The Ten Best Rap Albums Of 2008

10.  Lil’ Wayne – The Carter III

Of all the things Lil’ Wayne has accomplished in the past couple of years, perhaps the most important is reminding everyone that rap’s not dead.  In fact, Lil’ Wayne may be single-handedly keeping the entire music industry alive at this point.  With The Carter III, he built the perfect commercial vehicle to do it.  Half by-the-numbers big budget rap album, half weird impulse parade, The Carter III lets Kanye West and Jay-Z collaborations go toe-to-toe with Weezy singing one of The Animals’ classic singles and dressing down a female police officer.  He keeps at it, he may end up being all things to all people.

9.  Re-Up Gang – We Got It For Cheap Vol. 3

Volumes one and two established The Clipse as the thinking hipster’s crack rappers; Volume three of the We Got It For Cheap series is the inevitable posse introduction.  Even making the most clichéd rap moves, Pusha T and Malice are still leagues more clever than most.  For one thing, Re-Up Gang is more a rebranding effort, or an easy excuse to start calling Ab-Liva an official group member, than an entirely new group.  (The only other member, Sandman, has already peaced out.) For another, when they finally released a legitimate single, it only featured The Clipse on vocals anyway.  We Got It For Cheap is exactly what we want from a posse mixtape: maximum Clipse, an obligatory “Roc Boys” freestyle, and a monster single in the form of “20K Money Making Brothers On The Corner.”

8.  Bun B – II Trill

Pimp C’s untimely passing in 2007 came at the end of a career year for seminal Texas rap group UGK.  Still riding high (riding dirty?) on the success of their album Underground Kingz, killer single “Int’l Players Anthem” and collaborations with M.I.A. and Dizzee Rascal, the group finally seemed poised to receive the recognition they deserved when Pimp C died from an unfortunate mixture of syrup and sleep apnea.  In the wake of Pimp C’s death, Bun B’s 2008 album II Trill mostly steers clear of overt mourning in favor of an album that draws on all of UGK’s strengths—trunk rattlers, club bangers and gangster rap.  II Trill could proudly stand beside any of UGK’s achievements.  Instead of paying tribute to Pimp C with words, Bun B is building his legacy with music.

7.  Jean Grae – Jeanius

Jean Grae’s collaboration with 9^th Wonder was slated to come out in 2004, when both artists were at the peak of their media attention.  For Grae, Jeanius would have been the second album in a year, and fourth album-length release in four years.  For 9^th, Jeanius would have built momentum after 2003’s breakthroughs with Little Brother and God’s Stepson, and a track on Jay-Z’s The Black Album.  In 2008, Jeanius had little chance of connecting with the same audience it might have in 2004, when Grae had booked a string of front-of-book magazine profiles pivoting around the fact that she was a female MC who could actually, you know, rap.  It’s a damn shame, because, even with four years of dust on its sleeve, Jeanius showcases both artists at the top of their game.

6.  Q-Tip – The Renaissance

No one expected Q-Tip to release a relevant album in 2008.  For all intents and purposes, we’d lost him after the artistic misfire of 1999’s Amplified and the lost Kamaal The Abstract.  In 2001, he made an appearance on Jay-Z’s “Girls, Girls, Girls” with Biz Markie and Slick Rick—part of a gallery of icons used for their distinctive voices without being giving so much as a “Featured” credit or a guest verse on a remix. Yet, The Renaissance schools the legions of rappers trying to make albums that lean heavily on the model A Tribe Called Quest established.  Jazzy without being about jazz, The Renaissance re-establishes Q-Tip as a personality more than just a rapper—essentially, he’s getting the party started on each trap—and with a legion of potential singles, we should be hearing from him for a long time to come.

5.  The Roots – Rising Down

In the mid-90’s, The Roots seemed to come fully formed out of the womb as the next logical extension of the Native Tongues vibe, building rap songs around jazz breaks and playing their own instruments. (Did you know they play their own instruments?)  But after reaching the apex of that particular sound on 1999’s Things Fall Apart, they had a couple of immensely compelling identity crises with 2002’s Phrenology and 2004’s The Tipping Point.  With 2006’s Game Theory, they started to try to reconcile Phrenology’s rock experimentalism with The Tipping Point’s commercial aspirations.  On this year’s Rising Down, they did it.  The only possible next step is to become Jimmy Fallon's house band.

4.  El-P – WeAreAllGoingToBurnInHellMegamix2

El-P has often favored ideas over execution, packing his albums and songs full of thought—to the point of bursting.  On WeAreAllGoingToBurnInHellMegamix2, offered for free on the Definitive Jux website, takes it a little easier on the listener.  …Takes it easier in terms of high-concept overreach, but WeAreAllGoingToBurnInHellMegamix2 still comes with all of the production thunder of his previous efforts.  A simpler El-P means that you get most of the good stuff and little of the bad—for example, less impenetrable gobbledygook; more terse quote-ables like, “Settle down, skipper, that’s so September 10^th of you” and “I’m an everlasting Gobstopper.  Suck me forever,” that could be YOUR snide retort of 2009.

3.  The Knux – Remind Me In 3 Days

Marketed as hipster rap by a major label (Interscope), The Knux amplify that image amplified on their debut album, Remind Me In 3 Days, with valley girl impressions and choruses in which they order fancy coffee drinks (probably from The Coffee Bean on Sunset and Fairfax.)  These are the same kind of branding problems that keep people who couldn’t get past the literate preppieness away from Vampire Weekend’s album. The Knux, like Vampire Weekend, are secretly more interested in discovering an uncharted sub-genre of pop music—theirs is one with the creative expansiveness of turn-of-the-millennium OutKast and the swagger of the class of 1988.  Nothing on Remind Me In 3 Days skyrockets to “Bombs Over Baghdad” heights, but nearly everything jacks its spirit.

2.  GZA The Genius – Pro Tools

On “0% Finance,” GZA tells the story of  over a highwire-tight guitar driven beat, reminiscent of Ghostface’s “Daytona 500” if “Daytona 500” had been 250% more relentless.  On “Groundbreaking,” GZA and Justice Kareem finish each other’s sentences.  On “Pencil,” GZA opens Pro Tools with classic Wu-Tang chipmunk soul featuring RZA and Masta Killa.  Everything on the album succeeds at both upholding the GZA’s legacy and expanding it, everything is exquisitely tailored, every story is told immaculately, everything supremely confident, nothing calling attention to itself—it’s a classic that’s incredibly easy to overlook in a catalogue as rich as the Wu-Tang’s.  Don’t sleep.

1.  Wale – The Mixtape About Nothing

No other rap album matched the scope and ambition of Wale’s The Mixtape About Nothing in 2008.  In many ways, it was the Bizarro Carter III—countering Lil’ Wayne’s production value, commercial reach and looniness with a thoughtful, name-making treatise spawned from an out-there concept about Seinfeld.  You can imagine the two albums meeting on the corner of first and first at the nexus of the universe.  Wale begins The Mixtape About Nothing with a series of Jerry-style “What’s the deal” questions set to a beat cobbled out of the sitcom’s interstitial music.  Each question spawns from the question before it, creating a song with a stream-of-consciousness spiral that branches off in a hundred directions.  The album follows suit—each idea, each line serving as a launchpad for a handful of ideas, which inspire their own ideas.  A rap album of this scope and substance only comes along once in a long while.

-Martin Brown, 2008

Comments

[Tim]

I haven't given GZA another try since i tried Beneath the Surface - although, if he's back to Liquid Swords form, I may have to remedy that?

I also must admit the new Roots just seemed murky to me. Maybe I need to put it back in rotation.

[Tucker Stone]

The only GZA album that holds up for me post Swords was Grandmasters--Beneath The Surface was just torturous stuff, and listening to Legend of Liquid Swords reminded me of what it would sound like if somebody released an album composed solely of the 1-minute preview tracks they have on Amazon. That being said, Marty's list was the first place I heard about Pro Tools, so I'm in the dark as well. And yeah, I'd give the Roots another shot--it's been a thinker piece for me. Hopefully you'll find something to enjoy before the Jimmy Fallon show starts and everybody throws away their Roots albums and pretends they all died.

[David]

Great list, lots of good recommends here.

Thanks for turning me on to the new GZA album, by the way -- it's maybe not Liquid Swords good, but my first three listens say it's closer than he's been in ages. '0% Finance' = fuck me, now that's how you do intensity without ever breaking a sweat!

Lots of other albums here I haven't listened to yet. Lets see if we can do something to change that...

[Sean Witzke]

The El-P mixtape felt kind of samey and throwawy to me. Maybe it's time to give it another listen.

[Marty]

Tim,

I'm interested to see what you think of the GZA album. I think he's so rediculously on point, but the album's gotten slammed a bit by critical consensus.

I can see how The Roots album might be a little murky--in a better year for rap, it might not have placed as high--but I think that they're chasing after their own sound, and they hit some pretty fantastic peaks.

David,

The first time I heard O% Finance I was like "No way can he keep this up for an entire song." And then he did.

Sean,

Same as The Roots album, in a better year El-P might not have been as high, but I think WeAreAll... is a pretty great distillation of the things he does well. There's some clutter there, but there's also plenty of great material.

[adam]

Wheres Nas and atmosphere theyve got substance also immortal technique