Yes, one of the most whoa-inducing covers of 90s hip-hop, and it only gets wilder when you notice the little details: MJG’s baggy coat on the ground, his wild tips, nipple piercing, and long-ass fingernails. 8Ball & MJG are known more for their albums as a unit than their solo ventures, but both of their 90s solo projects are worth checking out. I’ve already covered 8Ball’s excellent Lost (1998), which was preceded by MJG’s No More Glory. Sometimes I wonder how good a 97 or 98 8Ball & MJG album would have been, because their collab tracks with each other on these solo efforts are among their greatest songs.

Take “Middle of the Night”, for example. 8Ball’s smooth flow on the first verse is a standout moment for him, and MJG’s chorus is addictive. The song reaches the upper echelon that Do or Die’s “Po Pimp” inhabits, so it’s only fitting that they tapped Twista for the remix. Elsewhere, “Shine & Recline” is a slap that would fit nicely on On Top of the World (1995), my favorite 8Ball & MJG album.

For his part, MJG’s solo tracks are largely excellent. “Hip Hop Voodoo” (“I’m throwin’ pepper in yo salt!”) finds him snapping over a crazy beat switch. A lot of the late-90s Suave House production is pretty dated, but it also has a really lovable quality, like it’s just silly enough to stand out and neither boom bap nor g-funk. “That Girl” is a re-work of the Stevie Wonder classic and was a hit. “Don’t Hold Back” is a straight-up great R&B crossover track, sort of bringing to mind early Darkchild production with a banging chorus. Amazing.

Despite its killer album cover, I don’t think that No More Glory has some grand political message – the title track is about the challenges of the rap industry and not racism. Nevertheless, the album has been in rotation and is better than I expected, which as a fan of 8Ball & MJG is saying something.

Listen to No More Glory here.

I’m not sure if Dom Kennedy would appeal to a hip-hop outsider: his flows are a little off-kilter; his rhymes often slow. But a couple of key early 2010s hip-hop moments helped me really appreciate this dude. The first is “Real Estates” from Curren$y’s Pilot Talk 2 (2010), an album that is (along with the preceding Pilot Talk) a benchmark for the kind of stoner rap music that doesn’t really exist anymore. “The game don’t get any realer” chirped Dom on his knot-tight “Real Estates” verse. Then 2012’s “Grooveline” (Schoolboy Q , 2012) verse showcased his relaxed playboy style, ending hilariously with a “Dom Kennedy” drop that sounds like a producer tag.

I never followed him enough to track a new release, but when Frank Ocean included “T P O” on his blonded radio it seemed like a good idea to check out this album. “T P O” is a mellow slap, immediately memorable for the beat’s harpsichord melody, but it’s also funny: “I was young, but I went to the Grand Canyon once / Now I’m at a stripper house makin’ tacos, rollin’ blunts.” The song exemplifies this album as a whole, which is Dom Kennedy at his best: a realist who is cool, confident and relatable, with fantastic production choices. Clearly following the mold of 90s LA g-funk, “Dominic, Pt. 2” updates the style with fantastic synth notes.

In college I fantasized about living in California and listening to “California”, and now I can finally do it. Something about the drums on this one… I would play this over and over again on my little wired earbuds walking around in the cold Pennsylvania winter daydreaming about life in Cali. “Wake up at 1:30, In-N-Out ‘fore it close / Catch me in the drive-thru, then spin out on these hoes.” Sounds like a good time, man… my plays of “California” dwarf the rest of the album.

I think sometimes Dom Kennedy is unintentionally funny or irreverent. Like, “Since We’re Telling the Truth” is ostensibly a love song, but the chorus ends with “I could have a statue downtown.” The lyrics “Even if I was starvin’ / I’m the type to pass on baloney / Walkman by Sony / I’m big as Tony, Toni, Tone,” read like Riff Raff bars, but they’re delivered earnestly over the heavenly beat of “When I’m Missin’ U”. Maybe it’s just the nostalgia, but I see these as pluses.

This album was not received well. You have to really dig Dom as a kind of normal-guy-who-likes-hanging-out if you want to sit through this whole record, which could be 3-4 tracks shorter. But revisiting it today it still strikes me as underrated.

Listen to Los Angeles Is Not For Sale, Vol.1 here.

I first discovered this one in 2016, and revisiting it recently I thought, “this is definitely the best thing Kool Keith’s ever done”. But then I was like, wait, Sex Style is really good… actually, The Cenubites is really good… actually, Critical Beatdown is REALLY good. And that’s not to mention any of the 25(!) or so albums Keith has released so far this millennium, most of which I haven’t heard. So you can’t really jump to a clear best with this guy.

Keith was and always has been a trailblazer, and this is clear from the title and cover here alone. The damn Elvis wig… and with the flashy, turn-of-the-millennium neon green style this looks more like an N*Sync album cover than a rap record. But what lies within is hardly pop or R&B. It’s Keith’s signature bizzaro-rap, a two-sided journey through the mind of a hip-hop visionary.

Whereas Dan the Automator produced the bulk of Keith’s most popular Dr. Octagonecologyst (1996), Keith handles the production here himself (with frequent collaborator Kutmasta Kurt assisting). The result is a consistent and original sound, with enough synths and beeps to fit the space theme, but enough bass and kick to feel like pure hip-hop.

Keith’s rap style is wild because he has an effortless cool (he was well over a decade deep in the rap game by the time of this recording) but he’s also a weird motherfucker. “Keep it simple, baby young girl / Now squeeze your pimple,” he raps on “Static”. This Sadat X feature is great because Sadat is another OG who also has an idiosyncratic and funny style, like when he starts singing “our house in the middle of our street” in the middle of his verse. “The year 2005…” Keith begins on “Lost in Space”, which is more “Star Trekkin'” than any other rap song I can think of. These are just a couple of highlights early on.

As good as the Lost in Space side is here, I think I would give the win to Black Elvis, the second half of this record. Kid Capri sets it off, and then “Black Elvis” and “Maxi Curls” have some of the fastest rapping on the album, Keith dropping his Supreme Clientele-like stream-of-consciousness raps (except this album came first). “The Girls Don’t Like the Job” is one of the best examples of Keith’s uniqueness: his weird falsetto chorus and strange subject matter – “With a loan from General Mills I would start a new NBA team in Baldwin Hills: / The Baldwin Hills Spacemen / Lime green uniforms… I ripped up four tickets to the Grammy Awards”. “Clifton” features Keith’s perfect foil Motion Man, probably the only guy on his level of bizarre. No strangers to alter egos, they appear here as “Clifton Santiago” and “Keith Televasquez”, a duo of sex-crazed bandits. Things get rounded out with “All the Time” (one of the more straightforward tracks here) and “I Don’t Play”, which was lyrically interpolated by Deftones on “Back to School”, the first track on White Pony – this should probably tell you something about the reach of Kool Keith’s influence.

Three months ago, Keith released Black Elvis 2, a sequel 24 years in the making. I haven’t heard it, but he’s on tour now. By the time he plays San Francisco in October, he’ll be 60. For this year’s “Hip-Hop Turns 50” reflections, Kool Keith described himself as “a one-person Parliament-Funkadelic” to The New York Times. And like George Clinton, it’s amazing to look back at his wide body of work and marvel at the fact that he’s still doing it.

Listen to Black Elvis / Lost in Space here.

I didn’t know much about Black Rob before he passed in 2021, except his song “Can I Live” with The LOX, which has a beautiful beat and finds Styles P fantasizing about “hang-glid[ing] to the Alps with a fly chick”. One of Bad Boy’s most promising artists after Biggie’s passing, Rob was featured on Motown’s “I Want You Back ’98”, a Jackson 5 remix that dropped, strangely, not 30 but 29 years after the original. Why this track was made, I’m not sure, but rapping on a track with (the then-living) Michael Jackson must have been a promising early-career move for Rob.

What followed in 1999 was the recording of Rob’s debut Life Story, including the smash lead single “Whoa!”, which has largely held up well (other than the f-slur). The Buckwild beat is bonkers, and Black Rob sells the single title as a catchall response to anything remarkable. Also worth pointing out is the 8-minute remix with Rah Digga, Beanie Sigel and more. Whoa.

But Life Story is a surprisingly solid front-to-back album. The title track is captivating as a wistful growing-up-in-the-ghetto song (“living in this tenement, eating stale Entenmann’s”). Rob’s character is quickly established: a hard-nosed jailbird who perseveres through life struggles by rapping. Somewhat unexpectedly, CeeLo Green appears as the album’s first rap feature on “Lookin’ at Us”, and he kills it. Sometimes I forgot how good at rapping CeeLo is. Then we have a Bad Boy posse cut with Diddy, Mase and G-Dep on “Down the Line Joint”.

Later on, “B.R.” is some expert noir-rap with gritty rhymes and the beat to match. “Thug Story” is a Slick Rick callback, and “Jasmine” is steel-drum infected storytelling rap. “I Love You Baby” originally appeared on the Puff & The Family album No Way Out (1997), which went 7x Platinum. Things wrap up with some pep on “I Dare You” (that’s after the J-Lo feature). I really like this album. It’s packed to the gills but there is nary a garbage track to be found. God bless Black Rob.

Listen to Life Story here.

This release from two LA-to-the-core hip-hop artists is an overlooked joint project. It’s a merging of two different generations: The 31-year-old Domo Genesis cut his teeth as a member of Tumblr-era phenoms Odd Future, and the 46-year-old Evidence co-founded the group Dilated Peoples in the 90s. What the two have in common is a laidback, uncomplicated approach to rap music. While this trait may have kept both artists from achieving the mainstream success achieved by some of their peers, it rewards listeners as they age with confidence and consistency in their respective outputs.

Evidence and Domo first collaborated on 2017’s “Deez Nuts”, a Domo track produced by Evidence. A year later, Ev rapped on Domo’s “Fuck a Co-Sign”, from his brief yet excellent Arent U Glad Youre U tape. Evidence produced the entirety of last year’s Intros, Outros and Interludes, and his beats are absolutely lush. I find myself playing this album early in the morning as it relaxes me. “Trust the Process” finds Doms riding over a 70s soul sample, his lyrics unadorned observation: “This hash is in my lungs / a bunch of plastic in the ocean”. The sunny “Stay One More Day” sample fades in and out as Evidence proves himself a master beatmaker.

Ev’s one guest verse is smooth: “Drive slow, homie / Like my son is in the car / My summers as a kid in Brooklyn made me to a star”. This is a reference to canon hip-hop (Late Registration), a sly nod to his age, and a reflection on his come-up in one rhyme. Domo follows with “I never had a chance / I lose my life to seek a new one, look we movin’ through the dance”. It’s just two guys ruminating on how they got where they are, but in the context of the album it feels almost like a passing of the torch moment.

The beat on “December Coming” is heavenly, another delicious piece of a brief yet worthy album from two rap devotees. Here’s hoping they team up again.

Listen to Intros… here.

Can I call this the last great Future project? I’m not mad at him for making 22-track albums that rehash the same territory he’s been in for years – his output from Pluto (2012) to 56 Nights (2015) is still unfuckwithable, and he’s earned the fandom that allows him to operate on cruise control.

But Beastmode 2 stands out among the mixed bag of Future projects over the last 5 years. Like the first Beast Mode (2015), Zaytoven – truly the Beethoven of trap-rap production – handles all the beats here, and the chemistry is palpable. Beastmode 2 is lean at 9 tracks, and holds up well in the era of bloated Deluxe editions.

I appreciate that Future, who had scored a massive hit in 2017 with “Mask Off”, included his OG Young Scooter as the only guest on this tape. “Doh Doh” bangs, and it helps Beastmode 2 feel more like a classic early 2010s ATL tape than post-peak Future.

Introspective Future is good Future: see “When I Think About It” (“I’m droppin’ outta school but that didn’t stop my education”). This is the first of three superb songs that close out the project. “Some More” finds Fewtch gliding over an icy, beautiful beat. And “Hate the Real Me” finds Future at his most compelling. Like “Codeine Crazy” and “Throw Away” he is reckless, remorseful, self-sabotaging, all over the most thrilling production on the project. It’s a peak that puts a bow on an outstanding tape with a lot of replay value. As Future himself puts it – the music special… it’s a part of us.

Listen to Beastmode 2 here.