Image via Complex Original
51.
Conventional pop music wisdom dictates that Track 4 is the traditional cornerstone of any pop music album, the compartment in which artists stash their best stuff for listeners to find after working through the appetizers at the beginning of an album. In rap, however, it’s always been about Track 1. Why? Because hip-hop is not polite and because it has no patience. A rapper won’t wait to engage you with subtlety: He’ll tell you what you need to know right now, up front, without delay.
Thus, the Opening Song: the gateway to a rapper’s album, or even his whole career. It’s the moment when the curtain comes up and the spotlight hits the stage and we all collectively ask: “What do you have to show us?” An album only gets one chance to make a first impression, and that leadoff song can say it all.
It can encapsulate an artist’s entire style, as with Warren G’s ”Regulate,” or it can be a sly and subtle introduction that eases you into terrors to come, as with Three 6 Mafia’s “Sippin’ on Some Syrup.” It can rip things open with a terrific explosion, like the Beasties’ “Shake Your Rump.” Or, like Nas’s “N.Y. State of Mind,” it might sneak up on you and run off with your wallet before you have a chance to decide whether or not you even want to listen. There’s a million ways to come at it and a million ways to get it wrong. Don't postpone joy. These are The 50 Best Album-Opening Songs in Rap History.
Written by Sam Sweet (All Nite Menu)
50.Grand Puba "Check Tha Resume" (1992)
Producer: Grand Puba
Album: Reel to Reel
Label: Elektra
What better way to introduce a new act who isn't actually that new than by directing listeners to his curriculum vitae? While Grand Puba's "360 Degrees (What Goes Around)" did manage to make some noise by topping the Billboard rap charts, the album it was drawn from—the rapper's solo debut, Reel to Reel—failed to make as much of a commercial or critical mark as the work of Puba's group Brand Nubian. But creatively, Reel to Reel was an excellent record, and no track better defined that quality than "Check Tha Resume." With a stop-start drum break and a ghostly, reverberating Otis Redding vocal sample looped up by Puba himself, the MC's playful verses feel off-the-cuff yet effortlessly clever. —David Drake
49.Cypress Hill "Pigs" (1991)
Producer: DJ Muggs
Album: Cypress Hill
Label: Ruffhouse/Columbia/SME Records
Although they became more known for stoner lifestyle rap when "Insane in the Brain" crossed over in '93, Cypress Hill's DJ Muggs-produced debut was a dirty and pugnacious record underlined by violence in early-'90s Los Angeles. Nowhere was that more evident than on opener "Pigs," a mocking indictment of the police based around the "This Little Pig" nursery rhyme. With a searing three-note guitar sample and subtext of anti-authoritarian satire, "Pigs" transforms a child's game into a scathing attack on the hypocrisy and absurdity of a corrupt police state. —David Drake
48.Twista "Adrenaline Rush" (1997)
Producer: Legendary Traxster
Album: Adrenaline Rush
Label: Creator's Way/Big Beat/Atlantic Records
"Adrenaline Rush" is emblematic of Twista's defiantly unclassifiable style. It's Midwestern hip-hop-you know, Bone-style triple-time death-obsessed rap. No, wait; it actually sounds more like some Dirty South business, with that queasy "Bout It Bout It" synth. Then there's that part of Twista that seems so fundamentally aligned to rap's original essence: a man who can make ordinary words astounding just by the order in which he puts them and the way in which they come out of his mouth. You can bask in the simple pleasure of its steady-stepping chorus or you can unpack it line and line and make the case that Twista's light-speed wordplay provided the groundwork for the fantastical forced rhymes that Gucci Man would make ten years later ("...carsick/ ...ostrich/ ...garbage/ ...accomplished/ ...compass"). Either way, "Adrenaline Rush" is one of modern rap's lost linchpins. —Sam Sweet
47.Organized Konfusion "Stress" (1994)
Producer: Buckwild
Album: Stress: The Extinction Agenda
Label: Hollywood BASIC/Elektra Records
Over the 45 minutes of Stress: The Extinction Agenda, Pharoahe Monch and Prince Po inhabit the spirit of a serial killer; an evangelical holy roller; a redneck trucker; and a poetical poltergeist. And that's all before the album gets to "Stray Bullet," the penultimate comment on hip-hop violence, in which our heroes assume the POV of one Glock 9's discharged ammunition. It makes sense then that the first words on the record are a confession of exasperation from Po: "Pain, stress / My brain can't even rest / It's hard to maintain the pressure on my chest / Excess frustration strikes!" The wordplay is dense and so is the music, but the whole thing still manages to move like a great slab of soul jazz, glutinous and gleaming with radioactive sheen. —Sam Sweet
46.Beastie Boys "Shake Your Rump" (1989)
Producer: Beastie Boys, Dust Brothers, Mario Caldato Jr.
Album: Paul's Boutique
Label: Def Jam
"Shake Your Rump" is the song that rips open the album that ripped open rap music. The delights of Paul's Boutique aren't simply a matter of its endless panoply of samples—it was the sonic possibility of the whole. Paul's was the first orchestral rap album. Its highs are stinging and its lows reverberate. The instrumental sounds don't float by in the background—they ambush you for a tongue kiss. The overall effect is incarnated in a single moment that occurs 40 seconds into "Shake Your Rump." A deejay scratches in a snippet from "It's the Joint" and then the bass noise from Rose Royce's "6 O'Clock DJ" sprays over the entire track. It's the subwoofer equivalent of the moment in "Wizard of Oz" where everything turns to Technicolor, an invitation to every sonic surprise that would unfold over the album's next 50 minutes. —Sam Sweet
45.Brand Nubian "All for One" (1990)
Producer: Grand Puba, Brand Nubian
Album: All for One
Label: Elektra
"All For One" makes egregious use of the fleetingly permissible term "tenderoni" but besides that it remains symbolic of Brand Nubian's creative synergy, even if the original lineup was only "all for one" for about a year. Puba was the funniest by far ("I think with the brain and I whip behind the zipper / I'm living kinda good similar to Jack Tripper") while Sadat and Jamar always sounded grumpy, like they were one step away from telling the listener off the lawn. It was no surprise when they split away to carry the Nubian name while Grand Puba left for a solo career full of more songs about tenderonis. One For All is usually remembered as one of the great '90s rap LPs, which is not untrue, but this song is better defined by the pure effervescence of its delivery. Even when it was obvious they weren't getting along, the Nubians performed like guys who preferred rapping to talking. —Sam Sweet
44.OutKast "Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)" (1996)
Producer: Organized Noize
Album: ATLiens
Label: LaFace/Arista
ATLiens was OutKast's chance to prove that the critical attention their debut record garnered was no fluke, and album opener "Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)" managed to do just that. From Big Boi's statement of purpose ("Every time I rhyme for y'all, I'm looking to prove a point") to beat's haunting two-note vocal sample to Andre's live-wire freestyle that closes out the song, "Two Dope Boyz" had a coiled, tense energy, only relieved by the sound effect that cuts off the chorus to bring it to a conclusion. —David Drake
43.DJ Quik "Sweet Black P***y" (1991)
Producer: DJ Quik
Album: Quik Is the Name
Label: Profile
In the 1920s jazz and blues artists penned odes to that "jelly roll;" the R&B shouters of the 1950s wanted to put "sugar in her bowl." But by the 1980s, rap was on the scene and subtlety was a thing of the past. DJ Quik upended a 60-year tradition of double entendre by calling it exactly what it is: "Sweet Black Pussy." Like all of the blues and jazz greats that preceded it, the leadoff track to Quik's 1991 debut Quik Is the Name is a marriage of street corner vulgarity and musical sophistication. Had Jelly Roll Morton lived long enough to powwow with Quik, he would have not only loved his jokes ("Because I'm like Noah's Ark - my bitches come in pairs") but respected the timeless swing and bass-driven momentum inherent to Quik's production style. —Sam Sweet
42.Wu-Tang Clan "Bring Da Ruckus" (1993)
Producer: RZA
Album: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Label: Loud
Like all seminal artworks "Bring Da Ruckus" is great because of what it refuses to do. A dozen different sounds float underneath the primary track like the buzz from a record player or television leaking in from an adjacent room. RZA refuses to clarify any one of these sounds and instead hangs the song on a single percussive line, which sounds like it could have been created with a small orchestra of blunt weapons (a "Concerto For Louisville Slugger in E Minor"). You have to lean in and squint with your ears to catch all the mysterious scuttling underneath the surface of the track but as soon as you get close they're shouting at you: "Bring the ruckus bring the motherfucking ruckus!" The song is not a hit; in fact, it's the anti-hit. But each verse was so catchy that individual lines functioned as singles-Deck "screaming on yo ass like your dad," Ghostface and his Egyptian musk-to be memorized by successive generations of rap devotees. Wu-Tang dared the public to love them and it worked. "Bring Da Ruckus" was obtuse and ornery and still it infected the culture more deeply than the most ubiquitous radio songs from that era. —Sam Sweet
41.Warren G "Regulate" (1994)
Producer: Warren G
Album: Regulate...G Funk Era
Label: Def Jam/Death Row/Interscope Records
Regulate...G Funk Era is a great album—classic even, depending on how close you live to 21st and Lewis—but there is no question that this is an example of an album hopelessly overshadowed by its leadoff title song. Sometimes it takes dozens of records to get a point across. Other times an artist's entire aesthetic purpose can be essentialized in one four-minute single. Such is the case with "Regulate," a work of perfect symmetry: Warren G. and Nate Dogg alternate 16 consecutive verses with infallible consistency. There is no chorus, only the recurring nonverbal motif of the whining synth (and the lingering bearded ghost of Michael McDonald, who composed the song that this song is based on). In 500 years people won't come to Los Angeles to see the Hollywood sign. Instead tours will trace the ruins of the Eastside Motel. —Sam Sweet
40.The Hot Boys "We on Fire" (1999)
Producer: Mannie Fresh
Album: Get It How U Live
Label: Cash Money
The Hot Boys were like the Marx Brothers of the New Orleans projects and "We On Fire" is their Duck Soup, even though the routine more closely resembles Abbott and Costello. Like a surreal edition of inner-city "Jeopardy," the rhetorical questions go round and round but regardless of the inquiry the answer remains ever the same: The Hot Boys, Hot Boys, that's who! I'm sorry, but we'll need that answer in the form of a question. "What kind of nigga freak shop like an eskimo?" That's correct. "What kind of nigga wears Reebok shoes and takes off his shirt just to show his tattoos?" Right you are. "What kind of nigga will make his third string hoe suck his dick." And that, folks, is our daily double. "We On Fire" is some ancient business, a pop song caught between a playground game and the pure pop delight of "Hey Hey We're the Monkees," but enforced by a fearsome Mannie Fresh beat that refuses to sit down. —Sam Sweet
39.Kool G Rap "Streets of New York" (1990)
Producer: Kool G Rap, Large Professor, Anton
Album: Wanted Dead or Alive
Label: Cold Chillin'/Warner Bros. Records
"Streets of New York" sounds like the Beatles' "Dear Prudence" done Blaxploitation style. Is that a harpsichord being played through a wah-wah pedal? Excuse me, waiter, but my smooth jazz sax is starting to melt! How did DJ Polo do it? Answer: he didn't. The imagery is so relentlessly bleak that Kool G Rap sometimes sounds exhausted by the demands of his own list: "Every day is a main event, some old lady limps / The pushers and pimps eat shrimps." When he finally explains the mystery behind that wonky saxophone—"Blind man plays the sax: A tune called 'The Arms On My Moms Show Railroad Tracks'"—you start to get the feeling that this part of town might not be for you, regardless of that gloriously moist harpsichord. And yet despite the dreamlike horror of his hometown tour you get the feeling that you'd never be able to convince G Rap to live anywhere else. —Sam Sweet
38.Dr. Dre "The Watcher" (1999)
Producer: Dr. Dre, Mel-Man
Album: 2001
Label: Aftermath, Interscope
"The Watcher" marks the release of Dr. Dre 2.0. The weekend picnic feeling of The Chronic is replaced here by a stealthier, more insulated version of G-funk with a matte black finish. The glory days of "Let Me Ride" and its hydraulic liberations were over but Dre had retained a master's sense of motion. "The Watcher" sounds like a product from an airless laboratory but its flawless surface is the perfect floor for some of the maestro's most rhythmically acute verses. Okay, so the fact that Nas ghostwrote Dre's words might make this the most convincing act of ventriloquism in the history of hip-hop (read the words off a paper and you hear Nas' voice). Doesn't matter: 2001 wasn't about credentials. Dre already had that in abundance. This time, it was was about perfectionism. —Sam Sweet
37.Drake “Over My Dead Body” (2011)
Producer: Noah "40" Shebib
Album: Take Care
Label: Cash Money Records
Take Care saw Drizzy depart from the mainstream beaten path and chart new territory to create both his own "sound" and his first truly great album (and a classic in my opinion, but that's besides the point here). But he eases us into things with an opener that deceptively seems like more of the same. Chantal Kreviazuk's gothic hook would be right at home on any of Take Care's predecessors, and the haunting notes suggest yet another #SadDrake song. And while the topic definitely gets morose later on the album, 2011 also marked the origin of the confident, unapologetic, brash Drake that's here in full today. Hence, kicking things off with "I think I killed everybody in the game last year, man." Hence a few subliminals even sub-king Jay Z would be proud of, which, current relationships notwithstanding, still sound like razor-barbed wire shots at Big Sean and Kanye. And my favorite part, the line that is at once winking at his own influence on the game and acknowledging that he has filed your complaints and can, and will, go harder: "Man, all of your flows bore me, paint drying." RIP hashtag rap, RIP to the old guard, and welcome to the album in which Drake will finally, officially plant his flag at the peak of the game. —Frazier Tharpe
36.Lauryn Hill "Lost Ones" (1998)
Producer: Lauryn Hill, Che' Guevara, Vada Nobles
Album: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Label: Ruffhouse, Columbia
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is not a rap album as much as an album that sprouted from the soil of rap, so it's fitting that the album's 14 songs grow from "Lost Ones," a pugnaciously pure rap song—perhaps the only one she ever recorded as a solo artist. Built around a simple block party beat self-produced by Hill, the song gives us one last dance with the rugged New Jersey-bred rapper—a persona Hill would soon abandon (as soon as the end of the album, some might say). She flirts with the spiritualism that would soon engulf her career and lets loose a line or two that would come back to haunt her ("Every man want to act like he's exempt / When him need to get down on his knees and repent " sounds different in light of Lauryn's IRS offenses) but none of it mattered. This song shows her knocking her fists before a set of turntables. No matter how off course she eventually strayed, she'll always be planted here, in a pair of big black Timberlands. —Sam Sweet
35.UGK "One Day" (1996)
Producer: Pimp C, N.O. Joe, Mr. 3-2
Album: Riding Dirty
Label: Jive
It begins with the warmest, richest track on Ridin' Dirty, an album that goes a hundred layers deep in shadowy warmth. It was one thing for rappers to recognize the greatness of vintage soul music but Bun B and Pimp C took deeper lessons from their parents' generation. To find an equal for "One Day" you might have to go all the way to Curtis Mayfield's "Billy Jack," from 1975. These are the songs that make pain indistinct from love and gentility indistinct from anger and lushness indistinct from toughness. Pimp C understood that to make a song about death feel true you had to make it as plush and elegant as the satin interiors of all the coffins in which his dead friends were buried. "One Day" makes a home for the deceased but it's also a song about what the deceased do to us after they're gone. It's a church service in song without the church and without the congregation, just three rappers and a track that feels like a Cadillac hearse winding across a cemetery, and a local friend who could do a frighteningly persuasive impression of Ron Isley. Hip-hop loves its "tribute" songs, sure, but this—this is an elegy. —Sam Sweet
34.Gang Starr "Step in the Arena" (1991)
Producer: DJ Premier, The Guru
Album: Step In the Arena
Label: Chrysalis
"Step in the Arena" is composed of a delightful dance routine between a springy bass, some delectable drums, a high-strung trumpet and a man named Guru who has a chocolate cream voice and a thing about being number one. The first track on Gang Starr's second is one of those rap songs that will locate the most ardent opponent of head bobbing and unapologetically enter his spine and force that head to do the rap nerd head bob. That's not to say Gang Starr was without its peccadilloes. With its visions of oiled-up men grappling in the sun, the video for "Step In the Arena" might have taken the "mic gladiator" metaphor a step too far and the line about "yellow fluid, check out how I mellowed into" should make you uneasy. Still, Guru performs with such a rarified air of confidence that listeners were, and are, more than willing to follow the leader. —Sam Sweet
33.EPMD "So Wat Cha Sayin'" (1989)
Producer: EPMD, DJ Scratch
Album: Unfinished Business
Label: Fresh/Sleeping Bag Records
When is sloppy not sloppy? When is moldy not moldy? When are you permitted to break all the rules and still get the glory? When you have something as tasty as "So Wat Cha Sayin," that's when. "One Nation Under a Groove" is a song built for a summer block party so what does Erick Sermon do? He shaves off all its treble, drags it down to the sewer and transforms it to a funk so polluted you'd think he scavenged it from the Gowanus Canal. The happy-go-luck lyrics ("Sit back and recline / Watch the sun shine / Take a stroll / Listen to rock and roll") are undermined by the thoroughly skewed Funkadelic sample that serves as chorus. Even as they reigned supreme among the cutthroat competition of New York rap circa 1989, EPMD was predicting the queasy sonic states that would come to fruition in Houston, Memphis and New Orleans in the decade to follow. —Sam Sweet
32.The D.O.C. "It's Funky Enough" (1989)
Producer: Dr. Dre
Album: No One Can Do It Better
Label: Ruthless Records
The D.O.C. doesn't just sink his teeth into this song—he rips it open with his canines, grinds it to a mash with his molars and leaves the remains hanging off his chin. "Suckers never come close 'cause of knowing / There is no stopping the D.O.C. when I'm flowing / But in the event that someone will try and juice this / Stop him in his tracks, show him that I am ruth-less!" In those days Dr. Dre was all about melding East Coast aggression to West Coast sonics: "It's Funky Enough" got it all in perfect proportion. It not only offered a vision of what was to come on the rest of No One Can Do It Better, but a vision of a future for west coast that could have been entirely different had the D.O.C. not lost his voice, thereby clearing the way for the sea change of The Chronic. —Sam Sweet
31.Eightball and MJG "Pimp in My Own Rhyme" (1995)
Producer: Eightball, MJG, Smoke O
Album: On Top Of The World
Label: Suave House Records/Relativity Records
"Pimp in My Own Rhyme" is the gateway not only to Eightball & MJG's classic 1995 album On Top of the World, but to the entire Suave House sound, a highly overlooked but nonetheless crucial competitor to No Limit and Death Row in the middle 1990s. Premro and Marlon possessed perfectly honed rap styles that could only grow out of the years they spent studying rapping at a time when the Tennessee hip-hop was barely in existence. "Pimp In My Own Rhyme" is a foundational forerunner to the Dirty South triumphs of the post-2000 years but it is also the culmination of an ancient old school ritual. While Eightball opens the track and MJG closes it, the entire midsection finds them engaged in an interlocking rhyme routine worthy of Run-DMC, had Run-DMC grown up in the weeds of Orange Mound instead of the brick row houses of Hollis. —Sam Sweet
30.Kendrick Lamar “Sherane a.k.a. Master Splinter’s Daughter" (2012)
Producer: Tha Bizness
Album: good kid, m.A.A.d city
Label: Top Dawg Entertainment, Aftermath, Interscope
good kid, m.A.A.d. city opens with a film reel's thin stutter, a group prayer, and a lunar howl—that's all before Kendrick Lamar starts reminiscing in horny noir: "I met her at this house party on El Segundo and Central/She had the credentials of strippers in Atlanta." Sherane is the most immediately vivid of Kendrick's many temptations; Kendrick draws her up close, and then again from afar as he's racing from his own bedroom to hers. "What you tryna get into?" he asks Sherane, before his steering takes a turn for the worse. —Justin Charity
29.Scarface "Mr. Scarface" (1991)
Producer: Crazy C, Scarface
Album: Mr. Scarface is Back
Label: Rap-a-Lot Records
The Geto Boys don't get enough credit for their unhinged sense of humor: what other rapper in 1991 would have started his unofficial autobiography of a crack dealer by rhyming "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"? It was Face's way of showing the miserable comedy of a life lived among fiends. "Mr. Scarface" transports the listener to a time before cocaine rap was all about yachts and Bugattis. It is as unembellished as the neighborhood from which it came. Houston's Fifth Ward was dirty and muggy and decrepit and full of death but "Mr. Scarface" simply takes all that for granted. There is no setting of the scene, no theatrical boasting, and absolutely no moralization. This place is exactly how it is shown to us: a day in the life that no one chooses until they have no choice. The beat is durable funk with almost no modification for the consideration of hip-hop orthodoxy. That's because hip-hop needed Face more than he needed hip-hop. Anyway, in the Fifth Ward funk IS hip-hop; it didn't require elaboration and neither did Scarface's portrayal of a existence forged in the distance it talks to walk from the stash house to the corner. —Sam Sweet
28.Jay Z "Can't Knock the Hustle" (1996)
Producer: Knobody, The Hitmen
Album: Reasonable Doubt
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Priority
Jay Z waited 26 years to make his solo debut and when Reasonable Doubt finally arrived in 1996 its first sound was a heartbeat in acceleration. This was his spotlight moment and rather than step out with a bang, he made it a soft-shoe, but that shoe was made of patent leather. "Can't Knock the Hustle" parcels a lifetime of information into a song designed to feel like the interior of a Lexus. The wordplay is dense but you don't notice because Jay is so swift. In a matter of minutes he comes up with approximately 200 ways to talk about getting rich but only says the word "money" three times. This was his rookie year but you never think about that when he's rapping because he already had the carriage of an elder. That's why Mary J. Blige is perfect for this song—she personified the maturity intrinsic to Jay Z's style. And even after the song reaches cruising speed you can still feel that heartbeat pulse in its doorframes. —Sam Sweet
27.Too Short "Life Is ... Too Short" (1989)
Producer: Todd Shaw
Album: Life Is...Too Short
Label: Dangerous Music/Jive/RCA Records
"Life Is ... Too Short" wears funk music the way that rappers would soon wear jeans: ass hanging out, belt reaching for the ground and denim all bunched up at the ankle. Todd Shaw was and is one of the greatest self-contained forces in hip-hop. "Life Is ... Too Short" has no samples, no guests and no singing. The way he made songs makes you feel like you could do it and so could anyone else and yet no one's been able to do it like him. In 1989, there was political rap and socially conscious rap and club rap and critically adored Native Tongues rap but "Life Is..." belonged to none of those categories. It can only be defined dumbly: this is RAP rap. Its sacrament is bass and its religion is persistence. Shaw's entire career can be summarized at the top of the third verse: "I don't stop rapping: That's my theme." —Sam Sweet
26.Kanye West "Dark Fantasy” (2010)
Producer: RZA, Kanye West, No I.D., Jeff Bhasker, Mike Dean
Album: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
Before Kanye West released his fifth solo album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, he directed and released a short film called Runaway. The film, written by frequent collaborator Hype Williams and staring model Selita Ebanks, opens with Kanye sprinting down a foggy tree-lined lane while Nicki Minaj (with her now-defunct British affectations) offers an introduction to the story. Then the beat drops. Unbeknownst to us, we were listening to the intro to MBDTF, “Dark Fantasy.” The album version features Teyana Taylor and Justin Vernon singing a gospel-like hymn, asking, “Can we get much higher?” A pretty apropos question for the guy who changed music at least three times prior and was on an enviable run with his G.O.O.D. Friday releases. The rollicking, but baroque piano-based beat produced in part by RZA and No I.D. set the tone for the album and let ’Ye introduce the topics that would be discussed: namely how he drowned his sorrow in models, liquor, and luxury goods. With all the success and wealth he accumulated up until that point in his career, what better way to kick off the album than with “I fantasized about this back in Chicago”? If there was ever an intro to set the mood for one of ’Ye’s best projects, this was it. Also, if nothing else, it birthed the phrase “you ain’t got no Yeezy in your Serato?” —Damien Scott
25.De La Soul "The Magic Number" (1989)
Producer: Prince Paul, De La Soul
Album: 3 Feet High and Rising
Label: Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. Records
Actually, they were wrong: Four was the magic number for De La Soul, as it was producer "Prince Paul" Huston that telegraphed this Long Island trio's dreams and turned them into the musical cinematography of 3 Feet High and Rising. Hip-hop's 20-year obsession with macho posturing was refuted in the three amiable minutes of "The Magic Number." As it turned out, you didn't need to be hard to be hip-hop. Of course, "The Magic Number" has all the fundamental ingredients: advanced rap skills, check; Prince Paul's old world scratching ("No more, no less" steals the song in the last minute); an ill break borrowed from the least likely source—in this case, a 1970s children's song written and sung by a gentle jazzbo named Bob Dorough. The song has enough mechanics to win the purists approval but its greatness comes from the fact that it simply didn't care about approval. Why else would they embrace those colors at a time when everyone was in uniform boots and hoodies? Like the album it introduces, "The Magic Number" heralded a new system of hip-hop artistry: the exchange that occurs when a group of close friends make music in a suburban basement with the sole purpose of self-entertainment. —Sam Sweet
24.The Geto Boys "We Can't Be Stopped" (1991)
Producer: James Smith
Album: We Can't Be Stopped
Label: Rap-A-Lot Records
It's perfectly summarized in the spoken introduction from Rap-A-Lot president J. Prince: "In 1989 we knocked on the door. In 1990 we beat on the door. Now it's 1991 and we fittin' to kick this motherfucker in." And kick it in they do. The theme of "We Can't Be Stopped" is that the Geto Boys were unafraid to say anything to anybody, and better still, they would say it in three of the most distinctive voices hip-hop has ever known. The first thing you hear on the opening title song is Willie D, whose enormously deep country accent prompted fits of execration from the New York rap establishment. The greatest thing about "We Can't Be Stopped" is that every one of its points is spot-on. What drove the world insane about the Geto Boys is that they rapped like degenerates and yet they articulated arguments with rapacious intelligence. This song is final proof that being rude and being smart will always go great together. —Sam Sweet
23.Jay Z "Intro” (2000)
Producer: Just Blaze
Album: The Dynasty
Label: Roc-A-Fella Records
The Dynasty: Roc La Familia album was originally slated to be a Roc-A-Fella Records compilation album. What we got instead was one of Jigga's hardest albums to date. And he wasted no time making that clear. Just Blaze's epic beat begins and Jay starts it off by saying, "This is ghetto to ghetto, gutter to gutter, street corner to street corner, project to project." At first you think it's just a regular intro with no raps, but then he starts going the fuck off further solidifying his place as the holder of the rap crown during this period. This track will make you run through a brick wall and squat 1,000 pounds. —Angel Diaz
22.The Fugees "How Many Mics" (1996)
Producer: Fugees, Shawn King, Jerry Duplessis
Album: The Score
Label: Ruffhouse, Columbia
Remember when Wyclef Jean had more in common with Redman than Sting? If you weren't around in 1996 don't take my word for it, just listen to "How Many Mics." Silky on the inside with a steel-toed exterior, the song is so comfortable-yet-hard that it's easy to imagine any number of emcees from that era jumping on a 20-minute remix. Alas, it was not to be; "Fu-Gee-la" and "Killing Me Softly" became the runaway hits and everyone forgot about the time Lauryn Hill described herself as "sweeter than licorice, dangerous like syphilis." Reacquaint yourself with the only truly viable MMF configuration in hip-hop history (Digable Planets fans proceed directly to the dumpster behind Shabazz Palace). —Sam Sweet
21.Kanye West "Good Morning" (2007)
Producer: Kanye West
Album: Graduation
Label: Roc-A-Fella, Def Jam
From the vantage point of 2013 "Good Morning" looks like the exact midpoint of Kanye West's career. He was still proving himself and had chosen an anime teddy bear as his latest avatar. The sun was setting on the era of chipmunk soul samples and the opening song on Graduation grabs the last of that light. (Before you smoke one to that sweet Delfonics sample be advised that you are actually listening to a sped-up version of Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life.") At the same time, you can feel the future closing in with all its uncertainty. So many changes and more on the way; how could that little bear have predicted that within a few years Kanye would be wearing balaclavas made of feathers and making babies with the world's most famous Armenian? More than ever "Good Morning" feels like the vessel for the trepidations of youth as symbolized by that teddy. This is his song. —Sam Sweet
20.Big Pun "Beware" (1998)
Producer: Juju
Album: Capital Punishment
Label: Terror Squad/Loud Records
"I gave you fair warning / Beware." The opening track on Big Pun's 1998 album Capital Punishment is not only a beginning, but a grand entrance. The album's refrain is beamed in from Prodigy's opening verse on "Shook Ones," and Pun's commencement song feels like a rumbling rejoinder to that earlier classic, which only came out three years prior but had quickly become the adopted hymn of inner city New York. Because the track is basic in its construction (in 1998 everyone wanted that "Don Corleone Warming his Hands Over a Gas Can Fire" vibe and Juju's beat nails it) "Beware" is primarily a showcase for Pun's Bronx-sharpened lyrical skills: "Sleep with the fish-dips for yapping too loud / What's happening now / Niggas is hard as hell but they Gargamels / Picking on the smallest victim give them heart to kill." —Sam Sweet
19.Common "Resurrection" (1994)
Producer: No I.D.
Album: Resurrection
Label: Relativity
If you had 15 songs to show the world your city, where would you start? Would you show them all the places where your life unfolded—where you picked up girls and got into fistfights? Would you show them the workings of the dangerous corners? Or would you just take them for a bite at your favorite street cart? Common does all of this on Resurrection, but before he gives you a tour of his life or even his city, you just do nothing. On the opening title song, the rhythm of his raps acclimates the listener to the pace of his place, because this is an album in which the amorphous forms of music are as much a part of the urban landscape as any street or skyscraper: "I bathe in bass lines, rinse in riffs, dry in drums, come from a tribe of bums." As the song winds down, you're with Common in the situation from where all this urban storytelling flowed: cruising the cold streets of Southside Chicago in an unregistered car with no heat. —Sam Sweet
18.Three 6 Mafia "Sippin on Some Syrup" (2000)
Producer: DJ Paul, Juicy J
Album: When The Smoke Clears
Label: Loud
The apocalyptic buzz that begins "Sippin' On Some Syrup"—the song that begins Three 6 Mafia's When The Smoke Clears, the group's first platinum disc—is so terrifying and otherworldly and filthy that you would never guess it was lifted directly from 1978 recording of Marvin Gaye's "Is That Enough." That is the genius of DJ Paul and Juicy J: they could extract the inner menace of vintage soul cuts, thereby bridging the paranoia and desperation of late-period Marvin to the elated wickedness of mid-career Mafia. As far as quotables go, this song's only rival is Mike Jones' 2004 hit "Still Tippin'," another tune about sipping that spawned a thousand sequels. From Paul's "duck-duck goose" to Juicy's "pup-pup powder" to Bun B's reference to the jazz standard "Perdido," these are lines you memorize without even trying. Think of a song that's badder than this and you'll inevitably hear Pimp C in your head telling you to "take that monkey shit off, you're embarrassing us." —Sam Sweet
17.Eminem "Kill You" (2000)
Producer: Dr. Dre, Mel-Man
Album: Marshall Mathers LP
Label: Aftermath, Interscope
"Kill You" exemplifies a sonic approach that Dre and Mel-Man devised specifically for Eminem. You know the sound when you hear it—it is squiggly and mischievous and strangely Bach-inflected. On his first album Em had been wobbly and impish while the beats were crisply tailored but with "Kill You" the beat is impish while Eminem's delivery becomes increasingly terse. The rapper's posse expanded in the wake of The Slim Shady LP and by the time Marshall Mathers LP appeared in 2000 he was writing routines for all six of the voices in his head. "Kill You" is a riddle written by a schizophrenic who watched too many horror flicks and was now dealing with the pressure of being the most visible pop star in the United States. "Know why I say these things? / Cause lady's screams keep creeping in Shady's dreams / And the way things seem I shouldn't have to pay these shrinks / This 80 G's a week to say the same things tweece / Twice? Whatever, I hate these things / Fuck shots! I hope the weed'll outweigh these drinks." —Sam Sweet
16.Boogie Down Productions "My Philosophy" (1988)
Producer: Boogie Down Productions
Album: By All Means Necessary
Label: Jive
"Funky, funky, funky, funky, funky hit records / No more than four minutes and some seconds." A song so heavy that the young Dr. Dre would repossess it two years later for the Above the Law's formative L.A. classic "Murder Rap," "My Philosophy" was an indication that By Any Means Necessary would be as dense as Criminal Minded was skeletal. That assumption was only half-right. By Any Means still boasted "T'Cha – T'Cha" and "Part Time Suckers," which harked to the bare steel of "South Bronx." Meanwhile, "My Philosophy" felt like KRS-One's true future. Like the great free-jazz masters of the 1960s, the song is both furious and limber. The music is the ideal setup for Kris's rhymes, which bridge the unapologetic bluntness of his early gangster tales to the unapologetic bluntness of his politically motivated pedagogy. —Sam Sweet
15.Meek Mill "Dreams and Nightmares" (2012)
Producer: Tone the Beat Bully
Album: Dreams and Nightmares
Label: Maybach Music Group, Warner Bros.
Nine years after people first started hearing the Philly spitter's name, Meek Mill released his debut, Dreams and Nightmares, and with that album's intro, Meek showcased the beauty and the beast within his material. Over a humongous instrumental from the Beat Bully, Meek did what he does best: spit. While the beginning of the track finds Meek not holding back over a glorious symphony, the intro does a 180, with Meek asking "y'all thought I was finished?!" before turning things up another notch, skating through the track—and the competition—with 100 blades. Meek might not highlight why everyone fucks with him throughout his albums, but he doesn't waste his intros by pussyfooting or lollygagging. It's all venom, frustration, and real rap. —khal
14.50 Cent "What Up Gangsta" (2003)
Producer: Rob "Reef" Tewlow
Album: Get Rich or Die Tryin'
Label: Aftermath, Interscope, Shady
Brutal and basic, the opening song from Get Rich Or Die Tryin' is reminiscent of being bludgeoned with a baseball bat upholstered in Louis Vuitton leather. In 2003 Jay-Z was busy getting suave while Eminem went for full-blown comedy. It was the perfect time for 50 Cent to come out and count the ways he could do you harm. He could cut you, buck you or gun-butt you. He could kill your connect or stomp the bone out your ass in some brand new Chukkas. Does that not sound like the next sponsor of America's favorite sport drink? 50's art was steeped in casual brutality but "What Up Gangsta" also betrays his particular charm; specifically, his special handling of the hook. He makes "gang-STA" sound like a back alley birdcall. —Sam Sweet
13.GZA "Liquid Swords" (1995)
Producer: RZA
Album: Liquid Swords
Label: Geffen/MCA
In the great Wu trifecta of 1995, Ol Dirty's Return To the 36 Chambers represents emotion and freedom and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx represents elevated fashion. That leaves Liquid Swords, an emblem of the organization's keen intellect and verbal precision. By far the most cerebral of any album in the Wu-Tang family tree, the album begins with its title song, one of the few instances in which a song can legitimately be referred to with the hoary critical shorthand "tightly coiled." Is the incessant ticking within the beat the sound of a silver pocket watch or a time bomb? You decide. The tense opener is reminiscient of the shark theme from Jaws, an analogy that GZA might appreciate given his penchant for the imagery of blood and biting. Liquid Swords is a compendium of priceless criminal metaphors but the best line in its title song is a stunning visualization of GZA's art: "It's a whole different sound / It's a wide entrance, small exit like a funnel / So deep it's picked up on radios in tunnels." —Sam Sweet
12.Notorious B.I.G. "Things Done Changed" (1994)
Producer: Darnell Scott
Album: Ready to Die
Label: Bad Boy
Recorded at a time when nostalgia pieces like Ahmad's "Back In the Day" were all the rage, "Things Done Changed" takes a matchstick of reality to every sweetened memory of the past and threw those memories in the gutter, where such rosy retrospections belonged. (That is, until Biggie decided to revive the form no more than 30 minutes later with "Juicy," Track Ten on Ready To Die.) The first verse ends with a couplet that draws a line in the sand of hip-hop history: "So step away with your fist-fight ways / Motherfucker, this ain't back in the days." Biggie was not as nihilistic as this song suggested—its brilliance is in the pained reactions he has to the behavior of his generation—but the fact that he put it first on his album indicates the importance of the sentiment. Rap music is not about respecting the past; it's not about the past whatsoever. It's about you and me face to face in the right now, doing everything possible to get one over on the other. Or as Biggie put it, with no small amount of self-alarm: "Back in the days, our parents used to take care of us / Look at 'em now: They even fucking scared of us!" —Sam Sweet
11.2Pac "Ambitionz Az a Ridah" (1996)
Producer: Dat Nigga Daz
Album: All Eyez On Me
Label: Death Row, Interscope
At once hushed and enraged, "Ambitionz Az A Ridah" opens the dark odyssey of All Eyes On Me with the ultimate gangsta limp. Dat Nigga Daz produced the track and if that beat had legs one would be six inches shorter than the other. Tupac had a lion's heart and a prizefighter's mouth, so it was all the more effective that he began his ominous opus with an under-the-breath murmur: "I won't deny it, I'm a straight ridah, you don't wanna fuck with me." It is the kind of inner incantation one undertakes just before or just after completing a task of pure and utter malice. "Ridah" is a murder ballad that any paranoid schizophrenic could understand, which might be the reason Mike Tyson once used it as his ring entrance. —Sam Sweet
10.Ice Cube "The N***a Ya Love to Hate" (1990)
Producer: The Bomb Squad, Ice Cube, Sir Jinx
Album: AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Label: Priority
"The Nigga Ya Love" is punk rock in the form of rap, but it's better than punk rock because Cube didn't simply subvert the establishment with his hatred: he met it head-on and beat it down point by point. AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted feels like a looting spree, but rather than ransacking storefronts for material goods, Cube runs rampant through the household of the white society that had villainized him and everyone that looked like him. The album leaves no table unturned, no glass intact, no lawn unharmed. Every single thing has to go and it has to go with glee. The thing about "The Nigga Ya Love To Hate" that most scared white America was that it made cultural insurgence sound like more fun than any house party you could ever throw in the suburbs. The political moment of this song may have passed but it has lost none of its momentum. As soon as you press play you already feel like you've thrown a chair through a plate glass window. —Sam Sweet
9.Juvenile "Ha" (1998)
Producer: Mannie Fresh
Album: 400 Degreez
Label: Cash Money, Universal
Written and released at a time when hip-hop from all parts of the country was falling to the mercy of a seemingly insurmountable set of clichés, Juvenile's "Ha" seemed like an utter impossibility: A totally original and 100% individualistic approach to the rap single. With hindsight we take Juvie's charms for granted but back then this was a seriously esoteric venture. The conceit of "Ha" is that every line ends with the same monosyllabic grunt. Is it rapping or is it talking? His flow thoroughly undermines the predominant New York paradigm, which prizes (or did in 1998, at least) complexity and articulation. Can you name another national hit that is as uncompromisingly localized? The song has the blood of the Third Ward coursing through its hi-hats. Mannie Fresh's beat is a parade rhythm recast in platinum bezel but the chorus-a double-dutch rhyme for the part of the Crescent City where tourists won't roam-marks the zenith of the New Orleans bounce cadence. —Sam Sweet
8.LL Cool J "I'm Bad" (1987)
Producer: L.A. Posse, LL Cool J
Album: Bigger and Deffer
Label: Def Jam
Forget "I Need Love"—"I'm Bad" steals the show before Bigger and Deffer leaves the gate. A slow Shaft-like introduction leads the listener to believe the song will split into double time when it kicks in, but it flips those expectations. LL does his best teen wolf scream and the song explodes into a halftime killer. Herein lies the definition of riding the beat. That obese bassline just keeps going up and down a set of imaginary stairs as LL flies over them doing acrobatics off every step. The last couplet is the grand finale, a spectacular little run that rivals Kool Keith for surrealist banter: "My vocals exact like rack and pinion in a Jag / You try to brag, you get your rhymes from a grab-bag / No good scavenger, catfish vulture / My tongue's a chisel in this composition sculpture, I'm bad!" —Sam Sweet
7.Nas "N.Y. State of Mind" (1994)
Producer: DJ Premier
Album: Illmatic
Label: Columbia
Stealthy and shuffling, "N.Y. State of Mind" could only have been written by someone familiar with the fine art of home invasion. At the time it was popular to sample sirens and police radio transmissions to evoke the paranoiac stew of ghetto reality but Nas and DJ Premier didn't need of that to bring Queensbridge to record. "N.Y. State of Mind" overlays two gorgeous pieces of 1970s jazz—"Mind Rain" by Joe Chambers and "Flight Time" by Donald Byrd—and from that point somehow channels every enshrouded sound of nighttime in an uncertain corner of New York City. There is fog and subway steam in this song, even though none of those sounds actually exist on the record. Even though it's the ultimate portrayal of rap style, its rhythms seem more attuned to the rhythms of thieves and boxers and taxi drivers. The atmosphere is not the result of a predetermined recipe but instead is something Nas conjures through sheer visual presence and creative willpower; and through the dark and deeply nostalgic architecture of DJ Premier. —Sam Sweet
6.Dr. Dre "F**k Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebrating)" (1992)
Producer: Dr. Dre
Album: The Chronic
Label: Death Row, Interscope, Priority
Within a year of its release, the album "dedicated to the niggas that was down from day one" was in the stereo of half the households in the United States, and all of a sudden people who never knew or cared who Tim Dog and Eazy-E were to begin with were dancing around their gravestones like schoolyard zombies. All because of that staggering bass and a skinny teenager from Long Beach named Calvin. Even now it is epic and yet completely nonchalant. Like all songs that change the world it seems painfully simple upon closer inspection. It's a slowed-down Funkadelic tune enhanced by a deluge of synthesizers that gush over the surface of the song with the odor of afternoon intoxication. "Dre Day" was an integral part of a significant moment in politics, in pop music, and in the society of Los Angeles, but the song is not locked in time. It might be the only transcendent dis track in all of hip-hop: an experience so monumental that you somehow forget about what Dre wants to do to Uncle Luke's mouth. It was Dre's confirmation as a new elder in hip-hop and Snoop's coming out party. It's full of nausea and menace and still it exists to get that party moving. —Sam Sweet
5.A Tribe Called Quest "Excursions" (1991)
Producer: A Tribe Called Quest
Album: The Low End Theory
Label: Jive/RCA Records
In one of rap's great cosmic alignments, the very first thing you hear on The Low End Theory is the sound of a bass played by a man named Mickey Bass. Q-Tip lifted the main ingredient for this song from a 1973 recording of "A Chant For Blue" by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, for whom Mr. Bass played the titular instrument. The Low End Theory happens to be the album where Tribe became confirmed jazz messengers and in his first couple lines Q-Tip immediately draws the connection between hip-hop and bebop. It wouldn't take long for the fusion of jazz and rap to become a cliché-apologies to any surviving members of Dream Warriors-but "Excursions" represents the ground floor, the place where Tribe proved beyond any doubt that rhymes could swing and upright bass could sting. —Sam Sweet
4.Eric B & Rakim "Follow the Leader" (1988)
Producer: Eric B.
Album: Follow The Leader
Label: Uni/MCA Records
Paid In Full had been more a sequence of sterling singles than a proper album so 1988's Follow the Leader was Eric B. & Rakim's first opportunity to make their full-length statement. The opening title song is a demonstration of poise under fire. The beat is a hybrid of a few old jazz and funk samples but its raw burn more resembles acid house. Rakim, of course, reacts to this unconventional backdrop with stone-cold clarity: "Music mix, mellow maintains to make / Melodies for emcees, motivates the breaks / I'm everlasting, I can go on for days and days / With rhyme displays that engrave deep as x-rays." Here he proved himself a professional in the ancient mold: the rougher the conditions, the better he performed. —Sam Sweet
3.Public Enemy "Bring the Noise" (1988)
Producer: The Bomb Squad
Album: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Label: Def Jam
"Bring the Noise" is the song that proved to rap that sound in and of itself can be a weapon. It Takes A Nation of Millions was so magnificently aggressive and metallic that it was certain to draw a line in the sand. Only young people in the struggle had the psychic equipment to withstand this transmission. While everyone in the establishment was caught clutching their ears all the revolutionaries would have a chance to run past and take over the country. Well, that was the plan, anyway. Instead, Flava Flav hooked up with the blonde from Rocky 4 and judging from a recent NPR retrospective, people gave up on A Nation of Millions. The young reviewer called the album "bizarre" and "bludgeoning" and admitted he found Drake "more viscerally pleasing." In the words of our once fearless leader Chuck D: "Suckers, liars, get me a shovel! Some writers I know are damn devils." For that kid and NPR and every one like him, I say: Don't believe the hype. —Sam Sweet
2.N.W.A "Straight Outta Compton" (1988)
Producer: Dr. Dre, DJ Yella
Album: Straight Outta Compton
Label: Priority, Ruthless
"Straight Outta Compton" completely embodies the impetus of its title. The track explodes without any warning and proceeds to rush the listener in one uninterrupted attack. With this song N.W.A. opened a Pandora's box that contained every ugly sharp of buried resentment that had festered on the South Los Angeles streets over the preceding fifty years. It's funky but by no means laid back and violent but by no means melodramatic. Set to the tempo of someone being chased down an alley, "Straight Outta Compton" is pure and utter energy. It announced that N.W.A. could summon all the electricity of Public Enemy and still get away with letting Eazy-E threaten to smother your mother. —Sam Sweet
1.Run-DMC "Peter Piper" (1986)
Producer: Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons
Album: Raising Hell
Label: Profile/Arista Records
Swiftest beginning to a rap record ever: a 10-second acapella intro goes by in a blink and all of a sudden the song is off and skipping on the brass bells of Bob James' "Take Me To the Mardi Gras." There are no choruses and no melodies. What's left when you empty the contents of conventional song structure? The answer: three-and-a-half minutes of verbal double-dutch in which each line creates momentum that leads directly into the next with barely a pause. And yet, for all its hardness, "Peter Piper" still has the light touch. When Run-DMC got the party started they put the emphasis on "started." Let "Peter Piper" be the antidote to the bloated beginnings of contemporary rap albums. —Sam Sweet