Critical Beatdown cover

Critical Beatdown

Released

If rap has a Thelonious Monk, it’s Kool Keith: find the beat, work with the beat, but then flout the beat and the meter and the boundaries of A/B rhymes so thoroughly it leaves the Ultramags’ peers sounding basic. Ced-Gee killed it on the mic, too, but his contributions to chop-heavy sample-based production — teamed up with the gone-too-soon engineer/beat creator Paul C. (“Give the Drummer Some”) — completed a genre-reinventing epiphany that his rhyme partner envisioned.

Nate Patrin

Recommended by

Suggestions
Run the Jewels 3 cover

Run the Jewels 3

Run the Jewels
No Mercy cover

No Mercy

Da Youngsta's
Thugs Are Us cover

Thugs Are Us

Trick Daddy
Albert Einstein cover

Albert Einstein

Prodigy, The Alchemist
The Natural cover

The Natural

Mic Geronimo
Haram cover

Haram

Armand Hammer, The Alchemist