aL's Top Ten Greatest Hip Hop Albums

So...the Bored Housewife recently posted about Hip Hop and how it doesn't provoke thought.

I offered some suggestions in her comment box which she seemed grateful for, but she got me thinking.

I used to be an avid listener of Hip Hop...so i started recollecting all my favorite hip hop groups. So I am gonna list my Top Ten Hip Hop albums.

Please note that this list was created from very poor memory and I feel as if I left some thing out, so some of these are subject to change. Regardless, here they are:

The Top Ten Greatest Hip-Hop albums ever made!

1. Bizzare Ride to the Pharcyde- the Pharcyde

2. Sex Styles- Kool Keith

3. The Low End Theory- Tribe Called Quest

4. Aceyalone- The Book of Human Language

5. Sex and Violence- KRS-One

6. Cyrpress Hill- Cypress Hill

7. Eazyduzit- Eazy-E

8. Grip It! On that Other Level- Geto Boys

9. Enter the 36 Chambers- Wu-Tang Clan

10. Doggystyle- Snoop Doggy Dog

11. Phrenology- The Roots

Ten?... eleven?... who cares?






So after I wrote down the list and before I actually posted...i was searching for proper images...this turned into a whole ordeal as I discovered something...interesting.

I did an image search on photobucket and found that if you type in the word
"Ghetto", most of the photos that come up are of teenage white girls crossing their arms in rapper poses and oversized hats tilted to the side.

pretty damn ghetto...or white trash...or Britney Spears...all the same shit to me.

Anyyways I found that this discovery says some strange things about culture..and how terminology is never a static thing. The more pictures are taken of white girls pretending to be ghetto, the more the word ghetto loses its original meaning.

Also this could be due to the fact that maybe in the Ghetto...the real ghetto... digital cameras and photobucket are not heavily integrated into that particular
societal realm.



Ok, granted...I myself am I white boy...and I just listed my favorite Hip Hop albums. What is the difference? Well, i'm not sure, I am obviously a confused mutherfucker and have been for many years. Cultural identity has always been a conundrum for me
as the contradictions have always overlapped, conflicted, and contorted my ideas of who I am.

To put it bluntly..I am American.

That sounds ugly...but I like to say it.

I am also Texan.

Sounds uglier...but I don't care what some people say about it...

I am also Mexican...which most people have trouble believing... but again..
I don't really care.

So as a confused teenager, listening to Rap music, while all my friends were listening to Green Day, I identified more with the street music that dealt with
conflict...real conflict...not like...damn...my gf broke up with me so Im gonna write this sad song...

Eventually, I did realize that this connection was false...and there are very few similarities between the way I grew up and the street life portrayed in Hip Hop.
I also realized that most of the time Rappers were just really good at talking shit and making it sound good.

Well I went off on this whole other subject that I never really meant to get into so I am just gonna leave it at that...