The now five-man Oddjobs crew made their national debut in 2000 under the umbrella of the burgeoning Minneapolis/St. Paul hip-hop scene. Since then, they have avoided direct affiliation with the Rhymesayers crew and attempted to forge their own path, always growing and never settling into a specific sound.    As far as the overall [cont.]

     The face of underground hip-hop would be vastly different were it not for Company Flow. Their full-length debut, Funcrusher Plus, offered a completely unique aesthetic of rapping and production, and was almost instantly heralded as a watershed album. Today, El-P remains hot from the blistering, intensely personal Fantastic Damage, an album that sold remarkably well [cont.]

    After releasing the most popular album of his career (a collaboration with MF Doom entitled Madvillainy), you would think that Madlib take advantage of his notoriety and high reputation by doing whatever he could to blow up. But as he consistently does with music, Madlib decided to forgo conventions. Since the Madvillain album popped off, [cont.]

    Weldon Irvine was a true original in American music. He was a uniquely soulful jazz pianist with a vision that touched all of his peers, from Joe Henderson to Nina Simone. He was a conduit of experience to the hip-hop world, influencing and working with artists like Black Star and Q-Tip. He was a [cont.]

     Do you love hip-hop? Regardless of your experience, regional bias or knowledge of the music, if you can answer “yes” to that question, then you probably already have Biggie Smallz’ classic 1994 debut album, Ready To Die. You probably have already seen the videos from this album, which are just about the only videos [cont.]

     The year is 1996. Hip-hop stations all over the country, but particularly on the east coast, are showing tremendous rotation to the Wu-Tang Clan. Having released four albums between the nine members of the group (not counting pre-Clan discs from the RZA and the Genius), just about everyone is up on the Wu, regarding [cont.]

    Before even discussing the music, it is worthwhile to note that Goodie Mob’s latest release is one of the most aptly titled albums to come out in a long time. When the group first jumped out onto the national hip-hop scene in 1995, they already had a monkey on their back– no matter what [cont.]

      Since the Funcrusher EP dropped in 1996, the hip-hop world has come to expect a certain sound from El-P. It is an abrasive, challenging variety of boom-bap that rubs a lot of people the wrong way, but is also a great conduit for the reality that El kicks in his rhymes. Today, it seems [cont.]

Compilation; no rating given       Though the status of his crew is a bit up in the air right now, it’s difficult to imagine any underground hip-hop fans fronting on Del The Funkee Homosapien’s work in the early-to-mid-nineties. In this time period, Del and Hieroglyphics authored a number of classics that are still getting burn [cont.]