This was a release that affected both the hip-hop culture, and pop culture in a humongous way.Īll of that came from a bad ass mother fucker from Houston, Texas.
#SCARFACE THE DIARY 1994 MOVIE#
Hell, have you ever seen the movie Office Space? That kick ass song playing in the car near the beginning of the film was the song "No Tears" from this album. This album has fresh sounds, and has songs that still receive play to this day. What no one could have known was how well it would pass the test of time. In other words, it was obvious from day one that this album was going to be legendary. The album quickly reached platinum certification, and is one of the few albums to ever receive a perfect score from both XXL and The Source. After success with the Geto Boys, and two relatively successful solo projects, Brad Jordan truly left his mark on rap music with his third studio album, The Diary. Slowly, the other two were becoming background characters in the legendary career of this man. You cannot skim through a list of the greatest rappers of all time without finding Scarface somewhere around the top ten.Īfter a few albums with his original group, it was obvious that Jordan was emerging as the popular face of the crew. Let's all pretend he's a cold blooded killer Makes things more fun). He personifies the name he has chosen to represent him in every way, and has even been to prison multiple times (not for killing or drug dealing, but we don't really have to talk about that. Not a bad man in the sense that he does bad things, but more of an endearing bad, like John Wayne. His trench coat and mobster hat attire in the old days made him a presence to be felt. Face is a man who walks with a moxy that seemingly embodies his rhymes. Scarface, or Brad Jordan (yeah, that's who Isaiah Rashad was talking about) is from Houston, Texas, and is one of the most prominent members in the history of gangster rap. A group that was somewhat prominent in southern hip hop at this time was the Geto Boys outfit, made up of Bushwick Bill. Just about the greatest year in the history of our beloved genre. To a fan coming up in the era of Cardi or Tyler or Polo G or Playboi Carti, the golden age is now.Ah 1994. One of the incredible things about hip-hop is that it evolves and expands faster than any other genre in music history. to Houston to Chicago, and beyond.Īs we dug and listened, we found ourselves a little less swayed by “golden age” mystique than we might’ve been had we done this list 10 or 15 years ago. and Rakim and others, through the gangsta era, the rise of the South, the ascendance of larger-than-life aughts superstars like Jay-Z and Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, and on and on into more recent moments like blog-rap, emo-rap, and drill, from New York to L.A. The result was a list that touches on every important moment in the genre’s evolution - from compilations that honor the music’s paleo old-school days, to its artistic flourishing in the late Eighties and early Nineties with Public Enemy, De La Soul, Eric B. When confronted with a choice between the third (or fourth or fifth) record by a classic artist (Outkast, for instance, or A Tribe Called Quest) and an album from an artist who would make the list more interesting (The Jacka or Saba or Camp Lo), we tended to go with the latter option. Relatedly, a list of hip-hop-adjacent albums from the worlds of dancehall or reggaeton or grime would be fun and fascinating, and something for us to revisit down the road. That’s one reason we limited our scope to English language hip-hop. But the history of rap LPs is so rich and varied, we were forced to make some painful choices - there are so many iconic artists with deep catalogs, so many constantly evolving sounds and regional scenes. Two hundred seems like an almost luxuriantly expansive number when you’re making an albums list, and in any other genre, maybe it would be.