende Neubauten, for one, was on the list, and they're not only absolute geniuses and one of my favorite ever bands, they're even still going. 

Foetus was on the list, and JG Thirlwell's catalog is untouchable. And that marks referencing his work in each of my installments thus far (he's half of Wiseblood). Coil was on the list, and God only knows how some random high schooler knew about them, but they rule and Horse Rotorvator is a stone-cold classic. And so we go. When I went off to college, I made sure that I got a transcription of the list to take with me, and I continued to hunt for records from it even then.

But beyond the actual contents of the list, which mostly ruled, what that list did was give me the courage to take shots on things. For whatever reason, prior to that point, I was cautious about buying new music and seeking new artists. I was eager for new sounds, but still conservative about things. I had to have some significant exposure to the music before I was willing to have a go. I gradually expanded my exposure to music, but at a slow-ish rate. The list, though, gave me permission to have a go at stuff based on vibes, a quick recommendation, a capsule review, a shared music label, whatever. Buying a blind record went from scary to thrilling, and that was a sea change in my relationship to music. My tastes exploded in that last year of high school and through college, fueled in the latter by getting involved with college radio and new friends big into music. But it all started with one guy at debate camp who made a list.

So, what's your list? You meet an eager kid, just starting to explore music, and want to blow them away. Who are your five acts that you want them to learn about?

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: To your point, you gotta grok what direction the kid's headed in if the recco's gonna stick. Cool recent story: Gal who works at the coffee shop I sometimes hit on Main St. Sweet kid, very talkative. Told me she was into classic jazz lately, “..like John Coltrane." After taking a couple seconds to process that fact, I got her to throw an Ella track on the shop's system—I was on a Clap Hands! Here Comes Charlie kick at the time—and to keep an eye out for Lee Morgan, particularly Sidewinder. In hindsight, I'd tack Sidney Bechet, Hampton Hawes and Django in there for good measure, what the hell. That's five. That seems like a good exploratory starter kit for a young person who's receptive to jazz.

If it's out of their emotional frame of reference, it withers. Got another kid at the smoothie shop to listen to "Gates of Steel" by DEVO, but that's only because I found out during register chit-chat he didn't know who DEVO was, and I got all strident and weird and messianic about it. On the subsequent visit, found out he'd actually listened to it. He made some polite observations, but he didn't care about that shit. He didn't have a bridge to it. The bridge has to start on their side.

JOSH BUERGEL: It's my suspicion that for most people, it's basically impossible to predict what I'll call a breakthrough record. Once someone decides they like a genre or scene or whatever, they can and will explore freely within that genre, and will probably be pretty open to recommendations within that genre. The reason that list of bands worked for me is that I was already into industrial, so it was a way to explode that interest out in every direction. And sure, some of those bands pushed the envelope—to describe Foetus as like anything else is probably foolish—but those bands had a track record of appealing to fans in the genre, so it worked. But if that same list was presented to a kid who was mostly into what we called college rock at the time (R.E.M. and the like) or post-punk or new wave or whatever, it wouldn’t take.

There are blessed moments where a special record breaks through genres, knocks down the walls surrounding our tastes and shows us that we might love a different genre. I can name some of those records easily off the top of my head: Raising Hell showed me that I might love hip-hop (and Three Feet High and Rising and It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back taught me I definitely did). Those three records are, of course, stone-cold classics, inner-circle hall of fame records that have been praised in every corner, and deservedly so. 

But the tricky thing about a breakthrough record is that there's no real way to predict it. An album has to hit someone with the right sound, at the right time, in the right mood. It's an alchemical process, pure serendipity, and the only way it's ever happened for me is just happenstance. I hear a thing in a store, on the radio, at a party, at a friend's house, wherever, and I get a blast of magic through my head. 

The album that cracked the door to punk open for me was Allroy's Revenge, by ALL (the band that descended from the Descendents). It hit me just right. I couldn't explain why, but it sounded great to me, and I made a copy of my friend's CD and listened to it a ton. That led me from there to other work by them, by the Descendents, other SST stuff, the Dead Kennedys, and on we go. But that breakthrough record? Nobody could have predicted it.

It's why, to this day, I just try stuff. Records that I don't know, bands that I don't know, genres I don't love (but might soon), all kinds of things. It's an attempt to capture lightning in a bottle again, and I'll never get tired of chasing that high. It's getting harder and harder for me as the years go on, but I'll never stop.

I got through all of that without saying I'm not qualified to talk about jazz. Not bad!

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: So, what track most recently created that serendipitous (and increasingly evasive) blast of magic out of nowhere for you? Let's hear it.

JOSH BUERGEL: Good question! I used to be kind of an off-and-on again metal guy. I always loved Metallica because I have ears. I really enjoyed Slayer after being curious why they were on Def Jam and getting my skull crushed by Reign in Blood. I learned about Napalm Death in college and just slowly added metal bands I followed gradually over the years. But I never really went out seeking things. Wasn't my scene, you see.

By 2013, that stable of metal bands that I liked had grown enough that I think most rational observers would conclude that I was a metal fan, but I still sort of resisted that notion. The record that pulled me over the line from "Yeah, I like some metal, but not a ton,” to "I suppose I'm a metal guy" was from Altar of Plagues. It got a nice writeup in the AV Club, so I picked up Teethed Glory and Injury. I was sitting in the parking lot of my son's preschool, having arrived early for pickup that day, and was listening to it in the car. It was riveting. Sure, I'd listened to black metal before and even enjoyed some of it, but the visceral impact of the album hit me just right. I got to "Burnt Year" and it all clicked. That song, in that parking lot, on that day, tipped me over. I became a metal guy.

I'm not sure I've been hit quite the same since then? The previous one I can really remember was when Easy Street Records in West Seattle put on "Up From The South" from the Budos Band in the store in 2005 while I was waiting for my table at the nearby Mashiko. It was instant love. I became rabid about soul instantly, especially the new wave of stuff at that time. I'd been at least an occasional soul listener, as any hip-hop fan sort of invariably is, but that record and moment really kicked it into overdrive. So, every eight years-ish I hit one of these on my own? 

Those aren't the only records I've fallen in love with over that time, of course, but those are time where my tastes shifted and came into focus, and my path of seeking music bent in some new direction.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: My revelations this summer came from revisiting bands that I could hear with new ears now that I'm no longer a teenager (well, not in most regards) and don't stridently base my whole identity on which group listens to what. With gentle nudges from two friends who pointed me at tracks I never listened to from For Those About to Rock, I spent about two weeks this summer, mostly drunk, just listening to Thin Lizzy, Cheap Trick, Motorhead and AC/DC. I went after grainy concert videos. Weird late-night showcases like Don Kirshner's Rock Concert salvaged from the VHS collections of diligent obsessives. Listened to stuff other than the handful of tracks that FM radio ground into the dirt.

I was like that Ford exec in Ford vs Ferrari when Damon's character took him for a little spin in the monster he and his fellow senior brass had commissioned, but hadn't experienced. It's a great scene. He was weeping at the end: "I had no idea!"

The last instance was something like that divine visitation. I was legless in my kitchen, somewhere in the temporal warp between midnight and false dawn. The accent lights I placed all over my kitchen transformed its hideous and dated surfaces into an ethereal rock club. I think I listened to "Southern Girls" by Cheap Trick 15 times in a row. Each replay my brain was picking out new small touches that made it work: the pristine backing vocal melody on the chorus, the way Rick Nielsen's reverb-y tricks over Bun E. Carlos' lunchbucket drum intro make you salivate for that first big downstroke chord. The joy was absolute.

I used to think I'd go watch the Battle of Hastings or see Charlie Parker play at Harlem clubs if I had a time machine. Give me that option today? I'd just rewind a few weeks and do that night again.

JOSH BUERGEL: The point about not caring who listens to what is certainly one of those gifts we gain with age, and it's without a doubt a valuable one. Young Josh wouldn't be caught dead listening to country (Uncle Tupelo didn't count, maaaaan). My dad always derided the stuff, which was omnipresent in eastern Washington, and I certainly absorbed his contempt. And while I haven't come around on pop country at all (it's bad), learning more about country has been a nice journey. I'm certainly not well-versed or anything, but there's some outstanding music out there, and I don't even flinch at the sound of a twang anymore.

Broadly, I think there's a lesson there that only took decades to sink in, which is if something has stood the test of time and still appeals to people, there's probably something of value there. And it's worth seeking that value and learning about it, not just to see if it's for you, but even to acknowledge that it's there. 

Plenty of stuff will come and go, not really have much of a legacy. But if it did and found an audience, "Why?" is a great question to ask. Why do people still get amped by AC/DC? Why does Cheap Trick still sound like a million bucks today? You can unpack the micro, like you are, and find brilliance at that level. You can let the macro wash over you, let out a little "Fuck yeah.” Doesn't really matter, because if you pay attention, you can hear the quality, and it'll click.

BREAKUP GAMING SOCIETY: Yep. Speaking of which, you deserve to know that your efforts with Five Random Songs were not wasted on me. You're one of my Music Influencers, as proven by the fact I now have several tracks from The Fiery Furnaces on rotation and have for a couple years. At the time, it was lost on me in the hipster noise coming out of Brooklyn, but one night I hit Play on your site's embedded player...and I was sold.

So, good job, Mr. Save Stuff from the Cultural Memory Hole.

-FINIS-

50 Hip Hop Golden-Era Deep Cuts You Simply Must Experience

For Hip Hop’s 50th Birthday, I’ve updated my abandoned 100-track project, switched a few out because I found better entries, and created this so you could learn how to party.

This is not a ranked list. You can play all the tracks in it on this YouTube playlist.

1. Public Enemy, “Miuzi Weighs a Ton” 
All the kiddies go around citing Nation of Millions and Fear of a Black Planet because that’s what they read on hipster listicles and shit. Which is a shame, because PE’s debut album was A TOWERING MASTERPIECE OF SONIC AGGRESSION that stood alone in that year’s crop of incredible early Golden Era wax. Also see from same album: “Public Enemy No. 1” and, yes, that’s Terminator X scratching on Mike Muir’s opening cackle from the Suicidal Tendencies’ first album on “Raise the Roof.” This album is hip hop’s Nevermind the Bollocks...

2. Steady B, “Rockin’ Music” 
Used to be that it was de rigueur to let the DJ flex on at least one whole track of every album. Here DJ Tat Money puts in a workout with irresistible soul/disco hooks and a big, meaty drum machine track. (Fun fact: Steady B’s doing a life bid because when his career went south, his crew tried to rob a bank and sparked a shootout in which they achieved an ignominious first: First woman cop in Pennsylvania to die in line of duty.)

3. Run-DMC, “They Call us Run-DMC”
MCing styles evolved so rapidly from ‘86-’88 that by the time Run-D.M.C. followed up their mega-smash Raising Hell LP with Tougher Than Leather, they’d already been lyrically lapped by Chuck D, Rakim, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Keith et al. Nonetheless, I return to tracks from this album over and over because they’re still fun and the production kicks ass.

4. Audio Two, “Make it Funky”
Gizmo and Milk D will never be in the canon of microphone masters. They were more mixboard dudes who wanted to rap on their own beats (they were also producing stuff for MC Lyte at the time). Here they throw one of the best parties in hip hop with razor-sharp sampling, fun breaks and a few bars of shouted call-and-response crew raps. Daddy-O from Stetsasonic helped out on this one.

Not to be outdone for sheer fun: Milk and Giz of Audio Two

5. Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap, “Five Minutes of Death”
Extremely poor sound quality that I can only find on YouTube, but it’s like holding the superheated mother seed of the ascendant New School in your quaking hands. Superproducer Marley Marl eventually uses this beat on Big Daddy Kane’s classic, “Raw,” but at some point in the studio, he must have just let these drums run and told BDK and Kool G to go for it. No chorus. No pauses. No mercy. All fire.

6. DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince, “The Magnificent Jazzy Jeff”
Legend has it that DJ Cash Money (of Cash Money & Marvelous Marv, another Philly duo) came up with the vaunted “Transformer scratch,” but accounts vary. Here Jazzy Jeff commits the technique to wax along with a cavalcade of ace turntable tricks. If there’s a better “DJ brag” track recorded during this time, I’ve never heard it.

7. Cash Money and Marvelous Marv, “Ugly People Be Quiet”
As long as we’re talking DJ Cash Money, let’s throw this early banger in, too. Pulse-pounding tempo and texture. Produced by Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor, who also discovered and produced Salt-n-Pepa. This is also the best Tears for Fears have ever sounded.

8. 3rd Bass, “Product of the Environment (Remix)”
Don’t fuck with the original album version. You want the remix off The Cactus Revisited. They replace the original’s puny funk bassline and tappity-tap drums with this stomper and rewrite a lot of the bars, which flow better to these drums as MC Serch and Pete Nice tell their tales of white boy come-up. This is the version they did when they came on In Living Color and gave Keenen Ivory Wayans some custom airbrushed shirts. Classy!

9. Poor Righteous Teachers, “Rock Dis Funky Joint”
One of the most astonishingly original microphone performances of all time from Wise Intelligent. Over an unconventional time signature and a bombproof sample, Wise floats, flows, stalls and stutters over seemingly endless verses, keeping all his switched-up rhyme schemes velvety and seamless. Total artistry. These guys were from Trenton.

Wise Intelligent cautions you against trying to recreate what he did on “Rock Dis Funky Joint”

10. Stetsasonic, “Pen and Paper”
Prince Paul said in interviews he was only 17 and not legally old enough to sign contracts when he joined Stet’s top-tier production team. Like that was stopping him. He gets production credit for this one, which is the sound of a young genius spreading his wings. Also a joyous paean to the act of writing. Not long after this, Paul leaves to produce Three Feet High and Rising and quantum-shifts from apprentice to legend. (Not sure where that bassline is from, but it also shows up in Boogie Down Productions’ electrifying remix of Steady B’s “Serious.”)

11. Black Moon, “Who Got Da Props?”
This was an instant underground classic that put Buckshot Shorty and Evil Dee on the map. Black Moon were aligned with the Boot Camp Clik (like Heltah Skeltah, Smif-N-Wessun — who became the Cocoa Brovaz after the gun manufacturer lodged a strong legal objection for obvious reasons). I remember going to a show in 2006 featuring Denver indie rappers and one of the Radio Bums dropped this beat and I looked around the room and everybody was lip syncing it word for word.

12. Lords of the Underground, “Chief Rocka”
DoItAll and Mr. Funke, New Jersey cats with roots in the black frat scene, tear it down over a beat produced by somebody I don’t know, but engineered by Marley Marl. Sexy-as-all-get-out bassline with an echoed snare and OMIGOD HERE COMES THE CHORUS AGAIN
THE LORD CHIEF ROCKA #1 CHIEF ROCKA
THE LORD CHIEF ROCKA #1 CHIEF ROCKA
THE LORD CHIEF ROCKA #1 CHIEF ROCKA
If you got beef, you can sleep with Jimmy Hoffa.

13. Fu-Schnickens feat. Shaquille O’Neal, “What's Up Doc? (K-Cut's Fat Trac Remix)
Technically, this is Shaq featuring the Schnicks because it came off of the lumbering center’s debut rap album, Shaq Diesel, in 1993. K-Cut’s Fat Trac version was repurposed on the Schnick’s Nervous Breakdown LP. Shaq loved these guys, although their work doesn’t seem to have aged as well as many of their peers (especially after the Schnicks’ Nervous Breakdown LP, where Chip Fu, the Caribbean speed rhymer on the squad, basically decides that he’s Mel Blanc). Nonetheless, this is a must-have party cut in my household, owing largely to the Shaq Diesel version whose horns, drums and pleasantly anxiety-inducing car alarm effect elevate the Schnicks’ cadence to insane degrees. (Also a tasty time capsule: Fun to hear Shaq brag, “Who’s the first pick, me, word is born an’...not Christian Laettner, not Alonzo Mourning”)

14. Mad Lion, “Carpenter”
He of the gravelly, booming Jamaican style started popping up a lot in the same frame as Boogie Down Productions’ KRS-ONE, getting more mileage out of gun checks, death threats and unapologetically badly sung hooks than he had a right to. His album Real Ting made more of a splash, but this banger off of Ghetto Gold & Platinum Respect flies off an absolutely monstrous beat and grimly hilarious George Michael lyric substitution in the second verse. 

Breakup Gaming Society is not responsible for any furniture you throw out of windows while listening to Mad Lion tracks

15. DJ Quik, “Dollaz + Sense”
In one of the best diss tracks of all time, Quik serves up Compton’s Most Wanted’s MC Eiht on a silky slab of G-funk. You can hear the flush and gurgle of Eiht’s street cred going right down the john. The coup de grace: “E-I-H-T, should I continue?/Yeah, you left out the G ‘cause the G ain’t in you.” Toe tag.

16. Frankie Cutlass, “Puerto Rico”
Fuck you if you’re still in you’re seat when this drops and fuck you if you’re not feeling this list.

17. Wu-Tang Clan, “Severe Punishment”
In my opinion, the best track off Wu-Tang Forever, in which the Most Iconic Big Crew in Rap delivers a bloated two-album landmark after a string of legendary solo efforts like Tical and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx. The RZA raids a lot of Kung Fu flicks, but these kickoff samples take the cake; it’s menacing and driving and ominous and somehow makes every other track on this huge album look meandering and off the mark. Yes, including “Triumph.” Sorry, but “Triumph” sucks and it’s boring.

18. Sadat X, “The Lump Lump”
Nobody I’ve heard rhymes quite like Derek Murphy. You look at the hordes of awesome MCs across the Golden Era, how many were just lucky enough to drop the right bars on the right track at the right time, because there were at least 20 dudes from their borough who were just as nice, and you appreciate more and more this true American microphone original: hard-edged, cajoling, conversational and chippy, unanswerable to common rhyme schemes. He comes off like the guy in the barber shop who could smack the shit out of you without fear of reprise and has knows more about life than you. “The Lump Lump” is the leadoff on the otherwise so-so Wild Cowboys, but 20 years later, this extended cautionary about the perils of catting still shines from every facet.

19. Da Bush Babees, “Wax”
The clock was ticking on Natives Tongues-style production and rhyming, where your weapons were linguistic and metaphorical and you didn’t have to pose like a neighborhood kingpin to be considered deadly with your craft. The atmosphere of this track is borderline narcotic, with a tiny squeak augmenting the snare, a beautiful two-note keyboard and a snippet of King Ad Rock from “The New Style.” Beautiful track where fierce and funny lyricists dress down the would-be microphone gangsters of the time.

20. Funkdoobiest, “XXX Funk”
Part of the Soul Assassins flotilla in the early ‘90s with Cypress Hill and House of Pain, the Doobiest’s sophomore slab made a step change in sophistication. It’s easy to get a fast start off of Muggs beats, but what happens here is remarkable, especially if you remember the cadence of Son Doobie’s rhyme patterns on Which Doobie UB?, which were sometimes so basic, they were infuriating. Not here, where he mellows his delivery while upping the complexity of his imagery and flow. While a West Coast act, this album draws heavy production inspiration from the previous four years of East Coast sound. Irresistible beat.

Loony of the looniest, the mighty Funkdoobiest

21. Super Cat, “Ghetto Red Hot (Hip Hop Mix)”
You can play around with the original dancehall version if you want, but this is the joint. Full of well-traveled samples, but whoever remixed this made it feel more like a hot, hair-trigger night in the Kingston slums than the original producer did. One of my fave head-bobbers and most hypnotic city driving songs.

22. 2 Live Crew, “Move Somethin’”
Miami Bass still rules. Rudy Ray Moore samples and scratches, filthy rhymes and possibly the hottest bridge in hip hop outside of Public Enemy’s “Night of the Living Baseheads.” RIP Fresh Kid Ice, who, with the possible exception of MC Hammer, had one of the weakest pen games and lamest delivery of any major US rapper ever. Pour one out for him anyway.

23. Heavy D feat. Absolutely Fucking Everybody, “Don’t Curse”
Still the #1 crew joint of all time: Pete Rock, CL Smooth, Heavy D (RIP), Grand Puba, Big Daddy Kane, Kool G. Rap, Phife Dawg (RIP) and Q-Tip, all putting their own twist on the theme of making a big party record without dropping any cusswords in their bars. Cue Booker T and the MGs sample and go. A great day in hip hop.

24. Ultramagnetic MCs, “Break North”
Frankly, this whole album (Critical Beatdown) is break-out-the-beers-and-just-play-it-all worthy. I came to it in 2008 and it still gets better every time I hear it. Rapper/producer Ced Gee allegedly apprenticed with BDP’s Scott LaRock (RIP) and applied his newfound chops to...this hyperactive, hard-hitting tableau of freewheeling creative violence. I love “Break North” because the beat is SO DAMN TOUGH. Ced Gee’s verses always get overshadowed by Kool Keith and the way he patiently laces his bizarre rhymes over Ced’s big, big tracks. This album never hit it big, but it’s baked into hip hop’s DNA and everybody knows it.

25. Roxanne Shante, “Go On Girl”
A blistering challenge to the world from the Queen of MCs, propelled by a properly minimal and catchy track. That voice and cadence make it feel like you picked the wrong one to jaw at on the subway platform and now you’re getting roasted in front of your whole squad. Before all the perfunctory, inflatable gun molls du jour, there was Shante. After they are all forgotten, there will be Shante. (She was aligned with the Juice Crew during the Bridge Wars and did a pretty killer diss track of KRS-ONE, too.)

She’s been out there, Queen of MCs, since your man was walkin’ ‘round in mock necks and Lees

26. Digital Underground, “The Way We Swing”
“The Humpty Dance” will forever brand them as a novelty act to the filthy casual, but these dudes were hella fun on the mic and absolute monsters in the studio. Sex Packets was the chief piece of evidence that the West Coast wasn’t all Jheri curls and Uzis; a deep, rich soundscape heavily propelled by Funkadelic samples and a hedonistic, witty spirit. “The Way We Swing” lets Humpty’s alter ego, Shock G, do his (somewhat goofy) warning shot to MCs who don’t take them seriously, all built on licks from “Who Knows” off Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys live LP. If you’re not wide open by the time DJ Fuze’s scratch solo hits, you’re beyond help.

27. Gang Starr, “Code of the Streets”
Sometimes an MC can project invincible authority and intelligence on the mic without being lyrically flashy. That was Guru (RIP). One of your finer Golden Age duos here. Production and turntable legend DJ Premier pairs a catchy string sample with a snapping beat and some entertaining frisson in the form of a high-pitched scratch on the chorus. Like almost everything Guru and Premier did, it’s pure, studiously uncomplicated and wildly effective.

28. Public Enemy, “Shut Em Down (Pete Rock Remix)”
Apocalypse ‘91...The Enemy Strikes Black was the last of a four-album run that had kept PE in the center of the hip hop conversation, but it’s still PE, so we’re talking degrees of awesome here. Not sure if the Bomb Squad was still producing them by the time this platter came out, but whoever shelved their ego and let Pete Rock have a go at reinterpreting “Shut Em Down” deserves a fucking medal. “Pete Rock Remix,” roughly translated, means “Way hotter than your original.”

29. Original Concept, “Charlie Sez”
Despite being on the white-hot Dej Jam imprint and having some built-in star power from Dr. Dre (the East Coast one from Yo! MTV Raps), Original Concept never made much of a splash outside of the true heads. But, as they will remind you on this track, they did have two DJs. An accent cut or a scratch on the chorus? Fuck that. How about we let both of them go off for the WHOLE SONG on sections of Word of Mouth’s “King Kut”? The results speak for themselves.

30. The D.O.C., “Lend Me an Ear”
Dr. Dre (the West Coast one) discovered The D.O.C. in Texas and produced his solo album, No One Can Do It Better, in ‘89. He crushed his vocal chords in a drunk driving accident not long after (and is relegated to ghostwriting duties and croaking over skits in The Chronic), but he can always point to the day that Dre put his vocals over a stack of dynamite, wrapped them in C4, put them on a nuclear warhead, stuffed it all in the trunk of a ‘64 Impala and suicide-bombed it right down your earhole. Dre must have woke up mad the day he mixed this. It’s incredible.

31. Eazy-E, “No More ?’s”
The ultimate testament to the power of production in making a rapper’s name. As outlined in the biopic, Eric Wright was a crack dealer who couldn’t rap worth a shit when N.W.A. formed. Get him in crime reporting/advocacy mode, give it some storytelling structure with a novelty interview format over one of the best Dre tracks of all time? Voila. Masterpiece.

32. Intelligent Hoodlum, “Arrest the President”
This kid (later known as Tragedy Khadafi) was talking about George Herbert Walker Bush, but the sentiment still applies. In boxing they talk about “selling out” in the ring: Taking a risk to land a big blow. Marley Marl crafts a pulse-pounding, stripped-down breakbeat and siren capped by a sample stab; Hoodlum goes for it with all the oxygen, piss and vinegar in his young body: “Al Islam, read the Kuran/Grab the mic and drop bombs.”

The Tragedy Khadafi part comes later

33. A Tribe Called Quest, “We Can Get Down”
Based on the Midnight Marauders tracks that they did videos for and what the algorithms push you to, “Award Tour,” “Oh My God,” and “Electric Relaxation” are all the star efforts of this disc. The algorithms are WRONG. DJs who play these are WRONG. I mean, they’re all fine tracks, but none of them hold a candle to “We Can Get Down.” No, I will not be taking questions.

34. Nice and Smooth, “Hip Hop Junkies”
Stop thinking. Don’t listen at the fucking track. Shut up and party. Greg Nice and Smooth B are in the house and they brought a Partridge Family sample. I love the way Smooth purrs his bars and Greg Nice did whatever rhymed to get the party up, producing dependably entertaining non sequiturs every verse: “I’ll be damned, gag me with a spoon/Who loves Popeye? Alice the Goon.” (I was once at a throwback hipster party in 2008 and requested that the DJ play this and he made a funny little scrunchy face because he was a fucking bitch. You’ll also want “Sometimes I Rhyme Slow” off this platter. As my old rapper friend D.O. once said, 1991 literally wouldn’t exist without these tracks.)

35. Big Daddy Kane, “It’s Hard Being the Kane”
Highly in demand after making his name during his work with Stet and De La, Prince Paul shows up to guest produce tracks for everybody, almost singlehandedly saving the crappy Taste of Chocolate LP with this undeniable party in a can. Even the great Kane’s bag of tricks were feeling a little shopworn by the early ‘90s, but he hits classic form one more time over Prince Paul’s brilliant companion hooks, buildups and breakdowns. Every few measures there’s some minor, flawless new transfer of energy to subtly higher levels of excitement. What a touch he had.

36. King Tee feat. Tha Alkaholiks, “Bus Dat Ass”
The Chronic eclipsed almost everything released about this time. Sure, Dre broke Snoop and defined the West Coast sound for years. But King Tee and DJ Pooh were no slouches, giving Tha Alkaholiks an introductory bow on Tha Triflin’ Album: When a gangster legend gives you a couple guest verses on his LP, you throw lyrical haymakers on every second of mic time and leave it all in the ring, which is precisely what J-Ro, Tash and E-Swift did.

37. Lord Finesse feat. AG, “Back to Back Rhyming”
The Diggin’ in the Crates crew is a wellspring of the most fun, most instinctive, no-bullshit rhyming and beatmaking of the Golden Era. This crew included Big L, Fat Joe, OC, Diamond D, Showbiz & AG, and—my current favorite of the alliance—the supremely self-assured, nasty and charismatic Lord Finesse. Here are Finesse and AG putting on a quick two-verse clinic from Finesse’s ‘90 debut, Funky Technician on the Wild Pitch label.

You don’t need all that other bullshit, Finesse is here now

38. Now Born Click, “Mad Sick”
A fairly recent discovery from following where the Stoli and algorithm take me in the wee hours. Wait, what? Who are these guys? They never even released a full album, but they have tapes going on Discogs for $300? Oh, it’s because it’s pure underground hardcore with precise, boisterous MCing and production to match.

39. Mad Kap, “Da Whole Kit and Kaboodle”
Uptempo, ludic and highly finessed track that captures so much of what made this era of hip hop simultaneously accessible and full of surprises. The builds, drums and sample switchups at key transitions are pleasant shocks and the whole thing—down to the mood projected by the MCs—is just so dang self-assured and disarming. Magic.

40. 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.

41. 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 chessboard. 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.

42. 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.

She is the Lyte and you are just paper thin

43. "I Own America, Pt. 1," Slick Rick
He of the eye patch and imperial drip, he of the singular style: lilting, louche delivery; pornographic imagination, literary scene-sketching and, lest you think he's soft, one of the sharpest pens in the game when it sensed a pretender's jugular in the room. Surgical savagery from The Ruler, one of the best MCs of all time. (Somebody in some magazine said one of the rhymes on this track was one of the year's worst, but why that one? In '88, he said he was going to let his dog nail your wife if you give him trouble, so I'm not seeing anything egregious here.)

44. 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. Each verse leads a simile for a different trade or sport, and the way he leads off the architect section is worth the price of admission alone.

45. 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 one of the largest jewels, 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.

46. Brand Nubian, "Steal Ya Ho"
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 Nubians roamed. A singular manifesto of the hip hop Lothario.

They don’t care if your man’s blood boil, ‘cause they know a place with some nice, soft soil

47. 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 Mr. Freddie Foxxx aka Bumpy Knuckles himself for a tag-team mic beatdown whose menace and verve knock your teeth right down your windpipe.

48. Camp Lo, "Coolie High"
Uptown Saturday Night feels like one of those divine manifestations that slips into sight like a golden-scaled fish and leaves you in wonderment; Camp Lo never made much of a splash thereafter, but if I were one of the mic or mixboard team who was involved with this, I could go to the afterlife content with 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.

49. Queen Latifah feat. Monie Love, “Ladies First (The Crazy Extended 45 King Remix)”
The intro melodic layering and buildup makes this one the version for highly danceable boasting and uplift from Latifah’s debut, All Hail the Queen. Monie Love murders her guest verses, which seals the deal.

50. "Disk and Dat," Kwest Tha Madd Ladd
Another brilliant artist partially doomed by late release/label bullshit. "101 Things To Do When I'm With Your Girl" is probably the most well-known, but I played the hell out of this one, too, with its rollicking drums/keyboard sample and time-capsule tribute to the studio tools and processes that made the tracks. I don't know if Eminem ever listed him as an influence, but listening to this, it seems he owes Kwest a debt: hyperactive, troubled and funny microphone scamp from around the way, alike in spirit and cadence. (Eminem and Kwest actually appeared on a track called “5 Star Generals” way back, and Kwest blew everybody out of the water.)