Yeezus — Kanye West

Yeezus is the soundtrack of dissent. Beginning with the brash distortions of “On Sight,” Kanye drives his foot onto the listener’s neck, delivering them into a thundery wasteland terrorized by synth-worms and floating megaliths. Yeezus was made at a time when people still laughed at Kanye for claiming he would be a fashion designer billionaire. The album consciously smashes expectations of Kanye’ past music, and popular music in general; it was deliberately wound to provoke, challenge, and dissent—which 99% of celebrities, 95% of artists, and about 85% of people are too scared to do nowadays.

Unknown Death 2002 — Yung Lean

While technically not an album, Yung Lean's 2013 debut mixtape Unknown Death 2002 proved that he, along with his crew Sad Boys, could create waves in the global rap scene from their bedrooms in Sweden. One can trace the origins of the entire first wave of Soundcloud rap to this project. The vocal mix is a little rough around the edges, but Unknown Death 2002 sounded like almost nothing that had released before. Despite basically inventing a new genre, Lean still managed to not take himself too seriously. With lyrics about childhood pop culture icons like Pokemon juxtaposed with novel and tongue-in-cheek references to hard drugs, the album is hard not to at least be amused by, and the vapory genre he created in 2013 still has influence today.

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) — Wu-Tang Clan

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is based because of its landmark style. From the beats to the rhymes, everything fits perfectly. The RZA’s rugged beats combined with each MC’s unique flow, along with skits and Kung Fu movie inserts, creates an album that’ll cut your head off and keep you wanting more. It’s not overproduced corporate shit; it’s real, it’s authentic, it’s the Wu-Tang. A unique and gritty sound that cannot be replicated. Ever.

Anything by Lil B

If we didn’t mention The BasedGod himself, we would surely be deserving of death. Every word this man speaks—every phonetic syllable that tumbles out of his mouth—is automatically based. Lil B invented the term “based” for his relentlessly positive, if strange, music. Many of us have memories as teenagers of taking copious amount of drugs and repeating his hook “Bitch I’m Bill Clinton / fucking all the bitches” over and over again. Anyone who denies that Lil B is based, is an atheist.

Reasonable Doubt — Jay-Z

Forget Beyoncé, forget the cheating, forget the Ye collaborations, forget the bling era—let’s return to the mid-90s for Jay-Z’s very first album. On Reasonable Doubt, Jay-Z isn’t the show-off MC cuffed to the biggest female pop star in the world; this is the slick gangster who almost got cuffed for selling crack. The entire album is a carefully calculated attack, as if Hov is a mafioso lurking from his large tower, overlooking the streets he worked up from, delivering lessons to those still there. Add tough and slick-sounding boom-bap beats, great storytelling, timeless hooks, and a solid set of features from rappers that never really got to shine elsewhere. The rest of Jay-Z’s catalog is spotty but Reasonable Doubt is easily one of the best hip hop albums of all time. One of the few artists to peak on his debut.

Whole Lotta Red — Playboi Carti

When this album first came out, it was often heard on the Instagram of Dark Iron Gains, a highly influential online lifter. The hyperactivity, ADHD, narcissism & arguable schizophrenia that characterizes Playboi Carti’s work is instantly familiar to any modern-day lifter who also has Instagram. These are songs that will make you tweak at the gym and scare off all the ladies (a good thing). Whole Lotta Red will also be remembered as one of the very last times Pitchfork ever got it right—they awarded it “Best New Music” against the prevailing sentiment at the time that the album was trash—a feat quickly dispelled by their subsequent dismissal of Donda, which they will come to regret…

You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack — Viper

The album that launched a thousand memes. Viper is “the poor man’s Lil B”: a belligerently prolific artist—at his peak, he released an album a day, cumulating in over 1500 albums total—who’s either a genius or a nut-job depending on how much internet you’ve consumed. One of his albums, 2008’s You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack, by far his most popular work, first went viral for its abjectly shitty cover art, itself a poorly cropped image of the rapper’s face from a previous album. Memers began making their own versions, and the rest is history; Viper eventually earned one of the highest accolades for an Internet troll, his very own Know Your Meme page.

Come Over When You’re Sober, Pts. I & II — Lil Peep

Lil Peep is the blackpilled doomer bard of his generation. Without Lil Peep, there would be no Juice WRLD or Lil Xan. On Peep’s only full-length studio projects (Come Over When You’re Sober and its sequel), he raps about his prolific drug use and general despair in the face of the nihilistic void against a backing of post-emotional hardcore guitar riffs. Arguably the most influential rapper of this decade, his brief oeuvre merits study.

The Minstrel Show — Little Brother

The mid-2000s would see the poles of hip hop move away from the original East and West Coast divide and towards the South, where they remain today. This era of the South is often associated with its original ATL clientele (Outkast, Goodie Mob) or its later crunk practitioners (Lil Jon, Crime Mob), but between those two styles there was a group known as Little Brother. Rocking MC duties were Rapper Big Pooh and Phonte, with production handled by 9th Wonder. Their 2005 album, The Minstrel Show, took its cue from Southern aesthetics but developed them further with beats that could have been lifted from a neo-soul artist or a chipmunk-soul producer like Kanye. The leg up that this album has on all other albums released during this period is that it’s actually funny. The Minstrel Show is built around the concept of a black television network; the boys are not afraid to let you laugh with them as they impersonate aging R&B singers and local boutique commercials. It’s fun, boastful, and unafraid. It’s none other than The Minstrel Show.

Check Your Head — The Beastie Boys

Beastie Boys serve as one of the more interesting acts in hip-hop, not for their race as many people will say, but for their innovation. Licensed to Ill brought out the first signs of a compelling fusion of rap & rock, while their follow up Paul’s Boutique completely flipped the production game on its head with its funk bass-lines and primal heaviness that rivaled the hard rock acts they called contemporaries. Those two albums alone are classics of 80s hip hop, but Check Your Head is the synthesis of all their ideas into one. We are not just getting prime production skills and rap-rock here; we’re also getting masterfully crafted funk tracks built from the bottom-up, legitimate punk-rock songs, and real instrumentation supplementing sampling. This is hip-hop stepping forward from a sample-based culture into its own live world: funk from the 70s meeting 80s punk rock; Brooklyn rappers in their prime ready to pounce on their competition.

Daytona — Pusha—T

Daytona by Pusha T is based because it’s an unapologetically gangster rap album with superb Kanye production in an era where gangster rap doesn’t really exist. Much of Pusha’s subject matter—he pretty much exclusively raps about selling coke throughout all of his projects—is informed and grounded in his relationship with his former manager Anthony “Geezy” Gonzalez, a convicted drug kingpin based in Virginia Beach. That level of authenticity backed by soulful, orchestral production is a rare feat and earns King Push his place on this list. There’s nothing more based than authenticity in a fake world.

Donda — Kanye West

Donda is based because it's the first album in recent memory to dominate so much of America's cultural terrain (#1 on Billboard, 3 stadium shows) while promoting positive, wholesome, spiritually uplifting messages. All swear words are censored on Donda. What was the last #1 rap album you could play for your kids? Donda will forever be associated with its musical foil, Certified Lover Boy, and while the latter sold more, "Donda" changed far more lives, and like a green nub in the frozen ground, signaled that perhaps an age of nihilism, narcissism, and degeneracy is coming to an end, and a new paradigm now has a chance to blossom.

Credits

This piece was written with contributions from the Countere Discord community:

FJB — Unknown Death 2002

John Gallagher — Daytona, Come Over When You’re Sober

Aesthetic Fanatic — Reasonable Doubt, The Minstrel Show, Check Your Head

DB — Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

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