One for All
Artist: Brand Nubian
Community Score: 9.00

Brand Nubian never sold as many albums as the many West Coast rappers burning up the charts in the early '90s, but the New York group commanded great respect in East Coast rap circles. In black neighborhoods of New York and Philadelphia, Nubian's debut album, One for All, was actually a bigger seller than many of the platinum gangsta rap... Read More

Techno-Bass
Artist: Beat Dominator

Although it is not as consistent as Bass Station Zero, Techno-Bass has enough great moments to make it a worthwhile purchase for any bass lover's collection. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide Read More

Mecca and the Soul Brother
Artist: Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Community Score: 9.12

It would have been hard to match the artistic success of their debut EP on a full-length recording, but Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth did just that on Mecca and the Soul Brother, and they did so in the most unlikely way of all after the succinctness of All Souled Out -- by coming up with a sprawling, nearly 80-minute-long album on which not a single... Read More

House of Pain
Artist: House of Pain
Community Score: 8.02

It's an album that ushered in an era of a thousand suburbanites drinking malt liquor, wearing U.S. Postal Service caps, and reawakening their Irish (or in some cases pseudo-Irish) heritage. And it's also the debut album that ushered House of Pain into the forefront of rap culture for a brief period of time. While it's unfair to expect a whole... Read More

Reel to Reel
Artist: Grand Puba
Community Score: 8.00

In a sense, Grand Puba really never was a genuine member of Brand Nubian. He was several years older than Lord Jamar and Sadat X, and had already recorded with the old-school crew Masters of Ceremony several years before finally hooking up with his younger mates. And even the mostly collective-minded One for All featured a couple Puba solo... Read More

Fear of a Black Planet
Artist: Public Enemy
Community Score: 7.80

At the time of its release in March 1990 -- just a mere two years after It Takes a Nation of Millions -- nearly all of the attention spent on Public Enemy's third album, Fear of a Black Planet, was concentrated on the dying controversy over Professor Griff's anti-Semitic statements of 1989, and how leader Chuck D bungled the public relations... Read More

Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience
Artist: P.M. Dawn
Community Score: 10.00

It may not have been embraced by the entire hip-hop community, but P.M. Dawn's ponderously titled debut Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience was a startling reimagination of the music's possibilities. In the post-De La Soul age, hip-hop seemed open to all sorts of eccentrics, but P.M. Dawn was still difficult for... Read More

Wake Your Daughter Up
Artist: No Face

A hardcore rap group that dabbled in new jack swing, No Face had an underground hit in 1990 with Wake Your Daughter Up. In contrast to social and political commentators like Ice-T, Public Enemy and KRS-One, No Face set out to not to educate or inform, but strictly to entertain. There's nothing groundbreaking or innovative about the group's... Read More

Ill Na Na
Artist: Foxy Brown
Community Score: 6.42

After appearing as a guest on a number of albums, most notably LL Cool J, Foxy Brown finally delivered her debut album, Ill Na Na, in late 1996. On her cameos, the teenage rapper rhapsodized about her three obsessions -- fashion, sex, and the mafia -- and all three dominate the discourse on Ill Na Na. Taken on their own terms, any of those... Read More