![]() If you were a hip-hop head in 1990, chances are you were enamored by the powerful, beautiful, and hyper-conscious music of Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, and Monie Love, while you were also jamming the gangsta raps of NWA and the over-the-top lyrical orgies thrown by 2 Live Crew. More than 20 years later, fans still clamor for a Paul and Cham reunion, but with this effort, they solidified themselves as two of Houston’s most important voices, and left a landmark album for generations. “The Other Day” is a Wall solo cut that bends around a sample of Bootsy Collins’ “What’s a Telephone Bill,” where the man who’d become an unofficial mayor of the city reflects on how being real kept him safer than any obnoxious rhyme. Get Ya Mind Correct has pockets where each turns up their personalities to 11, offset by moments where reality far outweighs supersized flexing. He and childhood friend Paul Wall had long been Houston favorites for relaying rhymes about wayward women and car culture, but this album made them neighborhood superstars. Chamillionaire’s sing-song makes him sound more like a swaggering bluesman than the tongue-twisting lyrical wizard of Swishahouse. There’s a swing to “N Luv Wit My Money,” the lead single from Paul Wall & Chamillionaire’s debut album, that oozes “Houston.” The layered and staggered synths from producer Mr. So without further ado, we proudly present the woefully abbreviated story of one the great American music scenes. More realistically, it could turn you on to one or two dope, unsung, brilliant albums you were previously unfamiliar with and might want to add to your phone to stream at a later date. At best, maybe this piece will encourage the curiosity and passion necessary for that journey. Think of it as a jumping off point, a wide window into a musical scene it would take an entire lifetime to fully explore and appreciate. More than a list, our intention was to tell a story through representative albums, snapshots of genius-level talents, and styles. We also took Screw tapes out of the equation-a tough call that meant excluding the aforementioned DJ Screw's hundreds-deep catalog of mixtapes, a subject for another day and article. When selecting the contenders, we limited ourselves to one album per artist/group in the interest of highlighting the widest possible range of subjects, stories, and sounds. Together, this brain trust narrowed down the nearly endless master list of possible inclusions to an unforgivingly tight 10. ![]() To do that lofty concept justice, we looked to a panel of writers from Texas and beyond, some authorities on the city's rap culture, all fans of it: eye-patch-sporting tourist and curator Abe Beame, who assembled the team with the help of Dallas writer Taylor Crumpton Houston Hip Hop Museum founder Shelby Stewart Lance Scott Walker, lauded author of DJ Screw: A Life in Slow Revolution ESPN and Mo City's own Brandon Caldwell and Houston rap Zelig/ambassador Matt Sonzala. The culture writ large has been limiting the city since rap first arrived there in the late '70s, and now this? The suggestion that Houston’s deep, diverse, historically essential rap scene can be reduced to just 10 albums is another insult to throw on the pile.Īnd so contrary to the hooky title of this article, the list that follows is less an empirical ranking of albums-an impossible task-than an entryway into the rich history of Bayou City hip-hop. ![]() ![]() It's a city and sound that has already been unfairly marginalized-once written off as a string of fads rather than a town with a rich musical tradition, often forgotten or misunderstood when mapping both the history and geography of rap, treated like a shorthand filter when rappers from other locales want to manufacture their funk. Every list is dumb, arbitrary and designed to enrage, but there's a particular cruelty in attempting to rank Houston's 10 best rap albums.
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