What is the most underrated hip-hop album of all-time?

We always talk about underrated MCs and Producers etc…but what album is the most underrated?

and I'm not really getting at naming albums by unknown artists…I'm talking about albums from (at least somewhat) popular artists.

The album that brought the post about is Hold It Down by Das Efx.

They went platinum with Dead Serious. Gold with Straight Up Sewaside. And then they failed to even go gold with their third album.

And to me, Hold It Down is their best overall album.

What other albums can be named?

i love that album

there is like ONE song i cld do without ("rill shit")

but nobody move is one of my favorite hiphop songs of all time

the production (again for ME) still sounds as good today as it did when the album came out

just a GREAT album

that most people dont talk about at all anymore

i thought diverse' 'one a.m.' should've got more love... beats from madlib, rjd2, prefuse 73, features from vast aire, lyrics born, jean grae, and diverse is very dynamic and engaging on the mic, very thoughtful and engrossing lyrics

i'm also a big fan of j-live's 'all of the above,' but people mostly talk about 'the best part' as his one great album

I love both albums but imo both could be trimmed down.

He always has a few joints I can do without.

HELL YES to J-Live though, especially The Best Part.

>i thought diverse' 'one a.m.' should've got more love...
>beats from madlib, rjd2, prefuse 73, features from vast aire,
>lyrics born, jean grae, and diverse is very dynamic and
>engaging on the mic, very thoughtful and engrossing lyrics
>
>i'm also a big fan of j-live's 'all of the above,' but people
>mostly talk about 'the best part' as his one great album

bangers that he accumulated over the first few years of his career, but I don't think it was what it was intended to be. Heads waited like three years for that one. "All of the Above" was the true first album imo.

. . . of the proper album as he possibly could have made it.

He added 'Epilogue' (which is awesome) and changed the beat on 'School's In' (lawsuit on the uncleared sample on the original beat).

I remember getting a mixtape in 98 that had 'Them that's Not' and 'Yes' on it and I bought a bootleg of the album in late 99, so all of that stuff had been around for a while in that incarnation.

~Austin

I think Then What Happened? is J-Live's best album. I don't even remember many people talking about it when it came out, so I guess that fits in here too...

its ashame that IMO each of their albums got better and they still lost steam as far as acclaim

kind of echoing your same sentiment

we rocked the shit out of straight up sewaside though

but there is something about Hold It Down for me.

that album dope from top to bottom.

>we rocked the shit out of straight up sewaside though

I def bumped that more than their 1st one...I think i got that shit from one of those BMG music catalogs

i deleted that comment tho as to not open another can of worms

smh

i guess we've all done it...lol...

but it was those ads that MADE me do it!

In college a friend of mine bought a boom box that came with a certificate where you could join Columbia House and get 4 CDs for $4, including shipping, with no further obligation to buy anything, quit at any time. This was a damn sight better than most of the deals Columbia House and BMG ran in magazines, of course. We ran about 50 photocopies of it and kicked off a years-long cycle of joining and quitting, over and over. At the time I was big into jazz and I built up a pretty large jazz collection just by taking advantage of Columbia House. I think eventually they stopped accepting that deal.

"TRUE INDEED"

"Underrated" can be hard to pin down. This album is probably really well-known in hip hop circles; it probably sold well too. But I'd still consider it underrated, or at least overshadowed by their debut and by all the good OutKast albums. Never seems to come up in conversations about great rap albums, though it should.

--------
Guante: www.guante.info
Tru Ruts/Speakeasy Records

KILLED IT

edit: i should have said ceelo AND organized noize

next to aquemimi is my fav. DF album...I've probably played that CD AND LP more than almost anything i ever owned

probably my favorite ONP album.

the production is crazy.

and Cee-Lo killed it.

one of my favorite Dre verses on Black Ice as well.

there were some questionable areas like Ghetto-ology, the interlude leading into They Don't Dance No Mo, and I'm not so sure Just About Over fit the vibe of the album.

other than that…very very high points on that album.

and did we mention Cee-Lo killed it?

about the album...lol

>there were some questionable areas like Ghetto-ology, the
>interlude leading into They Don't Dance No Mo, and I'm not so
>sure Just About Over fit the vibe of the album.
>

The beat on Ghetto-ology, and the hook? man, that song was hittin home for me...i think its also because that album came out right as I was going to college so i really did have one foot in and one foot out...

what album does Just About Over fit on?

sorry man...i know its just a diff of opinion...i've just never heard anyone mention those as weak points...the only thing I don't really care for and most folks i know don't is Khujo talking about hollow-points on gay rights activists...i mean i ain't gay or even an activist, but that shit was just kinda wrong...and it sucks because the song is jammin!

i HATE interludes and that one i mentioned really serves no purpose and is a waste of time, as are most interludes in my opinion.

as for the songs; i guess i don't dislike Just About Over but I don't feel it fit the vibe of the album because it sticks out from the rest of the production.

Ghetto-ology I'm going to pass off as my typical pro-northeast taste in hip-hop.

in 98 that song sounded more like the southern hip-hop I didn't vibe with as opposed to the usual ON production that gave Kast and Goodie their more universal appeal. I believe Cee-Lo produced that one so it makes sense. I like my Goodie on the Beautiful Skin, Distant Wilderness, Inshallah, Still Standing tip. That soulful southern hip-hop shit. Ghetto-ology is clearly not that. I wasn't big on the guest spots either.

The Skinny

seeing as it was pretty much lost in the sands of time. If you own all the main 'Kast and Goodie albums, this is one of the first Dungeon Family affiliate albums to pick up.

I guess its cause im from ATL
but if you walk up to anybody 25+ right now they can
recite at least 3 songs off the top of their head off that LP

It is definitely considered a classic and was maybe their biggest album, but when cats talk about old school hiphop they always leave this classic out...for me, that album had just as much impact on my hiphop asthetic as any RUNDMC, LL, BDP, etc album...
I mean it had that R&Bish feel with the Full Force production, but UTFO ALWAYS came hard with the lyrics...Between "Lethal" and "Life Is..." (Too $hort) my 4th grade vocabulary was highly advanced...

my first two tapes were fat boys and this...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTFO_(album)

the fat boys were cool and all but THIS stayed one of my favorites for a long time

wow

wasnt expecting anyone to bring them up

my cousin from brooklyn came to live with us in indiana for a year because he was in some uh...trouble...legally and well, i guess wise-guy trouble...
anyway, he was 18 and rude and bad and cool as fuck to me...and he introduced me to real NY hiphop (by this i mean stuff other than RUNDMC and Beastie Boys, etc)
He left me a mixtape (which i still will never know who half the artists were)
and that UTFO - Lethal

I mean S.W.A.T., Diss, Ask Yo Mama, The Ride, Mo' Bass, Burn in Bed...man that was just a great album front to back


>wasnt expecting anyone to bring them up

exactly...that's why i did...it surprises me how much they get left out of the "hiphop pioneers" discussion around here...I mean you get lots of cats who know "Roxanne Roxanne" from an old-school compilation or whatever, but Lethal gets overlooked all the time...
unless i'm talking to someone 29+...i guess you had to be there or something...

in my room back in the day.

I'd almost go so far to say that UTFO themselves don't get the props they deserve when folks discuss hip-hop from prior generations.

>
> I'd almost go so far to say that UTFO themselves don't get
>the props they deserve when folks discuss hip-hop from prior
>generations.

no question

I was 9 and a half when BITE IT dropped on the radio in philly. I remember having the tape and memorizing almost every song that summer. I also remember watching beat street every night on betamax and trying to re-create all the RAMO burners. heh.

Dr. Ice and the Kangol Kid. sooo fresh.

lurkin since 1999. werd.

De La Soul The Grind and of course the okay player favorite whipping boy Common Electric Circus

I know it's a love/hate type of album but that album is just not one of his higher moments.

it's not Com doing what Com does best.

it's Com trying to go the Andre 3000 route and it comes off contrived.

the pretentiousness of the album shines through more so than anything else and that's a negative.

the same way I can't rock with Drake. I can tell by listening to Drake's music that he went into the studio with the intention of making a radio friendly watered down piece of shit.

I can tell Com went into the studio and tried to create that album. it doesn't come off natural.

but hey, it's your opinion and I know others love the album as well.

Just had to say my piece.

When Organized Noise is the weak link on your album, you got a banger! Too bad it didn't sell and Bubba ran away from making that type of music, cause he was damn good at it.

lol

One of the 2 qualifiers.

>When Organized Noise is the weak link on your album, you got
>a banger! Too bad it didn't sell and Bubba ran away from
>making that type of music, cause he was damn good at it.

Yeah, I was mad disappointed in the follow up. But I understand.

It's CLEARLY not as good as "Runaway Slave" (which is underrated too but only because it's not considered one of the 5 best Hip-Hop albums of all time) but damn if it's not one of the harshest, most minimalist albums of the 90's. I take it over Mobb Deep any day of the week...

Since I'm on the topic of DITC, Fat Joe's debut "Represent" is REALLY underrated too. Sure, Fat Joe's rapping is absolutely terrible but so is Group Home's and that one is considered a classic. W¤hat it has in common with Group Home is that the beats are godlike. Diamond D and Showbiz in the 92-93 era were just too good...

they were kinda under the radar but dope

...never was a fan of fat joe though...

I liked "Goodfellas" as well, bought it on vinyl the week it came out and transferred it to a cassette, didn't know till a few years later that it was a bonus track on the cd version.

Anyway, it was a good album and like you said it wasn't good as their debut album but it was a solid release, it had a dope first single "Next Level" with the Premier remix, had guest appearances from other DITC members, had a guest appearance from Method Man as well, but I think it was kind of a different vibe from the first album (dark) and that was why it wasn't recieved as well from the masses but it's still gets rotation from me.

It's weird. A.G. came out with two dope guest spots on Lord Finesse's first solo. Then when Show and AG drops all of a sudden his rapping is on the mediocre side. Then on Goodfellas he's nasty again.

i forgot what this post was about i just had to state that.
i STILL play that album as if it came out two days ago.

Some dope stuff on there, I suppose it just didn't fit in with everything else that was happening in 1995, where I was people were either G-funking or WuTanging. I was gfunking, wutanging and publicememing

I've always thought that album was a chaotic masterpiece. Sure, it's not PE anywhere near their peak, but it's a fucking GOOD album. 'Whole Lotta Love', 'Give it Up', 'Live and Undrugged', 'Whatcha Gone Do Now?'. . . god damn, really the opening six or seven song sequence was just masterfully put together.

Yeah, good album that really doesn't deserve its shitty reputation.

Also, Chuck's solo album. Forget underrated. People just flat out ignored that thing.

~Austin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI1HS28wSIo

~Austin

I'm still mad about how the record label treated these two guy's second release, it was pure dopeness and it basically got pushed under the rug after the second release "The Ultimate" from this album got released, but I think that had to do with the label "Big Beat" having bigger success with Lil Kim, Junior Mafia, Fat Joe, Quad City Djs, & Leschea) instead of the underground signees (Artifacts, La The Darkman, Lord Digga, Real Live, etc) at the time.

I won't say that "Wrong Side Of The Tracks" was some big phenomenal popular album but it was well recieved unlike "That's Them" which was a more focused album from the duo, full of great songs, dope production, good sequencing of songs, but was slept on like a motherfucker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9t5lYu0Aao

Ridiculously good Shawn J. Period production all over that thing.

~Austin

I always felt it got lost in the shuffle of Wu Tang Forever and Life After Death

Granted LA LA wasn't as big as Dogg House's joint but...nah.

got plenty of acclaim from hip hop types and got hella burn on videos

Barsha's "Explicit Lyrics."

For the first two, I just love that specific early era of early '90s gangsta shit, before the whiny keyboards and synths took over, where MCs would rhyme about street shit over samples. Threat's performance on "Sicknahead" is just beyond dope, in terms of his flow and the stories he weaves, plus I still think DJ Pooh is one of the most underrated behind the boards from that era. "Black Mafia Life" has kind of the chaotic, almost Bomb Squad feeling to it as well, but with a unique West Coast flavor, plus Cold187 kilt it on the lyrics.

Barsha is almost completely forgotten, even by his peers/collaborators. Dude's style and wordplay was top notch and the beats (done by Audio Two, I believe) were perfect for that era.

then said "let me see if hood been in here first" lol
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thats always my first answer...

C/S

The Listening

Dope beats Dope ryhmes, what more do ya'll want

EDO G/PETE ROCK: MY OWN WORST ENEMY

HELTAH SKELTAH: D.I.R.T.

LARGE PRO: 1ST CLASS

REMOVING INVIZZIBLE MEN...EVEN THOUGH THAT ALBUM IS MAD UNDERRATED AND SLEPT ON

Great album but a lot of Wu heads haven't even heard this one.

i'd take it over tical

Someone said the other one above, Bubba's Deliverance.

were incredible albums

Some others:

Busta Rhymes-Anarchy
Organized Konfusion-Equinox
Rosco-Times Waits For No Man
Alkaholiks-Coast II Coast
8 Ball & MJG-On Top Of the world

Album was perfect from start to fin, they put on a clinic. 8ball ripped every verse, nobody was rapping lke that, they really never got real props

When it came out, it was simply a dope album. Now it stands as a clinic on rhyme patterns and dense lyricism. 99.9% of mc's who fancy themselves as "underground" & "lyrical" couldn't touch it, Saafir himself has never gotten back this level.

.

I love that album a lot, people usually give me strange looks when I tell them that "Vagina Diner" is in my top 15 all-time (use to be in my top 10) favorite rap albums.

I know why it was slept on but Akinyele was as much as anticipated by rap fans at the time as Nas was but his debut album just didn't get to that point, Large Professor hooked him up with some of the dopest beats he had at the time and Akinyele was dropping some gems over them too.

What's weird is the song that came out years later that I don't like by him is he's most famous for these days which is "Put It In Ya Mouth" from his EP & second album.

not necessarily an OAT to me...but an underrated joint for sure...

Nick wiz laced the hell out if that lp

The Cella Dwellas "Realms 'N Reality" is in my top 15 all time favorite rap albums, infact I was listening to this album this past weekend, it's not a month that doesn't go by that I don't end up blasting this on the radio or in the car.

Nick Wiz & Megahurtz supplied them with some dope production, "Perfect Combination" had some success but I guess that still didn't bring much attention they needed to make that album as big as it should've been but to me it's a platinum album.

I was hooked ever since their first single "Land Of The Lost".

>I was hooked ever since their first single "Land Of The Lost".

Yeah bro me too i used to tape Rap city/yo mtv raps and i stayed rewinding that cheap ass video

song was dope as hell

>>I was hooked ever since their first single
>"Land Of The Lost".

>Yeah bro me too i used to tape Rap city/yo mtv
>raps and i stayed rewinding that cheap ass video
>song was dope as hell

Oh snap, I never knew they made a video for that song, back then I wasn't into rap videos so much (maybe cause I didn't have cable for a few years in the 90's, lol) as I was just into finding the vinyl & mixing underground hip-hop joints; thanks for the heads up on this, I'm going to search and watch it right now on tubeyou.

tubeyou lank: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XacekdUXBqE

I ACTUALLY PREFER THEIR 2ND ALBUM...THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST

THAT'S AN UNDERRATED ALBUM AND UG IS AN UNDERRATED MC

Queen Latifah "All Hail the Queen" 45 King destroyed on the beats...and Latifah was spittin....

whenever I've mentioned this album on okp, it gets shot down. Well, this is one of my personal favorites. Always keep in near rotation.

honorable mention:

Binary Star - Masters of the Universe. Don't sleep. This album knocks straight throw. One Be Lo and senim silla kill it.





lurkin since 1999. werd.

I remember the first time i heard it, i was blown away.

Also gotta agree on Vagina DIner. Front to back produced by Large Professor. I still bump CHeckmate on a regular basis

As for Das Efx Hold It Down, I agree it was a certified banger. The ONE thing that killed it for me was the interchangable hooks in every damn song. You literally could take any hook and swap it with another. Annoyed the hell out of me. But 'Dedicated' cranks like shit

Al' Tariq - God Connection
Poor Righteous Teachers - New World Order

overshadowed by other seminal albums of the time from com and RE, plus the having dropped the same day as the pharoahe solo kinda hurt this one IMO.

thing is, it's a true masterpiece to me personally and one of the greatest albums in hip hop history. content wise it dealt with heavy social issues (mr. n****, water, mathematics) using an almost humorous, wise cracking tone, which makes the sometimes preachy lyrics go down easier. thus, the songs wind up thought provoking as opposed to finger pointing, a rare balance indeed.

songs like "got" were street savvy while maintaining his usual wit and creative flair. hip hop was a dope take on a well worn subject. all of this is dope and done at a high level lyrically speaking.

the album SHINES, however, on the production front. it was highly ambitious without being pretentious. it utilized a different tone of jazz than is typical of hip hop. but the sheer scope, from top to bottom is pretty damn imperssive IMO. there's no "HEY, LOOK HOW EPIC I AM!!!" moments, they just sort of creep up on you. climb and umi says are lightning in a bottle type brilliant if you ask me. ms fat booty was the joint that REALLY kicked off the chipmunk soul era.

personally i look at this and look at the pantheon of great, classic albums and it stacks up with all but the VERY best of the best. it ain't quite on the level of aquemeni-which gets my nod for the single greatest album in hip hop, ever, point blank, period. that's my *personal* standard.

this is boho rap's illmatic. lol

I don't know anybody who knew about it and was like, "Enh, s'ok...'

Everybody was all over this album.

Even I declared it the GOAT hip hop album in my fall 2000 wrap up of 90's music.

Train of Thought, in the long run, has revealed itself to be the better album.

~Austin

Black Sheep - A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Not really underated but largely unheard.


Rasco's no frills lyricism laced with HARD fuckin beats, at the height of the West Coast underground resurgence of the late 90's (think: Dilated, Soleside, Heiro, Likwit, etc), and this album suprisingly holds up!



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-pM33dNzwk title track

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0UJKs0mo88 the unassisted

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkCewdilvS4 view to a kill

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-YQvHpFqMY&feature=related major league

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po2z580ahHk&feature=related take it back home

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_QopmrsW2M&feature=related hiphop essentials

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cevVXJs8qBY me & my crew

I'll admit a few of the songs toward the end lost steam with some of the newer DF members, but Cee-lo, Gipp, Dre, Big Boi and Backbone all showed their ass on that to me...the beats were dope and pretty groundbreaking for the time imo...that joint with Bubba Sparxx with the Tomita sample?
man I bumped that shit for a long ass time...I still bust out 'Follow the Light' and 'Trans DF Express' in sets sometimes...

the intro to Rollin wakes me up every morning. I love this album.

between that and Excalibur (church!) and Crooked Booty...I mean DF was just pushing the boundaries of the types of beats that you can rap over...no coincidence this was the era when Outkast fell in love with rapping over swing beats (which actually wan't my favorite 'kast era)

I'm gonna bump that DF album today as a matter of fact...