The 25 Best Long Island Rap Albums

With his impossibly cool delivery, complex metaphors, previously unheard of internal rhyme schemes and Five Percent Nation of Gods and Earths–informed knowledge, Rakim instantly changed the game for MCs with Paid in Full, his 1987 debut album with Eric B, released 25 years ago today.

The emergence of The God MC was remarkable, at the time at least, for another reason: He didn’t claim Brooklyn (where he had deep family roots), or Eric B.’s home borough of Queens, but Wyandanch, a small town 30 miles east of the city, in Long Island’s Suffolk County. People still generally don’t associate the suburbs with hip-hop credibility but starting with Paid In Full and Public Enemy’s aptly titled Yo! Bumrush The Show (also released in ‘87),

Long Island’s “Black Belt” became, for several years, hip-hop’s center of creativity. Embracing their outsider status, acts like De La Soul, EPMD, Leaders of the New School and KMD issued a wave of innovative albums in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, ushering in sounds and sensibilities that invigorated hip-hop’s core audience while evincing a universality rappers from the city couldn’t always muster.

Though not as vital as it once was, Long Island’s rap scene still produces the occasional gem—see Roc Marciano’s Marcberg, for one recent example. What better was to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Paid In Full than to take a look at 25 of the greatest albums to come from Strong Island? Recognize.

Written by Jesse Serwer (@JesseSerwer)

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Label: Fresh/Sleeping Bag Records/Priority Records

EPMD never tried to one-up or reinvent themselves after their breakthrough success with Strictly Business. The Brothers from Brentwood, L.I., have been content to retrace that album’s blueprint (funky, whip-friendly beats and rhymes about snappin’ necks and gold-digging chicks named Jane) over and over throughout their career. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Case in point: '91's Business As Usual isn't necessarily superior to their next best albums, ‘89’s Unfinished Business and ‘92’s Business Never Personal—they're all pretty much the same in terms of overall quality—but it was the first EPMD release to showcase Erick and Parrish's ability for spotting talent, introducing the Hit Squad to the world via Redman's cameo on “Hardcore.”

Label: MCA/Sound of Urban Listeners

Long Island produced a lot of colorful acts in the early ‘90s, but none more unique than Son of Bazerk or, as they were known in full, Son of Bazerk featuring No Self Control and the Band. Looking more like a vintage Motown act than a rap group, the co-ed unit (whose members were childhood friends of Flavor Flav's) put a soulful, reggae-accented spin on some of Public Enemy producers the Bomb Squad’s most experimental beats.

While Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk flew over the heads of most rap fans in ‘91, leading to the group’s dissolution shortly thereafter, those who “got it” successfully urged the group to reform in 2010 via the comments section of hip-hop blog Unkut. The surprisingly taut result, Well Thawed Out, showed the foursome hadn't lost a step, even after 20 years of inactivity.

Label: Elektra Records

Busta Rhymes had five years after his breakout performance on A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario,” and three years after the demise of his group Leaders of the New School, to prepare a classic debut. He certainly made good on his promise with The Coming.

While the debut single "Woo Hah!! (Got You All In Check)" offered Bussa Buss as a zany character suitable for mainstream consumption, the album itself took a much darker tone, introducing the apocalyptic themes that would color nearly all of his successive LPs. Busta's Y2K fearmongering proved to be unfounded but, from an artistic standpoint it was a win.

Label: Tommy Boy

3 Feet High and Rising was so strange and different from any other hip-hop album before it that it had to have come from outer space. (In fact the original concept for the album involved music being transmitted from Mars by three microphone plugs). Things made a little more sense (at least to New Yorkers, at the time) when you learned that De La—Posdnous, Trugoy the Dove and Pasemaster Mase, aka Plug One, Plug Two and Plug Three—were from Amityville, the racially mixed town on Long Island’s South Shore known for its infamous “Horror House.”

Together with producer Prince Paul, a high school classmate who’d already gained hip-hop fame as the DJ for Brooklyn’s Stetsasonic, De La made it cool to be weird in hip-hop—so long as the artistry and cultural credibility were on point, too. With its sublimely random samples (The Turtles, Johnny Cash, French library records), the original hip-hop skits (involving a not-quite-explainable gameshow whose host asked questions like “How many times did the Batmobile catch a flat?”) and the special sort of rambunctious energy you only get from young friends who spend all their time hanging out and making music together, 3 Feet High and Rising elevated bugging out to the level of high art.

Label: Uni/MCA Records

The R's second microphone clinic with Eric B. in the cut may not have shattered hip-hop’s rulebook in quite the same way that its predecessor, Paid in Full, had just a year earlier. But it actually was more commercially successful—and good enough to be considered one of the best albums in a year (1988) that produced some of rap’s greatest LPs (PE’s It Takes a Nation of Millions...; NWA’s Straight Outta Compton; the Ultramagnetic MC’s Critical Beatdown; The Great Adventures Of Slick Rick, and the list goes on).

Anyone who questions how ahead of the game lyrically Rakim truly was should listen to the first verse of “Microphone Fiend” ASAP. The Suffolk County native invented hashtag rap two whole decades before Twitter even launched: “I was a fiend before I became a teen/Melting microphones instead of cones of ice cream/Music orientated so when hip-hop was originated/Fitted like pieces of puzzles... #Complicated.”

Label: Def Jam/Columbia

Buying an album based on the cover art might be unheard of to those whose music consumption has come primarily in the iTunes era, but when you saw what Public Enemy looked like on the front of Yo! Bum Rush the Show back in ‘87, you knew their album had to be the shit.

The dimly lit image of Chuck D., Flav, Professor Griff, Terminator X and the S1Ws in paramilitary attire told you that these guys were on some next-level seriousness, and the album delivered with some of the most aggressive and provocative raps ever laid to wax, from the bourgie-broad–baiting “Sophisticated Bitch” to the menacing “Miuzi Weights A Ton.”

But the best track on the whole album was already three years old by the time Def Jam put it in stores: “Public Enemy No. 1,” a battle rap over the JB’s “Blow Your Head” that Chuck had originally recorded as a promo for the Adelphi University radio station, was so good that Rick Rubin literally called Chuck’s house for years trying to get him to sign a record deal. The reluctant MC finally gave in, PE was born, and the rest is history.

Label: Flipmode/Elektra Records

Nowadays Busta Rhymes plays up his early life in Brooklyn more than his time in Uniondale, L.I. (where he attended high school and began his rap career as a member of Leaders of the New School) but he has, on occasion, acknowledged how his move to the suburbs gave him the space to embrace his creativity and become the character we know today.

Credit Uniondale then for the rapper’s sophomore LP, When Disaster Strikes..., which saw Busta at his creative peak. From the blockbuster singles “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See” and “Dangerous” to darker fare like “Survival Hungry” and “Things We Be Doin’ For Money, Pt. 2,” and the collaboration with Erykah Badu ("One"), the whole album felt huge—for Busta, for hip-hop, and for Strong Island.

Label: Def Jam/Columbia

Released at the height of the Strong Island representer's fame and influence in 1990—and against the backdrop of heightened racial tensions in New York and Professor Griff’s dismissal from the group over alleged anti-Semitic remarks—Public Enemy’s third album played off of current events in a way that no other rap album had before.

The three songs for which PE is best known—“911 Is a Joke,” “Fight The Power” (originally featured on the soundtrack to Do the Right Thing) and “Welcome to the Terrordome,” are all contained on Fear of a Black Planet, not to mention Chuck D.’s most oft-quoted lyrics, from that infamous line about Elvis to "hear the drummer get wicked!"

Label: Def Jam

LL Cool J famously represented Queens on “Doin It Well,” among other hits, but James Todd Smith has lived practically his whole life east of the New York city line in Long Island. Having spent his early years in Suffolk County before making his way to Hollis, Queens as a teen, the rapper-turned-actor has more recently called the upscale Nassau County enclave of Manhasset his home.

Even if L.I. allows the Q Borough credit for Ladies Love Cool James’ other signature releases (‘90’s Mama Said Knock You Out, ‘95’s Mr. Smith) it would still have to claim Radio, though: Def Jam’s first LP release not only gave the world its introduction to LL’s “hard as hell” rhymes but also to the abrasive, bell-rocking production style of another Long Island native: Rick Rubin.

Label: Fondle 'Em Records

Lots of rappers have reinvented themselves with new personalities, but none ever re-emerged in a fashion quite like Daniel "MF DOOM" Dumile. The artist formerly known as Zevlove X had been MIA for five years after the death of his brother Subroc (and the resulting demise of their group, KMD) when he returned with his omnipresent metal mask (few photos exist of the rapper without it) and a new, comic book–inspired persona.

Dumile reportedly wound up drug addled and homeless during his hiatus. Operation: Doomsday, the Long Beach, L.I. native’s only full-length as DOOM before relocating to Atlanta in the early 2000s, addressed his descent and recovery in the most creative ways imaginable. DOOM would gain much wider acclaim five years later for his collaboration with L.A.’s MadLlb, Madvillainy, but Operation: Doomsday remains his definitive work.

Label: Fresh/Sleeping Bag Records

There were rumblings of a rivalry between Rakim and EPMD after Strictly Business dropped in '88 but, really? Rakim was the God MC. Erick Sermon and Parrish Smith were two regular guys who used their government names to rap about things like which six pack to buy, Miller or Stroh’s. And therein lay the appeal of Strictly Business, an album that perfected the art of rhyming about nothing, two decades before Wale decided to make a mixtape with that theme.

What they lacked in lyrical depth, Erick and Parrish made up for with sonic foresight. Strictly Business’ deeply funky, hard-hitting beats helped steer hip-hop away from an over-reliance on James Brown breaks and into the car.

On 231, the popular Long Island drag racing strip separating Rakim's hometown of Wyandanch from EPMD's Brentwood turf, you couldn't miss the subwoofer-friendly sounds of "You Gots To Chill" (the first rap song of note to use Zapp's supreme "More Bounce to the Ounce" groove) and "It's My Thing" booming out of custom Camaros and Jeeps, foreshadowing developments soon to occur in L.A. and the South.

Label: Tommy Boy

De La Soul’s last album with Prince Paul in the producer’s chair is probably the least celebrated of their early LPs but it stands as the most expansive album in their catalog and, arguably, the most complete.

Aesthetically, Buhloone Mindstate tempered some of the grumpiness of De La Soul is Dead (though their continued frustration with the state of hip-hop was addressed on “Ego Trippin’ [Part Two],” the video that instigated a brief and little-known feud with 2Pac) with more of the fun, free-wheeling randomness of 3 Feet High and Rising (see the misleadingly titled “Long Island Wildin,’” a showcase for Japanese rappers Scha Dara Parr).

Prince Paul’s sample-heavy production meanwhile grew to take on organic elements from legendary James Brown players Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley and Pee Wee Ellis. Hip-hop grew in all sorts of new directions after De La dropped 3 Feet High and Rising in '89. Four years later, they were still leading its expansion.

Label: Def Jam/Columbia

Is there anything to say about It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back that hasn’t already been said? Critics and scholars have devoted more space to analyzing PE’s second album than almost every other rap record put together. And with good reason: from the onslaught of sociopoltical facts and observations with which Chuck D. armed listeners to the obscene number of samples the Bomb Squad crammed into each track, It Takes A Nation packed more data into 70 minutes than almost any other album in history.

But no know-it-all talking head can ever convey the stop-you-in-your tracks, what-the-fuck-is-this? sensation of hearing the sublime cacophony of “Rebel Without A Pause” and “Night of the Living Baseheads” for the first time in '88. Fewer still know about the group's origins as Spectrum City sound system and their show on Long Island's WBAU FM the Adelphi University radio station.

Label: 4th & B'way/Island Records

From the Dapper Dan custom suits, massive gold medallions and stacks of bills Eric B. and Rakim rocked on the cover to the subtle, ingenius way the "God MC" indoctrinated his listeners to Five Percent Nation philosophy, Paid In Full captured the streets in a way no rap album had before.

Collectively, songs like "Eric B. Is President," "My Melody" and "I Ain't No Joke" elevated MCing from a lighthearted pursuit into something dead serious, worthy of scholarly precision and study. Even “I Know You Got Soul,” Rakim’s call to dancers to get hype, was deeply lyrical, leading with one of his most unforgettable and oft-quoted lines: “It’s been a long time/I shouldn’t have left you/Without a strong rhyme to step to.”

Amidst all of Ra’s verbal innovations, the album’s production (a joint effort between Eric and Ra, with Marley Marl, engineer Patrick Adams and Ra’s brother Stevie Griffin also deserving some credit) sometimes gets short shrift, but it shouldn’t: From Marley's innovative sampling techniques on “Eric B. is President” to the title track’s DJ-friendly use of the Soul Searchers’ “Ashley’s Roachclip” (a break since used on everything from Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True” to Lil Wayne’s “Girls Around the World”), its impact was greater than any other rap album of the era. Not bad for a rapper from a small, Long Island town—Wyandanch—which few people had ever heard of before, and still haven't really.