chem's guide to indie hiphop (for dok) :

[Editor's Note - This document fell into my hands some time ago by accident. I don't know who wrote it, nor can I remember where it came from. It was a simple text file then, but I have reformatted it into an HTML file for easier reading online.]

i'll break it down by labels/crews...

rawkus

indie label out of nyc, home of mos def, company flow, talib kweli, kool g rap, and the soundbombing/lyricist lounge comps. the best thing they ever released was an album by black star called 'mos def and talib kweli are black star', which is pretty much self-explanatory. it has an incredible guest spot by common on 'respiration' which is the best cut on the album. i haven't heard the new talib, but i hear it isn't very good. soundbombing and lyricist lounge are nice for hardcore headz, but can be lacking in soul. mos def's solo one is pretty fantastic too, but sometimes slowed down by weak production. mos is one of the greatest mcs ever though, and his delivery and lyrics are simply awe-inspiring. realy worth picking up, even his singing skills shine. moving on...

the roots crew

ok, there's the roots. they're great, really. 'organic hiphop jazz' said black thought, one of their two mcs (the other being malik b). their best is 'things fall apart', which is also their newest and most popular. go figure. all their other albums are like it only not as good, except illadelph halflife, where they used more traditional production and is nice in a dilated peoples sort of way (dp sampled 'UNIverse at war' from this, by the way). human beatbox/biz markie student rahzel saw unexpected success with his single two summers ago, but by far their most successful venture has been their single 'you got me' featuring erykah badu, who, along with d'angelo and jazzyfatnastees, are the 'soul' part of the roots crew. the hiphop part, besides the roots, is the aforementioned dilated peoples and wonder mc common sense (now known only as common). common has a new one that i haven't heard, and although he can lay on quite thick the racism and homophobia, he is also an amazing mc. 1994's 'i used to love h.e.r.' is the greatest love song in hiphop, and it's to hiphop. i cried the first time i heard this song. he did a beautiful followup to it on the latest roots album with 'the love of my life'. the roots crew and the the rawkus crew are frequent collabarators, and together are pretty much considered today's incarnation of the late 80s/early 90s native tongues movement (tribe called quest, de la soul, jungle brothers, along with lesser-knowns brand nubian, kmd, black sheep and a few i can't remember right now. current state of 'the big three', by the way: de la: making decent club hiphop. hardly comparable to their earlier work. tribe: broken up. q-tip is jiggy, phife is mad about said jigginess, and ali-shaheed is doing some decent but unspectacular work with r&b singer lucy pearl. jungle brothers: drifted more and more towards techno. recently released a mostly awful album produced by alex gifford from the propellerheads. avoid.)

the hieroglyphics crew

known mainly for frontman del and symbolised by the ubiquitous three-eyed straight-faced smiley, the hiero crew are fun west coast hiphop and not in the shitty jurassic five way. souls of mischief did an incredible debut, '93 til infinity', then did shit and dropped off the map. i don't own anything by casual, but he has a joyous voice judging by his guest appearances and i'll venture anything by him is a pleasure to listen to. don't take my word for it though. del's first one was 'i wish my brother george were here', referring to george clinton, and was produced by george clinton fan extrordinare and del's cousin (!) ice cube. it's nice, but the p-funk and racial slurs get old after a while, and i much prefer his second album 'no need for alarm' with it's mainly self- and hiero-produced beats and sharp mc-hating del rhymes. del's mc skills are at their best on this one, and it has some great cover art to boot, with tags by del (!) all over the thing. i haven't heard 'both sides of the brain', but with a prince paul cut, it should be at least halfway good. his new one, deltron 3030, you know about. del + automator + koala. it's solid. highly recommend koala's solo one too, and even moreso his first mixtape 'scratchcratchratch', but i'll get to that in my djs section. let's continue.

automator

ok, since i just mentioned automator, let me get in a word here about him. he burst onto the scene with doc octagon, which you have, and did a mostly spectacular ep after that, which has been recently reissued by his label (75ark.com). he also collabarated with prince paul as handsomeboy modelling school on 'so, hows your girl', which was a kinda hit or miss affair. amazing tracks from del, encore, brand nub, and 1/3 of de la. and some nice work from others too. not amazing, but some is. i'd recommend having it just for the guest spots, it also has dj shadow, koala again, el-p from company flow, and samples from the chris elliot sitcom 'get a life' over classical music and beats.

prince paul

speaking of prince paul, let's talk about him. he rose to fame with stetsasonic in the late 80s, who i own nothing by but have heard and are nice jazzy hiphop, then went on with de la to produce two of the best albums EVER, any genre, and a decent third. (three feet high and rising, de la soul is dead, buhloone mindstate). i'd recommend getting '3ft high&rising' first, then 'de la is dead' a month later. they're fantastic, you'll be amazed at how much current underground hiphop owes to them. they're not dated a bit either. prince paul himself is much like his kindred spirit automator, in that they both have a knack for melodic, eclectic beats and weird sex rhymes, which can be good or bad. after splitting with de la, paul put out 'psychoanalysis (what is it)' on tommy boy. this is a fucking weird album. scary too. paul does reggae, paul does run-dmc, paul does too short, paul does string-coated date rape/racial murder anthems. basically, it's all his demons from happy-go-lucky de la running amuck. a bit much, but compelling stuff when you're in the mood. after that, paul did 'prince among thieves', a pretty boring stab at somewhat commercial non-indie friendly hiphop. it's a bunch of skits (which paul invented, by the way. the man invented the hiphop skit) and songs. nice guest spots by keith and de la, but nothing to write home about. shortly after, he dropped the handsome boy modelling school thing, and that's about up to date with him. his next is a project with automator and the dust brothers that will either be fantastic or a fantastic failure. anything produced by him is generally nice, so if you see he's done something with an mc you like, pick it up, chances are it's a classic track. lately he's been working with smartass white-guy paul barman, who i loved when i first heard and hate now. approach at your own risk.

keith thorton

well, i just touched on keith, so let me expand. keith is fucking weird. he seemed weirder in the days before weird mcs, when he was the weirdest guy in the ultra-magnetic mcs. they dropped a classic back in 86 called 'critical beatdown' that's a must for any keith fan. keith then split from the group, did some weird singles under 'sinistarr 6000' and dropped the new school classic 'dr. octagonacoligyst'. he's done a string of mediocre stuff after that, not hardly worth the attention it gets from white music mags. his best post octagon work is on the automator ep 'a better tomorrow' (recently reissued as 'a much better tomorrow' with new keith tracks) and 'black elvis/lost in space' with keith self-producing some timbaland-in-space shit. let it grow on you. analog brothers (with ice t (!) is awful. avoid it at all costs. buy ultramag if you like keith. some say it's all been downhill from 'kool keith housin things'. also, for some reason british techno group the prodigy love ultra-mag and recruited keith for their album. oh, and 'smack my bitch up' is based on a keith line, and samples ultra-mag. funny how things work out.

oakland hiphop funk

time to shift to the current west coast hiphop renaissance, which is so hit-or-miss it's not funny. first up, jurassic five. it's a love or hate thing with j5, and while spin and cmj love them, i'm amazingly annoyed by them. sing-song childish hiphop revival, with countless weak un-memorable tracks about 'taking it back to the essence of hiphop' and how they're great because they're not hot boyz. (popular dirty south gangsta rappers, if you don't know) they do have some nice beats by cut chemist and nu-mark occasionally, though, which brings me to a kindred spirit to chemist, dj shadow. let's see, i loved shadow when i was younger, and i still do mostly, although discovering how much he's ripped of sketches of spain-era miles davis has taken him down a notch. he's the founder of the usually spectacular collective solesides, which is now known as quannum, but is handy to know about because a compilation called 'solesides greatest bumps' was recently released that provides a handy history without a lot of cratedigging. shadow's best, overall, is 1996s 'endtroducing', but there's a decent historical comp called 'preemptive strike' as well. he also did the uneven unkle album 'psyence fiction' that is worth listening to if you like that sort of crossover thing. fellow quannumites blackalicious (the mc is gift of gab, the dj is chief x-cel) got loads of acclaim for this year's 'nia' which i don't own but have heard and wasn't blown away by. i suggest you hunt down the far superiod 'a2g' ep which has the best cuts off the album plus some rarities. it's about 8 bucks too. finishing quannum are bay area duo latyrx (the name comes from the combo of lyrics born and lateef the truth speaker, the two mcs, although i like lyrics' old moniker 'asia born' far better). i've only heard bits and pieces from them, but their self titled is supposedly terrific, and i believe it. lateef occasionally falls into gift of gab-style whiny-voice, but asia born makes up for it with his incredible bluesland patoir. honestly, i could listen to the man freestyle a phone book, he's one of my favorite mcs of all time. vocally, not lyrically. at this point i should probably mention peanut butter wolf and lootpack, of which madlib is from. i heard their album 'soundpieces: da antidote' and it was nice, but the real shit is madlibs weirdass self-produced (and this is no lame indulgent shit, this one of my albums of the year and even spin agrees on this) quasimoto alter ego, and the album 'the unseen' highly recommended as a great album, but madlib has no skills on the mic.

ninja tune/big dada

now quannum recently signed a distrobution deal with british indie jazz/electronic/funk/hiphop label ninja tune, which is kind of like mo'wax (if you know mo'wax, they're a similar brit jazz/hiphop/electro label that dropped shadow's albums and some other nice shit) only mo'wax isn't as good. ninja tune's hiphop sublabel is 'big dada' and they've dropped some real recent classics, the best of being mike ladd side project the infesticons with 'gun hill road' and jamaican brit roots manuva's 'brand new second hand'. mike ladd gets my pick for current-genius-that-hardly-anyone-knows about-but-will-save-intellectual-hiphop, but i'll venture you'll like him since he's a saul williams contemporary, who guests on the infesticons album along with anti-pop consortium, mums, and company flow. the company also show up on mike's fantastic 'welcome to the afterfurture', which is more introspective than the infesticons project, but some might say is also less 'hiphop', whatever that means. pick up both of em, they're great. not much else going on the hiphop tip at ninja tune, they were founded by veteran dj duo coldcut who did an incredible remix of eric b. and rakim's 'paid in full' ages ago and have been releasing the same album since, lucky for them it's a damn good turntable wizard hilarious same album. ninja's got koala too, who you know is good, plus moody hiphop producers herbaliser, who have actually dropped some decent shit. if you like jazz, pick up the new dj food ('kaleidoscope') and cinematic orchestra, who rip off miles more than shadow but still excite me. amon tobin's good too. if you wanna get up on all of this, 18 bucks should get you a copy of 'xen cuts', a ten year history compilation on ninja tune that's certainly worth owning. recommended.

that should do it for current indie hiphop. i've spent recent times employing my love of old school and 87-93 hiphop, but if i included that this list would never end. this is by no means a complete list of current artists, many i've left out that i just don't consider worthy of buying but you might love. it's all a matter of taste, and this is mine. good luck, and keep hiphop alive.

tragic epilogue: jiggy producers who i would buy a jay-z track from

one thing that didn't fit into the above but that i would like a chance to say are my favorite producers that are commercial to some degree and can still blow away half of the above with one nicely dropped single.

dj primo

first up, dj premier from gang starr. yeah, they're indie, but he's done so much commercial shit it's easy to forget. good thing all of it is incredible. i don't think he can touch something without turning it into a hardcore joint that'll bring down the cipher and have your little sister humming it in her walkman. simply amazing. if you want the best of the best, check out 'return of the boom bap' and 'krs one' by krs one, who is an mc's mc himself. primo did about half the tracks on each, and it's the most amazing shit he's ever done. i'm still waiting for krs to recruit this guy for a full length.

rza

rza is the master of strings. he calls himself black mozart and i believe it. the wu's first one ('enter the 36-chambers') was mostly fantastic, and they've still got some of my favorite mcs, but it seemed they never learned the ancient samuri code of quality control. chances are, there's a new wu-related joint coming out right now, and your mom is guesting on it. they just dropped two of the singles of the year, so don't sleep on that. speaking of single of the year...

timbaland

i can't say enough about timbaland. he's a fascinating pop culture phenom. he makes incredible, dubby, electro, string-sweeped, drum n bass beats, and is seemingly self-taught (when asked about drum n bass influence on his work, he said 'i only know timbaland drums and timbaland bass'. this guy consumes puffy and shits out gold). anything by him can be trusted to be the most avant garde thing the radio's ever played (no i'm not kidding) and he has my slot for single of the year with aaliyah's 'try again', which matches a classic rakim sample with sitar, horns, a detroit electro bass squiggle, sampled gasps of breath, and a post-radiohead synth burble that sounds like a sped-up warning signal from a space shuttle from the future. oh, and aaliyah's lovely vocals. it's as great as it sounds. buyer beware, timbaland frequently commits his own horrible raps to his tracks, and has a knack for producing irrestible work for the absolute worst artists, which can prove embarrassing (i own the jay-z 'big pimpin' cd single. shut up.)

the neptunes

i really don't know much about the neptunes actually, except that they seem to have come onto the scene recently, they produced odb's amazing 'baby i got your money' and kelis' wonderful primal scream 'i hate you so much right now' and, most recently, mystikals 'shake ya ass', which illustrates my favorite thing about the neptunes, putting 70s funk and soul geniuses like curtis mayfield and james brown back into the hiphop collective consciousness. i'd keep my eye on them, i predict big things, or at least a few more incredible singles you have to hide when cute feminist girls look at your cd collection.