Critical Beatdown: How '88 Was Hip-Hop's Dopest Year

By the time 2008 is out, mainstream media outlets will have devoted more air-time, web pages and column inches to this year's 40th anniversary of 1968 than they will have to the Iraq war. Baby-boomers just can't get enough. "Man, you talk to these kids these days, it's like they don't even wanna get smashed in the head with a National Guardsman's rifle butt. I smoked a joint with David Crosby one time, you know. At least, he said he was David Crosby. I mean, I never really got too good a look at him, it was pretty dark. That's the 60s for you, man. Not like today. Today you gotta switch a light on and get a real good at somebody before you know who they are." But ask any hip-hop nut what anniversary we should really be talkin' 'bout in 2008, and you'll get a different answer. 1988 produced so many landmark, all-time classic Top 100 rap LPs that it boggles the mind. It was the definition of a 'vintage pop year'. Read over to see just how vintage this vintage year was.

My TOP 10 1988 Hip-Hop LPs...in no particular order....

.1. Public Enemy: It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back

The Bomb-Squad live up to their name by lighting the fuse of one explosive stick of super-heavy dynamite cut 'n' paste noise after another, as Chuck D perfects his booming "God commentating on the final minutes of a New York Knicks game" vocal style. Lesson: if you're determined to tell America some uncomfortable home truths, why not got the whole 9 yards and do so over a soundtrack of relentlessly abrasive, screeching avant-garde funk like this. Uncompromising.

.2. NWA: Straight Outta Compton

...while over on the West Coast, this buncha LA hoods soaked up all the problems Chuck D was rappin' 'bout, and came to their own, rather different conclusion, ie: fuck black power, fuck the police, infact fuck everyone: I'm out to get mine, and anybody who gets in my way will pay a heavy price. Commentators often call this music the product of disenfranchisement, but Eazy-E and Ice Cube don't sound disenfranchised. They sound like the most powerful hardcore punks ever to walk the earth. If they were unlistened to by the system, that just meant they didn't owe the system anything. This LP made every city in the world a suburb of South Central Los Angeles. NWA got their's all right, and then they took everybody elses too.

.3. Ultramagnetic MCs: Critical Beatdown

Wanna know where Keith Flint of the Prodigy found every good sample he ever looped? Look no further. Flint has pillaged this LP repeatedly ("I'll take your brain to another dimension...") and he's far from the only one. With strong competition from Dr Octagon, this is probably Kool Keith's finest hour. Wacked-out, sci-fi lyrics and hard-hitting scratchy funk breaks make this a masterclass in classic old-skoolery. Check "Give The Drummer Some" for some A+ drum-heavy party-rockin' hip-hop.

.4. Big Daddy Kane: Long Live The Kane

From front to back, maybe Marly Marl's greatest production; a lesson in artful, brutal minimalism. Many tracks consist of nothing but up-tempo, rattling breaks, bursts of squealing electric guitar and some tasty old-skool Marley scratchin'. "Set It Off" - perhaps the absolute pinnacle of this style - is just relentless. These sparse arrangements give Kane's rhymes room to breathe, and he's so on-point here it's not even funny. "Ain't No Half-Steppin", a very funky mid-tempo groove based on an loop of The Emotion's 'Blind Alley', is simply one of my favourite records ever. Essential.

.5. Kool G Rap & DJ Polo: Road To Riches

Most "Best Hip-Hop Albums of 1988" lists don't place this LP quite as highly as I have done here, but one listen confirms how well this has dated production-wise compared to more highly acclaimed LPs like Sick Rick's 'The Adventures Of...'  and BDP's ' By All Means Necessary' which, while lyrically stunning, sound kind of wack. Wish I didn't feel that way, but I do. Compared to the work Marley does on the Cold Chillin' stuff from this year, they just don't cut it. Next to Kane's 'Set It Off' and 'Raw', Kool G Rap & Polo's 'Poison' is Marley's greatest rampaging drums + guitar squark production of the year.

.6. EPMD: Strictly Business

For the elemental hip-hop bombs 'I'm Housing' and' Let The Funk Flow', but most importantly for 'The Steve Martin', a novelty rap song about a non-existant dance craze inspired by LA Story and The Jerk star, Steve Martin. Actually includes the line "Steve Martin in full effect." Insane. (Read my previous article about this, here.)

.7. Jungle Brothers: Straight Out The Jungle

Released a more than a year before De La Soul or A Tribe Called Quest's debut offerings, 'Straight Out The Jungle' was the Native Tongues Posses' first full-length statement of intent, representing for a mellow afrocentric vision of hip-hop. Lyricaly very smart, and acoustically drawing more on jazz and psychedelic source material than their contemporaies, there's was an inclusive, humanist approach which appealed to people who had never before taken much notice of rap music. Their style was inevitably described as 'hippy-hop' by many commentators, but this is a hopelessly reductive white-rock journo sorta concept. The Jungle Brothers and likeminded crews were, as they said, just doin' their own dang.

.8. Marley Marl: In Contol Vol. 1

The first full Cold Chillin' posse cut has to get a mention here. Master Ace, Mc Shan, Roxanne Shante, Craig G, Biz Markie, Percy Tragedy and Big Daddy Kane...it's a Golden Age school class photo. 'The Symphony' and 'Droppin' Science' are standout tracks, the former beginning with the famous demand that "I don't care who's first or who's last, but it's got to be funky." Was anybody seriously worried it wouldn't be?

.9. Boogie Down Productions: By All Means Necessary

When BDP DJ Scott La Rock was murdered on the streets of the South Bronx in 1987, KRS-One coulda thrown in the towel. Instead, he threw himself in to the production of this, the sequel to the pair's stunning debut 'Criminal Minded'. Where 'Criminal Minded' was soaked in violent, gangsta, gang-bangin' attitude, his DJ's death forced KRS-One to re-think, and 'By All Means Necessary' saw him make a huge shift towards concious lyricism and a desire to educate. Opening cut 'My Philosophy' oulines this new vision; 'Boogie Down Productions is made up of teachers, the lecture is conducted from the mic into the speaker'.

.10. Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: He's The DJ, I'm The Rapper

Hardcore rap freaks are gonna hate me for putting this LP in my Top 10 and leaving Slick Rick to the honorable mentions section, but I'm not a hardcore rap freak. This is a superb pop album, packed with funny, funky, smart hip-hop music from a simpler age. Just as valid in it's own way as NWA or Public Enemy's 1988 offerings, I'd give my right arm to have rap hits in the charts as good as the ones this album produced.

They also served: Slick Rick: The Aventures Of.../ Eazy-E: Eazy Duz It / Salt n Peppa: A Salt With A Deadly Peppa / Biz Markie: Goin' Off / Eric B & Rakim: Follow The Leader...