Recommend an old white guy some Hip-Hop.

Nobody's mentioned The Roots yet? For Shame people! For shame.

Anything off the QN5 label. Off the top of my head that would include Cunninlynguists (Made up of Natti, Deacon The Villian, and Kno), PackFM, Tonedeff, and Mr. SOS. If you only go for one thing definitely check out Southern Underground from Cunninlynguists, their last couple albums have gone pretty 'serious' but Southern Underground is a great mix of their serious and not serious sides. Their album 'A Piece of Strange' is also a solid choice, everything they've done is very, very good stuff.

Trainwreck wrote:

Nobody's mentioned The Roots yet? For Shame people! For shame.

I was just going to say the same thing!

If you like Mos Def, the Fugees, etc., you'll LOVE these guys.

Better yet, you can get a free taste of some of their live performances here.

Non hardcore: Louis Logic - Please Listen To My Demos

everything else has been pretty much exhausted but I still recommend as much Wu-Tang, M.O.P, Bumpy Knuckles/Freddie Foxxx, Gangstarr, Big L and Mobb Deep as you can tolerate. Most of their old stuff is pretty much timeless too me.

Also a hidden Cypress Hill gem is. Cypress Hill - Los Grandes Exitos En Español. Its like the best of all in Spanish and the majority of it all sounds better.

Buck 65, straight up. The most original and creative hip hop artist out there. And he's like the Tom Waits of hip-hop so it will still fit in with your old white guy persona.

Man... Buck 65 drives me up the wall. He does put on probably the weirdest live show I've ever seen, though. I just really don't like his vocal style, or his lyrics. I am a huge fan of his cohorts, Sage Francis and Alias, both worth checking out.

I'm pretty much a fan of anything on Anticon, Sage's old label. In particular check out Sole, Alias, and Pedestrian.

/edit: the dude has inverse sideburns. He is so weird.

kuddles wrote:

Buck 65, straight up. The most original and creative hip hop artist out there. And he's like the Tom Waits of hip-hop so it will still fit in with your old white guy persona.

I'm not familiar w/ Buck 65, so I don't know if he sounds anything like Linton Kwesi Johnson, but if 'dub Poetry is considered hip hop, his poems have a pretty Waitsian feel to them so Buck might have some competition. Dread Beat An Blood blew my mind almost as much as The Satanic Verses did. I listened and read the two together and it was a powerful window into the experience of being a minority in Britain. After all, Inglan is a Female Doggo.

Lyrics Born?

Wow. Learned a lot in this thread. Time to do some downloading.

I'm no expert on hip-hop and certainly not a connoisseur, but I enjoy: Outkast, Mary J. Blige and Dynamite Hack. OK, the last one is not really hip hop but they do some great cover tunes.

If you don't mind a little disco flava in your kool-aid.

Jamiroquai

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGjC0...

One day I'll make a Hip-Hop Primer broken down by decade

Some more to the list.. but start a little at a time IMO

Chino XL
Sunz of Man

I'm mostly about the beats. If I like the beats, I start picking up the lyrics.

Pete Rock and CL Smooth - Any album but especially "Mecca and the Soul Brother". Classic.
People Under the Stairs - O.S.T.
DJ Jazzy Jeff - The Magnificent

If you dig the Madlib stuff guru recommended, you should check out Yesterday's New Quintet (Madlib instrumental project). Actually, most of the stuff released on Stones Throw Records is worth listening to.

Oh, and at the risk of seeming ridiculously old: Don't forget dem roots

Hit a little GrandMaster, and on the way, take a detour to King Tubby.

Thanks guys. I've spent most of my evening perusing the recommendations and suffice it to say that there's enough here to keep me and my wallet busy for a long time. Great, great stuff.

TheGameguru wrote:

http://www.myspace.com/thesecretorder

Some of this stuff gets pretty deep..

You're not kidding--that is one serious rabbit hole. Mind=blown.

Okay, not really like the stuff you've listed, but I can't recommend M.I.A enough. Ethnic sound, crosses genres happily. Both albums are good, but the first one (Arular) is better.

I of course, find this thread late.

Eric B. and Rakim should be required listening. "Paid In Full" is a classic, but the 20th Century Masters collection is a good start.

People always Female Doggo about the whole Hip-Hop v. Rap thing, in some cases, it's true. In others, like in the case of "Illmatic", one does not disqualify the other. Find "Life's a Female Doggo" and if you're not hooked by the first verse, I can't help you.

DJ Jazzy Jeff (yes, that one) has two absolutely fantastic albums out, "Hip Hop Forever" Volumes II and III which are full of classics from voices you may not have heard, such as Black Moon, Large Professor, Gang Starr ("The ? Remainz" is a great song), A Tribe Called Quest (Again, "The Low End Theory" should be required listneing), and my personal favorite, J-Live (Just find "Them That's Not". Just find it and listen to it.)

I have nothing against alternative MCs, I really like EL-P and Aesop Rock. But not every MC has to be flying way out of left field, probably hte only problem with EL-P is that his beats can be kind of... well dense, to say the least.

"Desire" just came out by Pharoae Monch, and it's stellar. Almost anything DJ Hi-Tek is involved with is worth a try, so that means that you need to find "Reflection Eternal" by Talib Kweli and "Black Star" by Mos Def & Talib Kweli. I would say that "Black on Both Sides" is a good purchase, but optional if you have the previous two.

For some international flavor, try "Closer Than Veins" by Outlandish or "Floetic" by Floetry. And I know we don't think of Queen Latifah in that way but "All Hail The Queen" is a landmark album. Hell, even "He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper" has some fantastic production by Jeff.

Other Good Albums:

"Mecca and the Soul Brother" - Pete Rock & CL Smooth ("They Reminisce Over You" is pretty much required listening at this point.)
"Funcrusher Plus" - Company Flow
" Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space)" - Digable Planets (I know people only remember "Cool Like That" but the whole album is solid.)
"Quality Control" - Jurassic 5

And that's just starting. Although it is heavily maligned in some circles and by some Hip-Hop heads, there is some surprisingly good lyricism and production in the Hardcore/Gangsta Rap scenes. You can't deny the influences that "Reasonable Doubt", "Enter the 36 Chambers" and the like had.

Oh, has anyone mentioned De La Soul? Also try Haiku D'Etat (BEST GROUP NAME EVER).

Okay, now i'm tired. Those are my suggestions from my favorites, personally.

Here are some of the groups and tracks I think are worth mentioning. Normally Dilated Peoples would be here too, but you already knew about them.

Jurassic 5: Concrete And Clay, The Game, Swing Set [Quality Control]

Classified: High School Behaviour [Boy-Cott-In The Industry], Feeling Fine (Remix)[Hitch Hikin' Music]

CunninLynguists: Rain, Love Ain't (feat. Tonedeff) [Southernunderground]

Swollen Members: Pressure [Black Magic], Deep End [Bad Dreams]

Jedi Mind Tricks: Blood In Blood Out [Visions of Gandhi], On the Eve of War (Feat. Gza) [Legacy of Blood]

Tonedeff: Politics [Archetype], Give A Damn [Underscore]

Blue Scholars: Back Home, Opening Salvo [Bayani]

At the risk of starting some sort of weird turf war....

DJ Shadow, pre-Oustider.

DJ Jazzy Jeff (yes, that one) has two absolutely fantastic albums out, "Hip Hop Forever" Volumes II and III which are full of classics from voices you may not have heard, such as Black Moon, Large Professor, Gang Starr ("The ? Remainz" is a great song), A Tribe Called Quest (Again, "The Low End Theory" should be required listneing), and my personal favorite, J-Live (Just find "Them That's Not". Just find it and listen to it.)

Jeff is awesome.. I had the privileged of talking to him on a flight to Vegas..I've vaguely known him since 1984 when one of my friends brothers took us to a house party in West Philly and Jeff was DJ'ing it... Jeff's one of the really good guys in this world.

Everyone if possible should attend a party where Jeff DJ's one time in your life.

Killarmy is awesome. They are affiliated with the Wu-Tang clan. Silent Weapons for Silent Wars is one of my favorite hip-hop albums. Definitely worth a look.

Killarmy is easily one of my all time favorite groups and albums. Where else will you find the Incredible Hulk Theme song and Dead can't Dance sampled on the same album?

Their current status is really up in the air.. with fully 2/3rds of them incarcerated, There is a collaboration album out though thats pretty awesome..

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm...

9th Prince has another album with a bunch of unreleased stuff out soon..

Also for the new.. most of Wutang and Family are not Muslims or follow Islam.. but rather "5 Percenters"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_percent

A great deal of their lyrics talk about this.. so it will make more sense if you understand what they are talking about. I've been to a couple Nation of Gods and Earth meetings in Philly.. certainly interesting and though provoking stuff.

A lot of Rakim's later work has 5 percenter lyrics in it as well. I fully endorse De La Soul, especially the two Art Official Intelligence albums. Though not quite hip-hop, I've always enjoyed Portishead.

And of course, for timeless hip hop with unparalleled lyricism, Boogie Down Productions, with KRS-1. Every hip hop collection must have it.

TheGameguru wrote:

Also..

Avoid everything that is labeled Rap or Hip-Hop on MTV, Radio, and in general major labels.

awful.. brutally awful.. essentially modern day blaxploitation.

Whats wrong with Jay-Z?

Their current status is really up in the air.. with fully 2/3rds of them incarcerated

Heh heh.

They could do what Shyne did, record a couple of songs over the prison phone for mix tapes. I busted out laughing when I first heard them. It sounded like he was literally rhyming into a tin can.

Mayfield wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

Also..

Avoid everything that is labeled Rap or Hip-Hop on MTV, Radio, and in general major labels.

awful.. brutally awful.. essentially modern day blaxploitation.

Whats wrong with Jay-Z?

For some, his whole "Big Pimpin'" phase was a colossal sell-out. But like I said, I think it's awfully hard to knock "Reasonable Doubt". More than anything, I think in this circumstance, GG may be referring to other major artists out today, especially those in the Snap Music genre, about which I would totally agree with him as to its Blaxploitation status. So Mims, Soulja Boy, anything involving Lil' Wayne, and that goddamned "I'm So Hood" song.

Trainwreck wrote:

Nobody's mentioned The Roots yet? For Shame people! For shame.

Second. I knew I was forgetting one.

Theres a ton more old school groups that should be checked out.. but I figured its best to start in small chunks..rather than overwhelm someone with a ton of stuff thats kinda tricky to track down.

The Fly wrote:

Thanks guys. I've spent most of my evening perusing the recommendations and suffice it to say that there's enough here to keep me and my wallet busy for a long time. Great, great stuff.

TheGameguru wrote:

http://www.myspace.com/thesecretorder

Some of this stuff gets pretty deep..

You're not kidding--that is one serious rabbit hole. Mind=blown.

Good Lord; Killah Priest is kinda sic wit it!!! Nice find with the "Secret Order" link...

I'll just second the Wu-Tang and Roots recommendations. I'd recommend starting with Enter The Wu-Tang(36 Chambers) and Things Fall Apart respectively. Also consider GZA's first solo album, Liquid Swords. If you want to try some of the more "alternative" hip-hop out there, there's aways Dälek.

Definitely Kanye West.

Give Slim Shady a try. You might be surprised at some of his stuff.

Styles of Beyond is another favorite of mine.

And I love Old School, personally. Kool Moe Dee, stuff like that.