Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 1

Posted: January 6th, 2009 | Author: Choppa | Filed under: music, reviews | Tags: top 10 albums of 2008 | 2 Comments »

If I had to give 2008 a title as it relates to hip hop, it would be “Year of the Autotune.”  Granted, autotune has never gone away from pop music, but it is normally used as a subtle pitch corrector, to make a singer’s imperfect vocals perfectly in tune. Last year saw T-Pain’s 2007 experiments with Roger Troutman’s signature warbling use of the effect spread like wildfire, however.  From Weezy to Yeezy, and from Doggy Dogg to Diddy, everybody seemed to want it in their effect chain.

I don’t hate on the effect itself, and it has produced some songs that I really loved this year.  However, like any over-inflated band wagon in hip hop, too much of anything has bad results.  Hopefully, ’09 will see a bit more diversity, and the talkbox (or it’s software equivalent) in the hands of those who really know what they’re doing with it.

With that in mind, I present the first of my three-part series recapping my favorite rap albums of ’08.

10. madlib | WLIB AM: king of the wigflip

stone’s throw

It’s hard to deny the offbeat genius of Oxnard, CA native, Madlib.  Between his solo albums as Yesterday’s New Quintet and Quasimoto, his classic collab with Jay Dilla, and his work on other people’s albums, he has earned his place as the rightful standard bearer for Stone’s Throw Records.  This is the final installment of the classic “Beat Generation” series of albums, which have showcased the eclectic stylings of underground mainstays like King Britt and DJ Spinna over the past decade or so.  Madlib’s contribution the series is fittingly and wonderfully random, as are most of his projects.

WLIB is a mix album strung together from beats that drift in and out of the frame like a hazy musical stream of consciousness.  Plenty of record dust and Madlib’s usual low-fi mix are the only consistent styles, as the album lurches back and forth between sugary soul samples and cold mechanical echoes.  It all hangs together somehow, though, spliced with various found recordings that lend a subtle shade of comedy to the whole thing.

There are several guest rappers/spoken word poets on here, most coming from the usual Stone’s Throw stable and their close affiliates.  There are a few quality performances here, notably from Guilty Simpson on Blow The Horns On ‘Em, and Cali underground rapper Defari on Gamble On Ya Boy.  Like most Stone’s Throw productions, however, this album suffers from a lack of cleverness and execution by the rappers.  In some ways, it fits the hazy atmospherics, but in others, it just gets monotonous.  It is a more or less constant achilles hill for this album, and makes it simply a very good record, instead of a great one.

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9. heltah skeltah | d.i.r.t.: da incredible rap team

duck down/koch

[Review edited from my original review of this album, posted at bigbadmedium.com]

That Brooklyn duo, Heltah Skeltah, would have a “much anticipated” release in 2008, a full decade since their last album is nothing short of amazing. This is due to member, Sean Price, who resurrected himself in the form of “the brokest rapper you know” on his out-of-nowhere solo debut, 2005’s Monkey Barz. With that album, and its followup, 2007’s Jesus Price, Superstar, Price, a.k.a. Ruck, set the stage for this reunion.

Price is joined by his gravel-voiced partner in crime, Rock. Together, the two continue the general trend of Price’s solo albums: rhymes that are at once threatening and amusing, with gun talk and chest thumping mixed in with a piercing wit, sometimes directed at themselves. This is a delicate balancing act that few should attempt, but these two do it perfectly. The imagery they use is often hilarious and over the top: “When I fucked Rhianna, ain’t use no umbrella/If the the bitch have twins, we namin’ ‘em both Ella…Ella…” It is a fantastic collection of verses, but they are all interchangeable from track to track, and for the most part, no particular concepts emerge on the tracks. Production on the album is decent high-octane underground stuff, but can’t escape comparisons to the Justus League-heavy sound of Sean Price’s two albums. There are certainly some good contributions, notably from Sic Beats (“Smack Muzik”) and Stu Bangas (“Ruck & Roll”), but Khrysis’ atypical swinging head nodder, “The Art of Disrespeckinization” is probably the strongest beat on the album. Not bad, but not great either.

Overall, this is a high-quality underground album from two original, if ill-mannered, voices in hip hop. It loses minor points for lack of variety in the tracks, and for production that doesn’t quite stand up to its Sean Price predecessors. Still, it is more than worth a listen, and hopefully means continued success for the re-invented Heltah Skeltah.

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8. snoop dogg – ego trippin’

Geffen

Nine albums in, the D-O-Double G is sure a long way from the Long Beach kid who redefined west coast hip hop nearly two decades ago.  A husband and father well into his 30′s, he even stars in a reality TV series, a genre which didn’t even exist in 1992.  Like many of his 90′s contemporaries, Snoop is finally having to acknowledge aging on record, and examine how the changes he is undergoing fit into the persona he’s spent years building.  This album does an above average job at this, with plenty of interesting plot twists along the way.

Moving away from the Neptunes-helmed sound that led his 2004 resurgence, and the producer-by-committee approach that produced Tha Blue Carpet Treatment, Snoop hands the reigns largely over to Teddy Riley and DJ Quik this time.  The beats are varied and overall very good.  QDT (aka Quik, Dogg, & Teddy) put together a string of heavily 80′s influenced tracks, the best of which are the Isley-sampling Press Play, the awesome cover of Cool by Morris Day, and the Bruce Hornsby-reworking Can’t Say Goodbye (which is amazingly distinct from  Tupac’s classic, Changes).  Other producers do about half the tracks too, and there are some good moments: Shawty Redd’s atmospheric sex romp, Sexual Eruption, Frequency’s darkly swinging Make It Good and Nottz’s lurching Deez Hollywood Nights.

The rapping on this album is certainly serviceable, but Snoop gets some points deducted for admitted use of ghostwriters.  That said, there’s no reason to think he’s the only one in the industry who does it, and the end result is decent, so we’ll have to let it slide.  He definitely took songs in a lot of different directions, and many of his zaniest experiments hit pay dirt.  His country song, My Medicine, featuring Willie Nelson and Everlast was great, and his Zapp sendup, Sexual Eruption was one of the best tracks of the year.  There was also a lot of introspective material, the best being the “I’ll be home soon” dedication to his wife, Been Around the World.  It was actually when he stopped pushing boundaries that the album lost steam.  About a quarter of the 20 songs were totally unnecessary, genric filler, and detracted from the overall album.  Still, the high points justified a few misfires to make this one of the better albums of the year.

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7. z-ro | crack

rap-a-lot

Certain rap scenes have certain musical roots.  This tends to develop organically: producers make music based on what was popular locally when they were young, or what their parents were listening to.  LA has Parliament-style funk, Detroit has Motown samples and influences from the local techno scene, and Houston has the blues.  From UGK to Swisha House, the influence of delta blues on Houston’s rap scene is unmistakeable, and perhaps no one personifies it better than Joseph McIvey, a.k.a. Z-Ro.

In his first album back from a stint in state prison, Z-Ro makes it quite clear that his life has been rough.  Incarceration, scandalous women, and well-armed haters all figure prominently on this album.  In fact, other than one out-of-place one-for-the-ladies track that just reeks of the label telling him to lighten up and make a usable single, he maintains a screw face for basically the whole album.  As much of a drag as this sounds like on paper though, it is very well done, and Z-Ro is a very skilled rapper.  With his baritone voice, sometimes rapping, sometimes singing, he does what a proper bluesman should: make something beautiful out of life’s drama and struggle.

Production on the album is pretty boilerplate Houston blues-funk tunes.  Overall it is fairly subdued, and fits with the album nicely.  Z-Ro handles several of the beats himself, and Rap-A-Lot mainstay, Mr. Lee, makes a few more.  The latter probably has the most engaging track: If That’s How You Feel is a punchy horn sample and slinky synth track that is probably the most danceable beat on the album, and ironically, is about not dancing: “I’m a head bussa, but I don’t think I’m better than nobody else, I just can’t move like Usher.”

A far cry from the full-on diamonds and wood grain boasting that has taken over Houston rap in the last half of this decade, this album is a throwback, in the best sense of the word, to Houston rap of the 1990′s.  It is sober and brooding, but still extremely accessible.  Hopefully, life improves for Z-Ro, but if this is the result of trials and tribulations, it’s hard to be mad at them.

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6. guilty simpson – ode to the ghetto

stone’s throw

While everybody was busy thinking up new nicknames for their buss-it-babies and supermanning dat hoe, Detroit quietly put out some of the best rap albums this year.  The first is the Stone’s Throw debut from protege of the late J Dilla, Guilty Simpson. Ode to the Ghetto is certainly that: a stark look at life in the hood that both laments and and celebrates various aspects of drug culture, poverty, hustling, and women.

Since these are all topics that have been covered many times, it takes a unique voice to tell the story in a way that is engaging once again.  Simpson is no verbal acrobat.  He won’t blow anyone away with elaborate metaphors or obscure references.  The relative simplicity of his lines makes them somehow more vivid though.  In some ways, it’s comparable to the impact of Ernest Hemingway’s brief, direct sentences, but I’ll stop short of calling Guilty the hood Hemingway.  His one-liners are a bit on the blunt side, but there is definitely a flatted, dry sense of humor there: “Barely have a pot for roast/But always have pots for coke.” Guests are relatively few on the album, and the big feature attraction is Sean Price’s verse on Run.  Overall, it’s quality work on the mic, and the production is defintely on point as well.

Produced by a combination of Stone’s Throw affiliates from California and hometown heros from Detroit, the beats on the album are a fittingly dark and dusty background.  Detroit soul sampling is more or less absent from the record.  In its place are an offbeat collection of obscure samples that mix with sparse drums and quirky synthesizers.  Some of the beats are subdued head nodders, others powerful and dramatic.  Standouts include Oh No’s spaced out, grimy Footwork and Mr. Porter’s (a.k.a. Kon Artis of D-12) violins and slowly stutter-stepping drums on Robbery.

Overall, this is a very good record and an interesting twist on the signature sound of Detroit contemporaries like Black Milk and Slum Village.  One of the better acts to emerge from the city in recent years, there seems to be a lot to look forward to from him.

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And that’s it for this round.  Check back later this week for Part 2!

Yo peep these:

1. Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 3
2. Chop Reviews: The Top 10 Hip Hop Albums of 2008, Pt. 2

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