On The Slim Shady LP, Eminem wants it all. He is conflicted, you see; the world has treated him badly, and he wants to respond in kind. But he isn't a straight-up gangsta--this is, after all, the first release on Dr. Dre's Aftermath Records, his post-Death Row-era venture--and Eminem (born Marshall Mathers) doesn't really want anyone to follow in his footsteps, which leads to some ...
Manufacturer: Polydor Group
The Gorillaz claim to have found their motley crew of cartoon characters sleeping in Leicester Square but Blur's Damon Albarn (aka 2-D) and cult cartoonist Jamie Hewlett (Murdoc) are not fooling anyone. As the ultimate experiment in manufactured image, the Gorillaz are a virtual, cartoon-character-based hip-hop band which bring together some of the wittiest, silliest lyrics and the most seriously ...
Manufacturer: Parlophone
This debut revolutionized hip-hop (and launched half a dozen solo careers), as much for The RZA's raw barrage of off-kilter, off-key loops and sound effects as for its elliptically violent lyrics. Martial arts--at least as they appear in kung fu movies--are the Wu-Tang Clan's favorite metaphor, but they're also the organizing principle of the group, a crowd of eight rappers, each with his own ...
Manufacturer: Loud
Manufacturer: Mercury Records Ltd (London)
How to follow the phenomenally-successful The Chronic album must have caused superstar rap producer Dr Dre more than a few sleepless nights. Five years on, for 2001 he's gathered a plethora of prime, new rap talent around him, including his prodigy-of-the-moment, Eminem, and Xzibit (who duet on boombastic anthem "What's The Difference?"); and is reunited with former compadres Snoop ...
Manufacturer: Sonybmg
Any lingering doubts as to the depth of Eminem's skills, or his potential for raw-yet-compelling honesty, are dispelled on The Eminem Show's first track. Armed with a quicksilver flow and a thundering rhythm track (the record was exec-produced by long-time mentor/partner Dr Dre, "White America" finds Eminem ferociously mauling the hand that feeds him, lambasting his critics, the industry ...
The title of N.E.R.D's third album, Seeing Sounds, was inspired by a TV show the band watched about synaesthesia--the neurological disorder that causes people to experience sounds as colours or objects in their minds. The concept inspired the trio (Pharrell Williams, Chad Hugo, a.k.a. The Neptunes, and their rapping pal Shay Haley) to create a record as if it were a live show, as if the ...
Conceived as an unofficial soundtrack to the Ridley Scott movie of the same name, American Gangster sees us getting reacquainted with a quite different Jay-Z to the mainstream-courting comeback kid that hooked up with Beyonce and Coldplay's Chris Martin on 2006's Kingdom Come. This, Jay-Z's second post-retirement album, is hip-hop to the bone: a record steeped in the sounds, ...
Manufacturer: Def Jam
Manufacturer: Polydor
