If you listen to alternative, psychedelic rap today, there's a good chance it was influenced either directly or indirectly by Deltron 3030. Deltron never became the superstars that Gorillaz did, but this album remains the Iggy Pop to their Ziggy Stardust. Among the album's guests was Blur's Damon Albarn, and he credits the album as a major inspiration on Gorillaz, whose debut single ("Clint Eastwood") the following year featured Del returning the favor. Automator's production is hypnotic and psychedelic and sounds like a trip through outer space, and Del's tongue-twisting rhymes and sci-fi themes make it even more dizzying. Deltron 3030, the self-titled debut album by the supergroup of Del the Funky Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala, wasn't just lyrically a concept album set in 3030 it still sounds futuristic today. The first album on this list was still largely rooted in the sound of the '90s, but the second one hit fast forward another 1,030 years. Read on for the list ( unranked, in chronological order) and leave your own favorites in the comments. No disrespect to early 2000s albums like Scarface's The Fix, Reflection Eternal's Train of Thought, DMX's Grand Champ, Blackalicious' Blazing Arrow, Paul Wall & Chamillionaire's Get Ya Mind Correct, Trina's Da Baddest Bitch, or any other classics that didn't make the list, but 25 is a small number and the line had to be drawn somewhere. The 25 albums on our list aren't necessarily the definitive 25 best rap albums of the early 2000s, but all 25 hold up in ways that make them feel especially essential today.
Later that year, Kanye would release his Jon Brion collaboration Late Registration, which started to shape a rap future that would look and sound much, much different. It's never easy to pinpoint the exact beginning and end of an era, but this list goes from 2000 through very early 2005, which saw the release of a certain instant-classic album that felt like the last (cough) document of the early 2000s sound. The early 2000s also birthed the first album by Kanye West, the pink polo-wearing rapper with a Benz and a backpack who irreversibly changed the very idea of what a rapper could be. The early 2000s saw Southern rap finally have the moment that Andre 3000 said it would back at the 1995 Source Awards, and we're still feeling the effects of that today - it's now more common to hear New York rappers try to sound like Atlanta than the other way around. The tough New York rap and West Coast gangsta rap that dominated the '90s continued into the early 2000s, but they eventually made way for other scenes and subgenres to take over. It was often a singles-dominated market and even some of the best artists failed to release albums without filler, but the highs on those 70-minute albums hold up and shouldn't be lost to history.
A lot of the most innovative music of the time lived on mainstream rap albums, and a good deal of those albums have become relics of the CD era when albums were pressured by major labels to have a little bit of everything (the love songs, the radio songs, the street songs) rather than to be concise, Illmatic-style classics. In 2020, it's normal for mainstream rap albums to be among the most acclaimed albums of the year, but 20 years ago, that wasn't always the case. "I was listening to Jay-Z before you even knew who Jay-Z was, when he was with Jaz and the Originators back in '88." "A lot of people would come up to us and be like, 'Yeah, I hate Jay-Z, too.' I don't hate Jay-Z, I think he's dope," El told Pitchfork in 2002. Some fans and critics tried to paint the underground as more authentic than the mainstream, but even El-P himself didn't see it that way. Artists like Jay-Z and Eminem made the genre more popular than ever, as a new critically acclaimed rap underground started to take shape, led by artists like Deltron 3030, Madvillain, and El-P. The early 2000s were a crucial time for rap. Some of the classic 2000 albums have already celebrated their 20th anniversaries, and other early 2000s classics will be turning 20 before we know it, so we thought it'd be a good time to look back on some of the early 2000s rap albums that hold up especially well and still feel relevant and influential today.
Music nostalgia tends to move in 20-year cycles, so it's no surprise that - following the '90s-rap revivalism of the 2010s - we're already seeing some early 2000s rap trends resurfacing in today's rap music.
0 kommentar(er)
