Given the sprawling, indefatigable nature of rap music, where recording careers can span decades, even the greatest rappers can drop dope albums which escape the attention of all but their most ardent fans.
Generally these type of albums fall into four distinct categories: early-career regional obscurities before the artist found fame; mid-career flops which were looked at at missteps at the time, but are revealed to be misunderstood in hindsight; late-career independent efforts which got lost in the shuffle; and stocking-stuffer odds-and-sods compilations of non-album tracks and guest spots on other rapper's songs.
Here, then, are 10 Underrated Albums by Great Rappers: A list of 10 rap albums you probably don't know (presented in chronological order), by 10 rap artists you definitely do, including Slick Rick, UGK, AZ and DJ Quik.
Written by Marty Macready.
RELATED: 11 Great Rappers Who Never Had a Classic Album
RELATED: The 50 Most Slept-On Rappers of All Time
RELATED: 10 Rap Cult Classics You Need to Hear (Part 1)
Slick Rick Behind Bars (1994)
Killer Cuts: "Sittin' In My Car," "A Love That's True (Part 1)," "Cuz It's Wrong"
No arguments here that 1994's Behind Bars is the weakest of Slick Rick's four albums. Hell, it barely even qualifies as an album, given that two of its eleven tracks are remixes and MC Ricky D recorded the vocals for the other nine songs on a work release visit home from prison before Def Jam grafted them onto whatever beats they happened to have lying around their office.
That Rick should bring his A-game in the booth when all he probably wanted to do was get drunk watching TV and have his wife blow him is remarkable; that the resulting album should end up featuring some of his best songs of the decade makes Behind Bars a triumph which only one of the true greats could pull off.
The long-awaited Doug E Fresh re-connection "Sittin' In My Car" is the album's glaring gem, and makes you upset that nobody ever managed to get Rick and Doug in the studio to record an album together. "A Love That's True Part 1" should have been an abomination—with its cod reggae synth backdrop and use of whistling—but it sounds like a lost track from Rick's classic debut album. It comes off as a more mature take on "Treat Her Like A Prostitute," where the grown-up Ricky laments that he's not given up on finding a sweetheart even though all he ever seems to meet are skanks, crazies, golddiggers, and junkies.
"Cuz It's Wrong" is a fuzzy saxophone-driven reminder that there was a time when rappers weren't proud to brag about date-rape. And then there's the two remixes: The incredible Large Professor remix of "It's A Boy" and Warren G's Dum-Ditty-Dum remix of "Behind Bars," both of which transformed workmanlike album fillers into something quite sublime.
Master P The Ghettos Tryin to Kill Me! (1994)
Juvenile Solja Rags (1997)
Killer Cuts: "Pimpinabitch," "Solja Rag," "I Did That"
May 13, 1997 stands out as an important date in the story of Cash Money Records. Juvenile released his sophomore album and debut for the small New Orleans Bounce label with the help of fledging producer Mannie Fresh, sold 200,000 copies independently, and set forth a chain of events which would change the face, sound, and dentistry of rap in the late '90s.
Most of the discussion about Juve's Solja Rags tends to focus on the aforementioned historical nuts and bolts about it being the sea change release for Cash Money, but it's so much more important an album than facts and numbers. It is, in fact, a down-low, down-home minor masterpiece capturing two unique talents about to hit their peaks. Nowhere nearly as polished an album as 1998's certified classic 400 Degreez, Solja Rags' strengths lie in Juvenile mostly being left to his own devices, and Mannie's production still retaining a lo-fi charm.
The title track/main single is the obvious classic, but the album's highlight is a Nolia Projects remodelling of Smoothe da Hustler & Trigga tha Gambler's "Broken Language" called "Pimpinabitch." A couple of years later and it was East Coast rappers who were sly remaking Juvenile's songs with Black Rob's mega-hit "Whoa" being a devious concept-jack of "Ha."
Kool G Rap Roots of Evil (1998)
UGK Side Hustles (2002)
Killer Cuts: "Pocket Full Of Stones (Remix)," "Belts To Match," "Pop The Trunk"
Every list of this nature requires a token compilation album of odds-and-ends, a Rap Game Nirvana's Incesticide, if you will.
UGK's Side Hustles collection of non-album tracks and tracks from other artists featuring UGK, Bun B, or Pimp C as solo artists fits the bill perfectly, since it was an album only hardcore UGK fans picked up. It features a host of amazing soundtrack cuts and secrete and rare guest appearances on songs by the likes of national legends like Too $hort and Scarface, as well as regional obscurities like B-Legit and Celly Cel.
For a start, it's the only UGK album where you can find the classic "Pocket Full Of Stones" remix (which originally appeared on the Menace II Society soundtrack), arguably the group's definitive song and the year-zero for nuts-swinging country-rap. Then there's the remakes of BDP's "I'm Still #1" and Above The Law's "Another Execution," with Scarface and B-Legit & E-40 respectively, and which jam as hard as the originals.
Finally, there's the regular guest-appearance tracks like the trans-regional posse cut "Cigarette" with Too $hort, 8Ball, and KB. And there's Celly Cel's "Pop The Trunk," where the duo join one of E-40's Vallejo minions on an incredible trunk-rattling beat which sounds alien cyborgs communicating with Earth via robo-forts through a Cadillac subwoofer.
Lil Boosie For My Thugz (2002)
Cormega Legal Hustle (2004)
Killer Cuts: "Tony/Montana," "Hoody," "A Beautiful Mind"
Two years before some spiteful dipshit deleted Birdman's verses from his Like Father Like Son duo-album with Wayne, some sexist pig decided Cormega's 2004 Legal Hustle compilation would be much better off with all traces of 'Mega's female collaborator Doña removed from it, and then uploaded the results. It was (probably) the first Internet-edit rap album.
It was a decision which was a trifle unfair, because Doña proved to be a compelling Foxy Brown stunt double on tracks like "Intro" and "Hoody," and it presumably broke Doña's heart because she's hitherto been heard from since. It's a pity that the compilation was overshadowed by that incident, and the brouhaha after The Source review which complained Legal Hustle didn't live up to Cormega's previous albums due to the guests.
The album contains five quintessential 'Mega Montana gems: the aforementioned "Hoody," "A Beautiful Mind" over the Q.B-approved "Ike's Mood III" piano break, "Let It Go" with M.O.P, "Sugar Ray And Hearns" with Large Professor, and album highlight "Tony/Montana," with a stunning opening verse from Ghostface. The album also served to introduce Bay Area legend and kindred spirit The Jacka to a (small) national audience via the inclusion of his original solo version of "More Crime." Not bad going for the runt of Cormega's catalog.
AZ The Format (2006)
Killer Cuts: "I Am The Truth," "The Format," "Sit 'Em Back Slow"
In the absence of any new material from Jay-Z or Nas, AZ's A.W.O.L album proved to be a unexpected commercial and critical independent success in 2005. So much so its follow up, The Format, adopted much the same business model a year later: A jump-off single produced by DJ Premier leading up to an album of Koch-budget New York classicism that's soulful enough to please older heads pining for Illmatic and stylish enough to please younger kids raised on the Roc.
The album came and went without much fanfare due to Jay-Z's return and the uproar surrounding Nas' Hip Hop Is Dead, but why an album where AZ raps over great beats from Lil' Fame, Primo, and Emile remains almost entirely forgotten today is as puzzling as why Nas thought rapping in an Edward G. Robinson voice on "Who Killed It" would be a good idea. There were few surprises on AZ's sixth studio album. This isn't a problem because his career has always been predicated on him honing the dense balance of profundity and panache he first demonstrated on "Life's A Bitch" and his own early tracks like "Rather Unique" to perfection over and over and over again.
All AZ's seamlessly wordy shtick of locking deep into the pulse of a groove has ever needed to succeed is good production, and that's what he gets for The Format's stand out cuts "I Am The Truth," "Animal," the Primo-helmed title track, "Game Of Life," and the M.O.P collaboration "Sit 'Em Back Slow," which is a clash of jarring rap styles in theory, but the greatest "4 Alarm Blaze" homage you've never heard in execution.
DJ Quik & Kurupt BlaQKout (2009)
Killer Cuts: "Jupiter's Critic & The Mind Of Mars," "Hey Playa (Moroccan Blues)," "9x's Outta 10"
BlaQKout saw West Coast veterans DJ Quik and Kurupt pair up for an album of Kurupt's hard-nosed gangsta raps over DJ Quik's trademark lavish G-Fu—wait a second! That's not what happened at all. The moment lead-off single "Hey Playa! (Moroccan Blues)" appeared with Quik rapping about over an Arabic sample from episode of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern, it was clear BlaQKout was set to be a different proposition altogether.
Despite the co-billing, BlaQKout is a DJ Quik album which just happens to feature Kurupt on a good portion of its thirteen tracks (the latter steals but one song, unsurprisingly the album's hardest cut "9x's Outta Ten.") Given carte blanche by the freedom of an independent label, Quik delivers his most adventurous album to date by treating BlaQKout as an exercise in pulling the rug out from underneath listeners track-by-track, just as you think you're beginning to get a handle on the album's tone and where it's headed.
There are few personalities in rap who could make a track like "Jupiter's Critic & the Mind of Mars" (a tirade aimed at, amongst others, bloggers with Gerald Levert beards over Egyptian Lover-style eighties Electro made on a broken Nintendo 64) work, but Quik pulls it off due to the sheer quirk of his character. The album succeeds as a whole, because Quik always sounds like he's having a blast, and he understands that even the most bizarre and whimsical experiments need to to knock.
Young Bleed Preserved (2011)
Killer Cuts: "Stamp On It," "Holla At Uh' Dog," "Walk Like Uh' Husala'"
When news emerged that Young Bleed had signed to a subsidiary label of Tech N9ne's Strange Music imprint in 2011 via a remake of his classic single "How Ya Do That," fans of the laconic Baton Rogue wordsmith were filled with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. This is kinda cool but, man, is a Bleed album full of guest verses from Tech N9ne and his face-paint carrier Juggalo underlings really a good idea?
It came as a shock, then, that the former No Limit Soldier's Strange Lane debut Preserved turned out to be his most interesting release in over a decade. The album got off to the best start possible with the inclusion of cult fan-favorite "Stamp On It," a song that'd only been available previously as a poorly-encoded, grainy Youtube video since 2006, and one of the highlights of Young Bleed's catalog as a whole.
From there, "Preserved" proved to be a surprisingly varied release: The mystical swamp stomp of "Holla At Uh' Dog," "Call The Police" sounding like "Hey Ya" with actual rapping, the ominous lean of "Walk Like Uh' Husala" and "Boot Up" with Juvenile being reminiscent of a vintage No Limit album cut. The only constant was Bleed's flow, still as subtly stylized as it was back in 1998 when My Balls And My World sold half a million copies.
Alas, the album tanked and Young Bleed officially left the comfort of Tech N9ne's pierced bosom in 2012 without so much as a Gathering Of The Juggalos live appearance check to his name.
