Despite what your favorite young rapper thinks, the rap game in the ’90s was unequivocally amazing. While the late ’70s and ’80s were the age of discovery, building the framework for both future production techniques and lyrical execution, hip-hop was hitting on all cylinders in the 10 years leading up to Y2K.
In a decade that was teeming with originality, lyricism, social commentary, classic albums, and iconic MCs, it was almost easy for even some of the dopest artists not to get their proper shine in the limelight. Mind you, this was before everyone on the planet had access to the Internet and every human being over the age of 10 was walking around with an iPhone stitched to their palm.
Times were different.
But the advances of today’s technology aren’t totally to blame. For one reason or another, several rappers who should have been just as big as their platinum-selling contemporaries slipped through the cracks of critical acclaim from the mainstream. Maybe it’s our fault as listeners for failing to recognize their greatness when they were riding that wave—sometimes, that’s the breaks.
Here are 10 incredibly underrated artists from the golden era of rap.
1.The Beatnuts
Album to Start With: The Beatnuts: Street Level (1994)
When all is said and done, the Beatnuts (Psycho Les and Juju) will be remembered for their 1999 hit “Watch Out Now” and the 1997 Big Pun and Cuban Link collab “Off the Books.” The two singles were two of the most well-known rap tracks from their respective years. While the mainstream might consider them one song away from making the cut for an episode of VH1’s One-Hit Wonders, the Beatnuts deserve way more props.
They broke out on the scene with their 1993 EP, Intoxicated Demons, with then-member Fashion (Al Tariq), which consisted of a mix of raunchy humor over a colorful sound palette. Follow-up studio LPs Street Level in 1994 and Stone Crazy in 1997 were even more solid. Ironically, Musical Massacre (1999) might be their least impressive output of the decade, but it wound up being the group’s biggest commercial success with help from the aforementioned, Billboard-charting “Watch Out Now.”
Though never considered elite lyricists, the Beats—who also helped usher in the Latin rap movement in NYC—had a style of their own. —C. Vernon Coleman II
2.Kilo Ali
Album to Start With: Organized Bass (1997)
What a time to be alive for an Atlanta MC. While ATL stands atop the rap world and runs the radio these days, in 1990, there were only a handful of artists who were making a splash. Kilo Ali (formerly known as just Kilo) was one of them.
Breaking ground with his 1991 single “America Has Problem (Cocaine)” and the LP of the same name, the Bankhead native was one of the first Atlanta rappers to get play on the airwaves. While heavy into the bass scene, Lo had local hits with tracks like, “Georgia,” “Nasty Dancer,” “Do You Hear What I Hear,” and “Show Me Luv,” dropping seven albums from ’91–’97, with three placing on Billboard’s Hot 200 chart.
While it was drug issues that shortened his career and kept him from getting more shine outside of Atlanta, every rapper from the A-town should pay homage to the original shawty L-O. They know. —C. Vernon Coleman II
3.Young Bleed
Album to Start With: Organized Bass (1998)
When you're on a label that seemingly has an endless assembly line of MCs dropping a new album once a month, it’s easy to get overlooked. As a member of Master P’s No Limit camp, Baton Rouge, La., rapper Young Bleed wasn’t one of the more well-known artists on the label, but he's definitely one of the brightest spots of the storied imprint.
Despite not getting a lot of album push, his Mafioso-tinged, classic debut album, My Balls and My Word, was one of the label’s finest releases, featuring fire tracks like “Keep It Real,” “Better Than Last Time,” and the previously released “How Ya Do Dat.”
YB parted ways with P and ’nem after his first LP but dropped a steady amount of music over the years. He tragically passed away on November 1, 2025 after suffering a brain aneurysm. —C. Vernon Coleman II
4.Saafir
Album to Start With: Boxcar Sessions (1994)
Yes, Harold from Menace II Society had bars. Though he made his first appearance to the masses on the big screen, Oakland, Calif., MC Saafir made his biggest impact to the culture on the rap front.
His debut, Boxcar Sessions (1994), was a welcome deviation from the Left Coast rap scene of the time, which tended to swing either gangster or alternative (think the Pharcyde). Sa was all about spitting—a wizard with the wordplay. Following the album’s release, he was involved in the notorious Hieroglyphics crew and Hobo Junction battle on Sway and King Tech’s Wake Up Show in 1994, a catalyst in the West Coast battle rap movement. —C. Vernon Coleman II
Saafir finished the ’90s with the albums Trigonometry (as Mr. No No) in 1998 and the more commercial attempt The Hit List in 1999. He never reached the status of freestyle MCs turned full-fledged rappers, like say Canibus, but best believe Saafir was rapping circles around cats during a time when lyrics still mattered. In 2024, Saafir, who had been living with a number of health issues for years, died in his hometown of Oakland.
5.Kwest tha Madd Lad
Album to Start With: This Is My First Album (1996)
There are some MCs who are true entertainers to the core. Kwest tha Madd Lad was that dude.
Building his name off the battle rap scene, Kwest signed with Rick Rubin’s American Recordings in the early ’90s. His only studio album release was the wildly amusing This Is My First Album. Filled with raunchy, anecdotal rhymes, and straight bars over boom-bap production, the sole output was an underground favorite.
Kwest had a short-lived run of captivating randy teens and young adults with singles like “101 Things to Do While I’m With Your Girl” and “Lubrication.” Frustrations with the industry, however, seemed to derail KTML’s career. After a decade-long hiatus, he released his latest offering of old tracks, These Are My Unreleased Recordings, in 2007. —C. Vernon Coleman II
6.Masta Ace Incorporated
Album to Start With: SlaughtaHouse (1993)
In the early ’90s, Masta Ace had already established himself in the rap game as an MC with great lyrical skills in the famed Juice Crew. Following his 1990 solo LP, Take a Look Around, all he needed was a crew of his own.
Master Ace Incorporated formed in ’92 with Ace joining forces with Eyceurokk, Lord Digga, Paula Perry, and R&B vocalist Leschea. They released their debut album, Slaughtahouse, to critical acclaim, as it was notable for its East Coast sound as well as its pointed jabs at the West Coast and its gangster posturing. Their second album, Sittin on Chrome, upped the ante, featuring the hits “Born to Roll,” “The I.N.C. Ride,” and “Sittin on Chrome” (a Yo! MTV Raps staple), all cracking the Billboard Hot 100. It still failed to make the group a household name.
Modest success also wasn’t enough to keep the band together. After only two LPs, inter-group strife forced the outfit to disband. —C. Vernon Coleman II
7.Organized Konfusion
Album to Start With: Stress: The Extinction Agenda (1994)
When listing the great duos of all time, Organized Konfusion—consisting of Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po—often gets overlooked.
But they were incredible: two extremely skilled rappers with razor-sharp lyricism. Ironically, Monch—now celebrated as one of the greatest pure MCs ever, known for his sputtering, multisyllabic flow—actually started out as the beatboxer for Prince Po. The two, of course, would grow into a dynamic duo whose first two albums are especially revered for their dense rhyme schemes and inventive song structures. “Stray Bullet,” a song delivered from the perspective of a bullet, stands as one of hip-hop’s most creative storytelling tracks—one that clearly inspired Nas’s “I Gave You Power.”
After their third album, The Equinox, came and went with a similarly muted commercial response, the pair went their separate ways. Monch, as a solo artist, would finally achieve the commercial success he long deserved with the Godzilla-sampling hit “Simon Says.” —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
8.The Coup
Album to Start With: Steal This Album (1998)
In the ’90s, Donald Trump was an aspirational figure in hip-hop—someone who symbolized the hyper-capitalist, “get-the-money-by-any-means” ethos that many rappers embraced during the boom commercial years of the decade.
If there was one rap act that refused to follow that trend, it was The Coup, a proudly communist group from the Bay Area. They famously dissed Trump on several tracks, including “Pimps (Free Stylin’ at the Fortune 500 Club)” from Genocide & Juice.
This was The Coup: proudly confrontational, political, and underground. The group consisted of Boots Riley—who is now a filmmaker—E-roc (who eventually left to become a longshoreman), and the late Pam the Funkstress.
Though The Coup were dead serious about their politics, the music itself was often breezy, funny, funky, and sometimes even danceable. The Coup went from obscure to infamous in the early 2000s when the original cover art for Party Music depicted the Twin Towers exploding—months before 9/11. But even prior to that controversy, they had one of the great underground rap catalogs. All their early releases—Kill My Landlord, Genocide, and Steal This Album—are considered cult classics. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo
9.Tragedy
Album to Start With: Tragedy: Saga of a Hoodlum
If you asked the average hip-hop fan who should be in the pantheon of rappers hailing from Queens, N.Y., you might be hard pressed to find someone willing to toss out Tragedy. And that’s just a trag shame. One of the most underrated MCs out of the borough, the Queensbridge OG and Juice Crew affiliate actually hit the scene in 1985—the same year the Bridge Wars started—in a duo named Super Kids.
His 1990 solo debut, Intelligent Hoodlum—put together following a two-year bid—was on another level. Truly slept on, the album was steeped in science and mathematics, Pan-Africanism ideologies, and street aesthetics. His second album, Tragedy: Saga of a Hoodlum, was an even less-restrained look into black plight.
He is credited as being the first rapper to use the term “illmatic” on wax, and while many—including this writer—consider Capone-N-Noreaga’s 1997 album, The War Report, a classic, Trag actually contributes to the LP more than Capone, who was locked up for much of its completion.
Despite his achievements, most overlook his contributions to the culture. He is still dropping records including his grimier Thug Matrix trilogy, with his latest offering coming in the form of 2014’s Pre Magnum Opus. —C. Vernon Coleman II
10.Lady of Rage
Album to Start With: Necessary Roughness (1997)
The Lady of Rage might not have been originally from L.A., but you can’t mention Death Row without her.
She was a ferocious rapper—with a commanding presence and fierce delivery—who got her breakout moment by rapping circles around her male peers on The Chronic and Doggystyle. In 1994 she scored her first solo hit: “Afro Puffs.” It not only proved she was a real spitter, but also showed she could craft an anthem strong enough to chart on the Billboard Hot 100.
Despite all her talent and her tendency to steal the show, Rage never really got her moment. By the mid-’90s, with the death of Tupac and Snoop and Dre leaving, Death Row was in a state of disarray—and she was stuck on the bench. She finally released her first and only solo album, Necessary Roughness, more than three years after the success of “Afro Puffs.” Despite the lost opportunity, the album is still worth a listen. —Dimas Sanfiorenzo