Not really the history of hip-hop you understand, given that the Sugarhill Gang released 'Rapper's Delight' in '79 and, lest we forget, that particular boy band weren't even the half of it. Rather, this is the history of hip-hop on Def Jam records, a label often prone to the belief that they invented the genre.
Unfortunately, there's no Slayer included here, though the Beastie Boys might like to point out that their more sinister labelmates are certainly implicated in this story. Instead, we kick off with LL Cool J's punishingly minimal 909 drum assault 'I Can't Live Without My Radio'. LL's first single reminds us just how raw his shit was before it all headed off to sappy rap ballad territory.
The Beastie Boys' 'Fight For Your Right' is up next and still drips with enough dumb testosterone thrills to make Fred Durst sound like an indie bed-wetter, almost. And let's just skirt over Oran 'Juice' Jones shall we?
Those who ever wondered where Ice Cube got those 'Gansta's Fairytale' tracks from should find it all right here in Slick Rick's 'Children's Story', a bedtime tale of hustler business told in the inimitable (Snoop excepted) style of the Wimbledon-born Ricky Walters.
The colossal leap that the album then takes to Public Enemy's seminal 'Fight The Power' - a single that came out long after the band had first sounded this mind-blowing on 1988's 'It Takes A Nation Of Millions..' - should act as a reminder of the quantum leap that Chuck and Flav represent. It may be historically misleading but it didn't get much better than this.
From here we get the MC Hammer dissin' 3rd Bass, original P-Funk samplers, EPMD, Nice & Smooth with the Tracy Chapman sampling 'Sometimes I Rhyme Slow..' and Queens gun-slingers Onyx. Finally, it all gives way to Def Jam's first foray into the West Coast G-Funk that ruled the mid-nineties with Warren G's 'Regulate'. Warren, Dr Dre's younger brother, never surpassed this insanely lazy slice of butter soul.
Def Jam's shining jewel from the Wu-Tang camp, Method Man, is represented by the soulless Puff Daddy re-edit of the commercial smash 'I'll Be There For You', giving no hint of the subterranean depths of bass and sonic consciousness mined by his astonishing 'Tical' LP. Thankfully, Meth's '99 collaboration with smokin' kindred spirit Redman on Rockwilder's futuristic 'Da Rockwilder' redresses the balance.
Then it's all Jigga, Foxy B, Ja Rule and DMX proving, if nothing else, that Def Jam has always placed more weight on commercial appeal than the artform. DMX's 'Party (Up In Here)' rocks hard but you suspect that when it's had as much time on the shelf as most of the tracks on this album it'll be the Onyx of it's era and not the Public Enemy.
