Straight Outta Compton, The Chronic, Cypress Hill, Doggystyle, either of Cube's first two solos.

Those were all monumental, crucial in making the genre a commercial force & turning the landscape from r&b/rock to rap bleeding into those genres plus being bigger than any of them outside country/assembly-line-pop by the late 90s.

if you lived back east during the late 80s/early-90s, these were the records that were getting the attention almost to the exclusion of many other good more regionally-based acts.

You had to either be watching a ton of Video Music Box & to a lesser degree Yo! to see any of those acts.

In some cases you probably had to be out here & listening to KDAY.

******************************* Anecdotal Sidebar ************************************

I saw the Eazy-Duz-It Tour (NWA, Eazy, PE, Kid N' Play, Too Short, Kwame, JJ Fadd, Salt N' Pepa) at age 12 and they booed Too Short off the damn stage at the Philadelphia Spectrum.

That motherfucka was platinum at the time, I was too young to be aware of those kind of odd divisions.

Oh & Short's show did suck that night as well.

Philly was used to that Fresh Fest/Run-DMC/Kane/PE/Moe Dee/Heavy D & Da Boyz level of showmanship with sets, dances, call-and-response.

Short came out pacing back and forth with shitty sound, clutching his dick & then almost flaming out on purpose by around the eight-minute mark until he was booed off stage so loudly I couldn't hear the words in the 300 level.

***************************************************************************************

You also had the blockbuster crossover hits now seen more as novelty records like Bust A Move, Wild Thing, You Can't Touch This, Baby Got Back, Humpty Dance, Passin Me By, Regulate, I Got Five On It, etc.

I don't have any data on deck to back it up but the West Coast for being virtually dormant nationally up until maybe '87 but more like '88 in earnest I'm guessing produced more hits that made their way into Top 40 & sold more albums than New York from then up through maybe '94/95 with less acts in terms of sheer numbers.

So what you're left with is songs that once they crossed into the mainstream have been played so incessantly you don't care if you hear them again or albums that were such landmarks of their era that we might have worn them out then and/or they feel rooted in that time.

I can't recall the last time I played Cypress Hill's first album.

I also can't say there was an album that we played more in 1991.

It might even still sound good but it's been locked & loaded in the mental rolodex since age 14 so if I'm ever just sitting in silence I can probably conjure it up in my head.

Not to mention, Cypress' falloff was awkward to me, almost as awkward as PE's even though they weren't as important to me on the whole.

In both cases on the surface it was for different reasons but ultimately stained by the same thing (they became accepted as rock and roll, which at first seemed cool but ultimately ruined both.......'How I Can Just Kill A Man' rocks harder than 'Rock/Rap Superstar' or whatever that trash was, 'Public Enemy #1' is far harder ripping than Scott Ian stumbling through a pointless 'Bring The Noise' remake).

That's an entirely different post however.

In regards to your observation me nowadays will be reaching for Uncle Sam's Curse, Coast II Coast, Likwidation, Quik's 3rd & 4th, CMW's first three, Don't Fight The Feelin, Fear Itself, In A Major Way, Konnectid, Who Got The Gravy, loads of random TDE shit, Streetz Iz A Mutha, Born To Mack & others before I bother playing Straight Outta Compton outside 'If It Ain't Ruff' (check that remaster in some headphones, that envelope bass tickles inside your ear......Dre is a genius no matter what some of y'all say).

But I can't in good conscience tell you that most if not ANY are better than any of those 'classics' if you were starting from scratch.

My middle school teachers were not up on Illmatic & wringing their hands over its messages.

The cute blonde who had the purple tape in her car just called it 'The Wu' & didn't connect it to Liquid Swords.

I don't remember the video for My Melody.

Express Yourself was on literally every goddamn day with them busting through the white banner in the black hats & Eazy ducking shots at the parade.

That's a long way to go to not really fully commit to a legitimate final answer to five West Coast albums but c'mon, the question you asked is a complex one for the reasons I tried to lay out above but we had fun, right?

**************************************Anecdotal Headphone Postscript**********************

Not sure who it was the last time Straight Outta Compton was discussed, maybe mrhood but whoever was horrified as I was telling them that 'Quiet On The Set' is just *aight*, my bad, I was tripping.

Home trying to fight off this food poisoning that's been tearing me up since Friday AM, had me hurling in the bathroom of Standard Station Pub in El Segundo during lunch yesterday then cold-sweating at my desk for a half hour before peacing-out for the week shortly thereafter.

This post inspired me to throw Straight Outta Compton & this cherry lemonade with Vodka along with 'Quiet On The Set' is saving me right now.

I swear, I might even be able to go out tonight if all the sudden I like 'Somethin 2 Dance 2'.

Oh wait, hell naw.....that shit just came on now. Still goofy as shit. I think you had to grow up out here & spend weekends on Crenshaw in the mid-80s to appreciate Arabian Prince or Rodney O & Joe Cooley.

This song is dripping activator juice into my earholes & my stomach is knotting up again.