Best Hip-Hop Albums Ever

As part of its ongoing Hip-Hop Week "celebration," the Tall Israelis over at MTV had some of the jigs who work in its mail department and also, inexplicably, an Indian fellow and a white lady, put together a list of the 10 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time. It's a decent enough list, I guess, for like the first 4 albums, but then it just falls completely to shit.

Anyhoo, here it is, liberated for your reading pleasure:

1. Eric B. & Rakim - Paid in Full - With all the arguments our brain trust had during this endeavor to come up with the greatest hip-hop albums of all time, you would think that it would have been a knock-down, drag-out affair when it came to declaring numero uno, right? Nope. When the tally was finally done and it became clear that Paid in Full was #1, not a peep was heard.

Paid in Full may not have been everyone's choice for #1 over Illmatic (especially for those of us who used to listen to Nas in '94 every day on the bus going to and from high school), but how can you argue with verses like "I take seven MCs, put 'em in a line/ And add seven more brothas who think they can rhyme/ Well, it'll take seven more before I go for mine/ And that's 21 MCs ate up at the same time."

When Paid in Full was released in 1987, Eric B. and Rakim left a mushroom cloud over the hip-hop community. The album was captivating, profound, innovative and instantly influential. We'd been used to MCs like Run and DMC, Chuck D and KRS-One leaping on the mic shouting with energy and irreverence, but Rakim took a methodical approach to his microphone fiending. He had a slow flow, and every line was blunt, mesmeric. And Eric B. had an ear for picking out loops and samples drenched with soul and turned out to be a trailblazer for producers in the coming years.

You couldn't stop repeating, "I came in the door, I said it before/ I never let the mic magnetize me no more," from "Eric B. Is President." "I Ain't No Joke" — where Ra raps about holding the microphone like a grudge — still defines the essence of hard-core hip-hop, without Ra having to rhyme about selling drugs and shooting up a whole city block. If you throw on "Paid in Full" or "Eric B. Is President" today, they'll still grab you by the throat.

Paid in Full set the table for higher achievement in hip-hop, both sonically and poetically. In 1987 and now, almost 20 years later, plenty of MCs are still trying to catch up.

2. Nas - Illmatic - Illmatic could have easily been called The Blueprint when it was released in 1994. Nas used five of the best producers at the time to lay the soundscape for his groundbreaking lyricism, creating the new hip-hop LP template. He was heralded as the second coming of Rakim.

3. Dr. Dre - The Chronic - Arguably the best produced hip-hop album ever. Dr. Dre gave Snoop Dogg a full-thrust introduction to the universe, and the two proved to be hip-hop's most formidable duo.

4. Notorious BIG - Ready to Die - Biggie mastered the game. Like Chuck D, his voice was so unique that all he had to do was utter an ad-lib like "Ugh" and you automatically knew it was him. Match that with rhymes that left most lyricists with sleepless nights and a delivery that flowed like a 1987 L.A. Lakers fast break and you have the impeccable birth of one of hip-hop's most beloved geniuses.

5. Run-DMC - Raising Hell - They already put Queens on the map, and this album put hip-hop on the globe. Kids from Asia and Africa as well as America were throwing on their Adidas and Lee jeans to be like Run, DMC and Jam Master Jay. Run-DMC also opened the doors for the rock and roll/hip-hop hybrids that maintain status on the charts today.

6. Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt - Obviously Jay-Z grew as an artist since his entrance into the game; however, he pieced together a flawless masterpiece the first time around. It was the hustlers' soundtrack, but even if you had that legit income, you had no choice but to be captivated by Hov's words.

7. NWA - Niggaz4life - Killing hookers, firing shots at "Benedict Arnold" and yelling "F--- the feds." Did you really think that hip-hop's most beloved bad guys would return any less abrasive with their second full-length? Losing their best lyricist could have easily caused the brash collective to fold. What did they do? Eazy talked even more reckless, Ren spit harder and Dre began to perfect his production craft.

8. Ice Cube - Death Certificate - The opus that made Ice Cube public enemy number one in the eyes of the mainstream. Cube brought back all his gangsta sensibilities and posturing from the N.W.A and AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted days and mixed it with his newfound social-activist stances.

9. Makaveli - The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory - The last album that Tupac recorded while he was alive. He wrote his hardest, his realest and some of his most poignant rhymes ever. It was the album that made the world shake for about a year after it came out.

10. Public Enemy - It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and "Don't Believe the Hype" alone make the album a classic. The Shocklee brothers' musical grenades were perfect accomplices to Chuck D's whirlwind revelations. Flavor Flav's buoyant personality could never be replicated.

My Suggestions? Greatest Albums of All Time lists aren't usually my thing anyway, but if I had to make one, I'd swap out Niggaz4life for Straight Outta Compton, obviously, and then I'd just get rid of Pac, Ice Cube, Jay-Z and Run-DMC altogether. In their place, I'd probably go with the Beastie Boys, BDP, De La Soul and, of course, The Wu.