The Greatest Rapper of All-Time Died on March 9th...

This ain't safe for work or for little pitchers with big ears, but it is the best example of the incipient street genius I've ever seen.



Nihilism in young black men remains a subject fraught with pitfalls, made heavy by centuries of oppression, degradation, and a back-breaking unwillingness on the part of society at-large to acknowledge that minorities encounter the same psychological stresses as the white majority.

 But I'll be damned if it didn't lead to the five greatest hip-hop rap records of all-time.

Oh...you want a list? I guess that's fine

5. Ice Cube - Amerikkka's Most Wanted - Mr. Jackson clearly had goals he wanted to achieve that far super-ceded any self-destructive tendencies, but he capture the psychology behind urban hopelessness and racial rage better than anyone since...well...

4. Boogie Down Productions - Criminal Minded - I've addressed this before. "South Bronx," "The Bridge is Over," "9mm Goes Bang." Changed the whole game. The whole goddamned game.

3. Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-tang (36 Chambers) - Nine guys who spent their formative years watching Kung-Fu flicks on TV, stuck in the absolutely shittiest of the 5 boroughs. Got caught up in the cliched pitfalls of drugs and gangs. Ripped a hole in the sky and sprayed a giant W spelled in bullet-holes into the atmosphere. Raekwon, Ghostface, Method Man, The RZA, The GZA, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killah, Old Dirty Bastard? With apologies to B. Sigel and Bleek but...Who the fuck want what?

2. Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die - Yeah, I faded ya'll a little bit. Calling Biggie the greatest, and then his best record isn't the best record? That's on me. But here's the deal. Ready to Die was spectacular. Black genius. Sick production and verses so perfectly crafted, Ezra Pound called Big, "Il miglior fabbro." (Not an actual fact.)
The record is almost perfect. The only problem is that a dude named Nasir Jones made...

1. Nas - Illmatic - Without spending 2000 words talking about it, Illmatic made poetry out of the worst elements of urban living. People describe rap as poetry all the time, and they are usually very wrong. Most rap is either a protracted Nantucket limerick, or it is little more than a sideline chant with a heavy downbeat.

 Illmatic has maybe two words out of place, MAYBE two. Everything works thematically. Nas weaves in glorious braggadocio without devolving into simplistic boasts. Some might claim Nas is slumming, or glorifying the worst parts of his experience. And I say any writer who doesn't exploit where they've been and what they've seen is fool or a fraud. Our experience is all we have. And we can either keep it in a bushel basket, or, if we are smart enough, we can find a way to make money from it. But only the rare few can simultaneously scratch dollars out of their life story and make a genuine work of art.