ARTDEALR 10 Albums to Get You Into Abstract Hip Hop

ARTDEALR 10 Albums to Get You Into Abstract Hip Hop DOOM Bazaart The Trailblazers ULTRAMAGNETIC MC'S CRITICAL BEATDOWN ORGANIZED KONFUSION STRESS FREESTYLE FELLOWSHIP INNERCITY GRIOTS COMPANY FLOW FUN RUSH EP 1. Madvillain - Madvillainy (2004) Decades later, the most celebrated underground hip hop collaboration of all time is still arguably the greatest. The alchemy of genius lyricist MF DOOM and mythic sample-chopping kingpin, Madlib, is indeed a match made in heaven. The beats here are equally indebted to classic boom bap, comic book culture, and film soundtracks just as they are masterful at carving out soundscapes entirely their own. But it's MF DOOM's lyricism that truly makes them shine. It's in the way DOOM centers these bars back in on the core themes of the project. It's in the layered references and meticulously dense rhyme schemes. It's in the mind blowing and hilariously clever wordplay and witty double entrees. It's the way MF DOOM reveals new layers to this persona with repeat listens. It was a groundbreaking abstract hip hop album for its time, and it remains timeless to this day. Bazaart 2. MF DOOM - Mm..Food (2004) With Madvillainy, MF DOOM explored persona through structure; with Mm.. Food, he explores pleasure through theatricality and humor. Mm.Food shouldn't work as well as it does. A hip hop record about food and drink doesn't sound like a masterpiece on paper, yet somehow, it is a marquee moment for the genre. Built upon hazy samples and beats pilfered from Saturday morning cartoons, DOOM painstakingly pieces together bar-after-bar of intricately constructed all-time-great rhymes in humorous and heady ways - all which serve to piece together a brilliant concept album that is as much about life itself as it is about food. Bazaart 3. Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein (2001) Another early 2000's masterpiece that effectively melds the lyrical complexity of abstract hip hop with the unorthodox, boundary-breaking production of experimental hip hop. El-P's frigid and metallic beats here act as the perfect canvas for Vordul Mega and Vast Aire's lyrical splatters of color and definition. Like a Pollock painting, there is a deftness with which the rappers seemingly splatter that canvas with feverish abstractions and pull everything around it inward. Their street-level surrealist lyrics are the ideal other half to El-P's industrial soundscapes of a dystopian New York. Bazaart 4. Edan - Beauty and the Beat (2005) An early masterpiece of abstract and experimental hip hop from the 2000's, Edan's seminal work is perhaps the genre's greatest exploration of psychedelia through hip hop structure. From its collected shards of psychedelia's past, Edan crafts a sonic effigy in remembrance of a love for all things music - from N.W.A. to Jimi Hendrix. Hovering above those excavated and meticulously arranged sounds are some of the most surreal and abstract lyrics to ever grace the genre: densely penned with feverish imagery and witty wordplay. A true modern classic. Bazaart 5. Billy Woods - Aethiopes (2022) Billy Woods's magnum opus and one of the greatest hip hop records of the current decade, bar none. The production here is deliberately sparse: jazz samples are given room to dream, where space and absence become a form of texture. In lieu of off-the-wall experimental production that Woods has dabbled with before and after this record, his incredible voice is given room to permeate that space. Aethiopes is a record with lyrics so literary and poetic that it could be examined for years to come. Billy Woods processes diaspora, generational trauma, memory, and late stage capitalism, all through wickedly cerebral imagery. It is not a record concerned with what hip hop should be, but rather what it feels true to mean. Bazaart 6. Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030 (2000) One of hip hop's most wildly ambitious concept albums, Deltron 3030 is the result of the combined talents of Del the Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator, and Kid Koala, who embark on telling a hyper-futuristic, cyberpunk fiction story through hip hop factor and form. The production here is vivid, grandiose at times, and equally indebted to the past as it is concerned with the future. Del's incredible lyricism and versatile flows give urgency and meaning to all that grandiosity, where he dishes out deep cultural and political references through witty bars and through his ruminations on the distant future, reflects on the injustices of the present. Bazaart 7. Viktor Vaughn - Vaudeville Villain (2003) Sadly overlooked in the pantheon of MF DOOM affiliated material, Vaudeville Villain is not only one of his greatest artistic statements, but one of the best for abstract hip hop as well. Where on Madvillainy the focus on the theme of 'villainy' is more cohesive and centered - backed by production that is equally tight and responsive - Vaudeville Villain is instead looser and rougher; the more unhinged older brother to Madvillainy. Here, MF DOOM plays the persona of villainy with a carnivalesque theatricality, but his lyrics and wordplay are just as brilliant, if only less untethered to notions of cohesion. Bazaart 8. Aesop Rock - Labor Days (2001) Long lauded as hip hop's most gifted wordsmith - with a sheer wordcount that actually outranks William Shakespeare - Aesop Rock is the epitome of abstract hip hop, and his third studio album is the perfect introduction to his dense and literary lyrics. Where other Aesop records drift into nebulously quirky lyrical territory, Labor Days is both remarkably topical and lazer-focused. Beneath all of its oblique and layered language is a record about alienation in the modern world and disaffection from the American dream, a message which makes this album evermore relevant despite its layers of dissection. Bazaart 9. Mac Miller - Faces (2014) As years elapse following Mac Miller's tragic passing, it has become clear to many that his initially slept-on mixtape, Faces, is his true masterpiece, and it is a towering moment for abstract hip hop. Equally backed by jazz-rap samples and hazy, cloud-rap textures, it's Mac's lyrics here which truly shine - all of which herald the turn of an hourglass whose sand is quickly diminishing. This is Mac at both his most self-confrontational and emotionally vulnerable, where he utilizes literary allusion to stunning affect. Bazaart 10. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Maps (2023) Less than a year after he dropped one of the defining hip hop records of the decade - the austere and confrontational aforementioned Aethiopes - Billy Woods returned once again with Kenny Segal to craft a very different, yet equally important abstract hip hop album. Both Maps and Aethiopes are indicative of abstract hip hop's varied lanes of design. Together, the two records create a sort of diptych and, in a greater sense, showcase Billy Woods's true versatility as a force in abstract hip hop. Kenny Segal's jazz-infused production - wavering between melodic, textured, occasionally lush - is the perfect backdrop for Billy's conceptual explorations of the life of a touring musician, where he delivers expertly abstract bars of dense imagery, albeit the emotional core is much closer to the skin. Bazaart Some Other Picks: LAUSSE THE CAT - The Mocking Stars MF DOOM - Operation: Doomsday Mach-Hommy - HBO (Haitian Body Odor) Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs DOOM - Born Like This Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele Mr. Lif - I Phantom King Geedorah - Take Me to Your Leader Doctor Octagon - Doctor Octagon Billy Woods & Kenny Segal - Hiding Places Del the Funkee Homosapien - Both Sides of the Brain Mach-Hommy - Dumpmeister Navy Blue - Song of Sage: Post Panic! DANGERDOOM - The Mouse and the Mask Aesop Rock - The Impossible Kid R.A.P. Ferreira - Purple Moonlight Pages Quasimoto - The Unseen Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass Ka - Honor Killed the Samurai Open Mike Eagle - Brick Body Kids Still Daydream Billy Woods - Solllwog MIKE - Burning Desire Kaliher 44 - Ksiega Tajemnicza. Prolog Milo & Kenny Segal - So the Flies Don't Come Billy Woods - History Will Absolve Me Earl Sweatshirt - I Don't Like Shit, I Don't Go Outside Pedro LVDrxgy - Amantes del dolor (HXXDLXWVZ II) Hordatoy - Entre lo habitual y lo desconocido Hermit and the Recluse - Orpheus vs. the Sirens Ka - The Thief Next to Jesus Armand Hammer - Paraffin Bazaart