NY’s Finest

By the mid-2000s “golden age” 90s New York rap was already being treated as chilled background music for hipster cafes — but in the “Intro” here, superproducer Pete Rock makes clear he has no time for “bourgeois bullshit.” His beats may be smooth — he was always ultra slick-sounding next to his peers in soul-sampling, RZA and Premier — but up loud their crisp impact is devastating, and the MCs make it clear from the start they mean business in every possible sense. Jim Jones? Styles P? Redman? Raekwon? I mean come on! And that’s just the start of a huge cast who all blend perfectly into the album’s flow. It’s an absolute litany of badassness, in both aesthetics and personality.