The group split and began work on solo projects just a year after The Score’s release, but that was enough time for it to put Fugees in the hip-hop hall of fame, changing the genre’s landscape forever. Each member of the band have the opportunity to really shine on this record, but The Score has to be noted for bringing Hill to a mainstream audience, with her vocals anchoring the group’s soulful sound on singles such as “Ready Or Not” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song”. Weaving together smart samples, live instruments and intelligent vignettes of ghetto life, The Score is intimate and thoughtful, at the time providing a broader appeal to masses who were skeptical about hip-hop music. If you talk that kind of talk, you sure as hell have to walk the walk and, upon release, The Score did not disappoint. “It’s almost like a hip-hop version of Tommy, like what The Who did for rock music,” said Lauryn Hill of Fugees’ second album, before it had even been released. Equipped with Death Row Records’ most celebrated producers – including, you guessed it, Dr Dre – to match his swaggering braggadocio, All Eyez On Me may not be 2Pac’s most thoughtful album, but it’s the one on which all elements came together harmoniously and, considering its sheer scale and quick turnaround, deserves to be remembered as one of the greats. While a tone of urgency runs through it, 2Pac’s work on this album is anything but sloppy, eschewing the more self-reflective themes explored on Me Against The World for an unashamed celebration of Thug Life. The rapper died in a drive-by shooting less than a year later, but not before the release of All Eyez On Me, an album that was hastily recorded in two weeks. In today’s world, no label in their right mind would have bailed him out for his crime, but that’s what Death Row Records did in 1995, forking out $1.4 million on the condition he would make three albums for them once released. Brick.At 27 songs long, 2Pac’s fourth and final album to be released during his lifetime is a tour de force of hip-hop, the first of its kind to ever be released for mass consumption and a ferocious return to music after spending eleven months in jail for sexual assault. He released two East Atlanta Santa mixtapes while serving time, but “The Return” is a specially gift-wrapped stocking stuffer from Ol’ St. “The Return East Atlanta Santa” The Gucci Mane parade was thrown as soon as he was released from prison in May, but you knew he was truly settled once the overflow of releases started coming. Meshed with Metro Boomin’s sinister ambient beats, it’s like music for the elevators in hell.
It feels less like you’re hearing raps and more like you’re hearing the voices in his head. “Savage Mode” In tone and content, 21 Savage takes you on a tour though a tormented subconscious. But on “Feminine” he takes the mask off and dives into love, lust, jazz, and funk. He dropped the “You” EP in 2012 under the name Larry Lovestein & the Velvet Revival. Probably because it’s a way to shake the image of the party-loving rapper that frat packs adore and to truly explore where different sounds can take him. It’s as lush, vivid, and pointed as his Grammy-winning opus, in a smaller, possibly more potent dose. “untitled unmastered” More than just “To Pimp a Butterfly” leftovers, “untitled” is a fully formed extension of Kendrick’s massive 2015 think piece. In many ways, ScHoolboy Q puts South Central Los Angeles on display with the same touches as Ryan Gattis in his 2015 novel “All Involved.” From the gang injunctions telling him where to go when he was just a middle-schooler, to the futility of a preacher trying to persuade him to keep a truce on Sundays, to uncles smoking what he was selling, the devil’s in Q’s details.
“Blank Face” Sometimes gangsta rap is a cartoon, sometimes it’s a novel. Thank You 4 Your Service” Both a tribute to one of hip-hop’s most legendary groups and to the “funky 5-footer” Phife Dawg, who died in February after years of battling diabetes, A Tribe Called Quest’s return brought beautiful closure to the loss of a friend as well as to their own storied run in rap, with beats and rhymes that were politically piercing and painfully heartfelt. From carefree late nights at the skating rink, to the annoying car rides after, to church the next morning, Chance managed to remain wide-eyed when those eyes could’ve easily been weary. “Coloring Book” Yes, Chance the Rapper injected Kirk Franklin and the Chicago Children’s Choir into hip-hop, but perhaps more importantly, he injected joy in its purest form.
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