The Best Hip-Hop Albums of the '80s

Hank Shocklee's Bomb Squad built these tracks out of stacked noise rather than one clean loop, and Def Jam released it in June 1988. Rebel Without A Pause runs on a shrieking saxophone squeal taken from the J.B.'s and never lets it resolve, with Terminator X cutting underneath Chuck D's flat low register. Sixteen tracks, original running order.

Rakim was nineteen and barely road-tested when 4th & B'way put this out, which is the detail that keeps mattering. I Know You Got Soul borrows Bobby Byrd's record and hands it to a rapper who refuses to shout, syllables landing off the beat on purpose. Spotify's edition appends two extra mixes after the original ten tracks.

Ruthless and Priority moved millions of copies with no radio and no video, and an FBI assistant director wrote the label a letter of complaint. Fuck Tha Police stages a mock trial and lets each member testify over a Dr. Dre track that keeps the drums dry and right in your face. Spotify styles the group N.W.A. with a trailing full stop.

Scott La Rock was shot dead in the Bronx a few months after B-Boy Records issued it, so this is the only full album the original duo finished together. The Bridge Is Over is KRS-One over a hammered piano vamp, dismantling MC Shan and the Juice Crew in a put-on Jamaican lilt. Ten tracks, original sequence, nothing bolted on.

Prince Paul produced it for Tommy Boy, and unresolved sample clearances kept the record off streaming services entirely until March 2023. Me Myself and I rides a Funkadelic guitar figure the group reportedly disliked and it became the hit regardless. The 23-track Spotify sequence keeps the game-show skits in place, which is the only way the thing coheres.

Capitol wanted another Licensed to Ill and got a Dust Brothers collage instead, which is why it sold poorly in 1989 and was reassessed later. Shake Your Rump stacks a Sugarhill bassline under live drums while three voices trade half-lines, none of them waiting a turn. Spotify carries both a 20th-anniversary remaster and this plain 1989 edition.

Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons produced it for Profile, and it became the first rap album to pass three million copies sold. Peter Piper is two turntables and a drum machine: the bell figure from Bob James's Take Me to the Mardi Gras, cut by Jam Master Jay into a nursery rhyme. Only the Expanded Edition exists on Spotify, with five bonus cuts appended.

Three years after La Di Da Di made him famous as MC Ricky D, Def Jam handed him a record of his own. Children's Story is a bedtime tale with a body count, narrated in a South London accent over a bass figure that barely changes across four minutes. Rick was convicted of attempted murder in 1991; he is ranked here on the album, not the man.

Marley Marl produced the whole thing for Cold Chillin', and Kane was already writing rhymes for Biz Markie and Roxanne Shante when he cut it. Ain't No Half-Steppin' loops a Heatwave record at a tempo loose enough for him to hold one syllable and then sprint through six. Spotify lists track two as Raw - Remix rather than the 12-inch version.

Ced-Gee's SP-1200 programming turns up all over 1987 New York, Criminal Minded included, and here he built a whole album on it for Next Plateau. Ego Trippin' takes the Melvin Bliss break and lets Kool Keith rap in non sequiturs at right angles to the beat. Three titles carry Remix tags because that is how the original LP labelled them.

Def Jam's first full-length album, made when its rapper was seventeen, and the sleeve credits Rick Rubin as having reduced it rather than produced it. Rock The Bells is a drum machine at concert volume, one bell sample and almost nothing else beneath a voice that shouts every line. Spotify shows eleven tracks against the original nine and styles the artist LL COOL J.

Fresh Records put it out and it went gold with almost no airplay, two Brentwood teenagers rapping as though they had just woken up. You Gots To Chill lifts Zapp's More Bounce to the Ounce whole and then leaves it alone, letting the funk carry the record while both voices stay deliberately flat. Ten tracks, original running order, no bonus material.

First rap album to reach number one on the Billboard 200, and the biggest seller Def Jam had in the decade. Paul Revere runs a drum-machine pattern backwards under a tall tale about crossing the desert on a horse, and the reversed kick is what makes it walk sideways. Spotify shortens the title of Fight For Your Right.

Six tracks, self-released in Philadelphia on his own label, with DJ Code Money cutting and no distributor to answer to. P.S.K. 'What Does It Mean'? drowns a drum machine in reverb until every snare hangs for most of a bar, and the gang talk is delivered deadpan. Border case: this predates gangsta rap being a named thing at all.

Afrika Islam handled most of the production for Sire, and the sleeve photograph of Darlene Ortiz holding a shotgun did as much for sales as any single. I'm Your Pusher rebuilds Curtis Mayfield's Pusherman and turns an anti-drug message into a dealer's sales pitch. Spotify titles it I'm Your Pusher / Pusherman and styles the artist ICE-T.

A federal judge in Florida declared this legally obscene in 1990 and an appeals court overturned him in 1992, which is why the record matters past Miami. Me So Horny hangs a film sample over an 808 kick tuned low enough to flap a speaker cone. Border case: Miami bass. Spotify dates its edition 1992 and censors the track titles.