"Speakerboxxx/Love Below" is a very underrated album, especially Big Boi's disc is purely amazing Southern hip-hop that points the way towards his excellent official debut "Big Lucious Left Foot" (what the hell was up with his sophomore effort though?). Each and every one of their albums are truly groundbreaking and can be called masterpieces (or classics) or at least very close (not counting "Idlewild", but that was a soundtrack so it doesn't really count - the film was pretty cool though). OutKast has always been one of my favorite groups - a duo that not only have one of the best chemistries in the game, includes one of the best emcees of all time, are great producers in their own right, and have one of the best catalouges around. It follows the group from the recording of their debut to their hip-pop masterpiece "Stankonia" in 2000. One of my favorites was always the Big Daddy Kane one, but recently I came across a brilliant piece on Andre 3000 and Big Boi, better known as OutKast, which follows the duo from their upbringing in the deep South, hooking up with each other at a local talent show, to quitting school to work with Organized Noize and chilling out in the Dungeon with the rest of the crew. VH1's bioraphical "Driven" show have aired some absolutely great 45 minutes documentaries since the start of the show.
If you're not up on them yet, be sure to check out Redman's entire catalouge, Keith Murray's first albums, large parts of Erick Sermon's catalouge, and of course all the EPMD albums (yeah even the last one is pretty ill if you ask me). As usual the Def Squad tracks on here (Red, E-Dub, Keith Murray) is non album tracks/soundtrack joints and such, basically stuff that you won't find on either of these guys albums. Featured on the compilation are a couple of Sermon solo cuts, Def Squad, Keith Murray, Shaquille O'Neal, LL Cool J, Redman, K-Solo, D'Angelo, Bahamadia, AZ, Jodeci, and more. Erick Sermon has always been very good at killing beats for both R&B and hardcore hip-hop artists, and even the ocassional ragga artist like Super Cat, so I decided to make this compilation pretty diverse within those categories. These tracks to me represent stands as a good compliment together with the classic albums Sermon has produced as the reason why he is still to this day considered a living legend in the game. Reading Erick Sermon's name in the credits of a new hip-hop album was a true mark of quality However I do have to admit that past 2004 or something like that hes been more and more generic in his sound, though he ocassionally comes through with some real hardhitting shit that we all love.įor this compilation I decided to focus more on E-Dub's earlier material, past the early EPMD albums and up until about 2000 (and mostly earlier). Still The Green Eyed Bandit has proven time and time again that he's a super dope producer with or without EPMD, as he has produced at least two out of three classics for Redman (he was involved in "Dare Iz A Darkside" but the bulk of the beats was handled by Reggie himself). People love and will always hold the early EPMD albums in the higest regards among other classic hip-hop albums, equally because of PMD and E's intricate front-to-back rhyming but also because of the duo's funky sample-heavy beats that solidified Erick Sermon as one of the best producers around (don't be completely fooled though, as PMD had a lot of production input as well - especially on their first album "Strictly Business" as revealed to Brian Coleman in his chapter on the album from his "Check The Technique" ).
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